Posted by jwatson on Mar 8, 2010 in
QA Community of Practice,
Teacher Voices 
Every school day in Quest Atlantis, hundreds of students submit responses to Quests, and teachers all over the world review those responses. And every workday, I receive several notifications from teachers who want to highlight an extraordinary response submitted by one of their students. I always get a little thrill when I read those nominations, because I know that these are efforts that make teachers proud… and a proud teacher is a happy teacher! There is no feeling on Earth to compare with seeing that spark … evidence that a student “gets it.” Being a former schoolteacher myself, I know that feeling. When one of my students turned in an assignment that knocked my socks off, I wanted to go door to door or shout it from the rooftops!
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Posted by Jeff Agamenoni on Mar 4, 2010 in
Teacher Voices A vice-principal came into my classroom a few days ago. My students were working on the “Ingolstadt” mission in Quest Atlantis. She watched them for a few minutes and said, “Man, are they ever ENGAGED”. I have a friend that calls virtual games like this and the activities they contain, “Behaviorist Pedagogy“. I think it could be considered to be experiential learning as well. I am not certain which of us is more correct, perhaps we are equally correct. But I do know one thing for sure, my students are engaged, learn self-direction, and have fun when they are in Quest Atlantis. They are learning to interact, communicate, and collaborate with others in an on-line, teacher-monitored, safe environment. They are investigating Social Commitments and how to treat others respectfully, all the while being invested in a standards based curriculum. The more I see kids work with Quest Atlantis, and as I become increasingly efficient at teaching with it, the more I believe that MUVE’s like it definitely hold a very strong place in the future of education.
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Posted by sscharf on Mar 1, 2010 in
Kid Voices It’s been hard to avoid Olympic fever these last two weeks. Certainly the kids have gotten in to it with the cheers for their countries. The Olympics provide an opportunity for people around the world to come together and highlight their talents. The students in QA are going through some of the same experiences; while they are not competing in sports, they are navigating some interesting territory.
By far my favorite part of working with the QA team is reading the chat and seeing what goes through kids’ heads on a daily basis. They certainly have a complex way of looking at the world and think on a much higher level than most adults give them credit for.
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Come share your ideas on a Student Congress.
An idea had been mulling for some months now about creating a world in Quest Atlantis where students can take up ownership, leadership and have opportunities to share their lifeworld experiences in the QA social commitments.
The first formal meeting of our steering group happened this week to focus on writing a design proposal for a new world where the particpants will be the designers. What will it look like? What will the students roles be? What will motivate students to come here? What passport will be required to get there? What resourcing issues will we have? What infrastructure will support the goals? Six teachers and our first very brave student member met to begin to answer some of these questions.
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Tags: leadership, participatory design, student design, teacher contribution, teacher design
Posted by Melissa Gresalfi on Jan 22, 2010 in
Design Cartography, coordinate plotting, and the ethical tensions of archeology combine in our new math mission in Quest Atlantis. Questers receive a message in a bottle, calling for help. Furious at having a team of archeologists investigate its secrets, the island takes revenge by trapping the director of the dig, Dr. Leo. With an assistant too concerned with the rule book to take action, the quester must step into the jungle to save the well-intentioned, yet adventurous, Dr. Leo. Of course, the island will resist an outsider’s presence, so the Questers have quite a challenge on their hands.
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Tags: Design
Teacher Connections restarted back in September and the last 4 months have raised some very interesting discussions as well as opportunities for QA teachers to locate mentors, local teaching buddies, join collaborative projects and source prospective co-questing classes. The December meetings were small but very engaging as many Southern Hemisphere schools are now preparing for end of the year and retiring their QA classes and US counterparts were getting back in the swing after Thanksgiving celebrations.
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Tags: collaboration, community of practice, social networking, teacher contribution
One of the challenges of creating an online gaming curriculum is also creating a means for teachers to experience the game while understanding how to support its content. Going through the Mesa Verde Unit as a student, for example, will give you a great idea of how to support students procedurally — that is to say, how to complete the tasks, where the characters are located, etc. But, an important part of the QA teaching experience is also pushing on our students’ understanding of the content so they truly understand what it means to use what they’ve learned in a meaningful way. While the Unit Plan offers many suggestions for teachers, wouldn’t it be great if you could both experience the Unit AND learn about new ways to support your students conceptual understanding of the material at the same time? Read more…
Tags: Ander City, Classroom practice, community of practice, Modern Prometheus, Taiga, teacher contribution, theme-based instruction
Posted by Steve Zuiker on Nov 12, 2009 in
Kid Voices In our work with Quest Atlantis here in Singapore, my colleague Doreen and I repeatedly confront the pragmatic ambitions of a well-run, centrally-organized education system. It is therefore a pleasure for us when the things that kids say as they contribute to QA make us to step back for a moment. In this post, we share one such episode that occurred recently in the home of a not atypical local family. The video is not particularly long, but we think it highlights QA’s influence on the mindsets of both Singapore children and their parents. Before rolling the film, however, we think it is also important to share some of the tensions that QA must navigate in Singapore’s “schooling straits” and so we begin by setting up the video with a bit of background information. Read more…
Tags: family, home, Singapore, transformational play
Posted by Lucy Barrow on Nov 3, 2009 in
Kid Voices,
Teacher Voices It was exactly twelve months ago that I attended a Quest Atlantis presentation at the Australian Computers in Education Conference in Canberra. Since then, an amazing journey has unfolded for our students, teachers and even parents! Participating in QA has far exceeded our expectations. At first, it was hoped that QA would provide us with an innovative way to deliver aspects of our curriculum. However, it became quite evident after only a short time, that what we had in fact been given was an incredible opportunity on a number of different levels. So what are these other opportunities? Read more…
Tags: caring, curriculum, transformation, values
I was setting up accounts in the next Teacher Online Professional Development for QA and I got a Skype call from someone I did not recognize. I did not accept the call but instant messaged the person to find out what they wanted. The caller said they were part of the next online course and wanted to know when their account would be ready. I proceeded to tell the caller that he would need a partner teacher as is this is a requirement of our online PD program; schools must present 2 teachers in the workshop. He went on to make excuses and say that the school was poorly resourced with computers and could not present 2 teachers and started putting forward more and more excuses. Hmm, I became suspicious … Read more…
Tags: meaning, ownership, transformation, value
