Sharing some history. About six years ago, when I first learned that QA was to be funded the second time by the National Science Foundation, I was simultaneously excited and concerned. I was excited because I believed in what we were trying to do. As a former drug counselor and subsequent special education teacher, there was a strong commitment in me to find ways to motivate children to care about themselves, their community, and the world. I had experienced the power of education in motivating children and had also experienced how much of the curriculum in school was failing to do so and even turning them off. Therefore, I wanted to produce a suite of curricular opportunities that would allow teachers to engage their students in powerful life narratives that required understanding academic content all in the context of their classrooms. When I learned that NSF was going to support our efforts I knew that science would also have to take a front-row seat, and met with the team to determine what designs had to be put in place to ensure that the broader QA Social Commitment agenda would not be lost (see manuscript on critical design). For, while I was excited about the support, I feared that we might lose the heart of the project as we optimized experiences to support science content learning. As it so turned out, the Shardflower was born and this science unit engaged children in a form of socio-scientific inquiry that was as much about the role of science in solving socially significant problems as it was about understanding, for example, what is an appropriate level of phosphates in a body of water (see manuscript on socio-scientific inquiry).

Moving Forward. Well, as many of our veteran teachers are aware, this desire to ensure that the game fostered a disposition for social action led to the birth of the Shardflower and the idea that players, through the manifestation of wise acts, could earn lumins. Wise acts contain knowledge, attitude, and behavior: an important combination that is central to the newly released Epic trajectory. As players complete various missions and earn lumins, they eventually are able to luminate on each of the seven petals and outer leaves of their Shardflower. The Shardflower itself provides a metaphorical key to unlock important backstory elements that drive the game forward. Well, it has been a real challenge to provide an experience that is educational but not didactic, that is entertaining but not a casual game, and that is socially illuminative but not evangelical (see original Games W/Out Guns published five years ago). Importantly, and for those not familiar with modern videogames, they often contain rich stories in addition to fun gameplay, and every story needs a protagonist. More than a book to be read, in a game, the player has a form of dramatic agency. And, in a pedagogical game, or what we refer to as a curricular drama, the player is often protagonist at one point and audience member or simply participant at another point (see manuscript on the notion of curricular drama and one on transformational play). While we originally had a novel and had the player unlock chunks of dialogue communicating the backstory in game, it wasn’t very gamey (fun) and was narratively quite thin. Due to the countless hours and commitment of our team members and the ongoing feedback from the community, that has all changed this week.

The Present. We always had the core character of OTAK, but in the recently revised set of epic missions, Otak, a new character Maq, along with the Quester, take on significant protagonist roles designed to communicate the power of Social Commitments and the importance of the Quester in realizing them through their wise acts. At no other time in the history of QA has this story been so well crafted to be unlocked by the player. Due to the tireless work and dedication of our team, we now have an epic trajectory designed to embed the player within a rich backstory where he or she experiences the power of Social Commitments and the value of his or her work in QA. [Spoilers here]. It all begins with a distraught Maq who fled from a morally broken Atlantis with only his sorrow and a crystal salvaged from the tattered shards of the old Arch—all revealed in a beautifully illustrated set of comic pages (see legend PDF and video of backstory).

Following this description of the history, the player takes on a more active role in New Atlantis where they are recruited by the displaced caretaker, Maq, and the reluctant new caretaker OTAK. Together, the three go on an adventure as the player experiences another area (Aegea) of New Atlantis that has fallen to into moral apathy and that becomes overzealous at the belief that lumins might provide the key to mending their world—a belief that the Quester unintentionally seeded. Through this adventure, Maq, OTAK, and the player all come to understand what the lumin truly represents, and what a world without Social Commitments can end up becoming. Because this is not a book or movie, each of which has merit towards certain ends, this story is played out as the player solves puzzles and takes actions, experiencing the consequences of the particular choices they engaged. We encourage teachers to participate in this adventure along with their students by asking questions, supporting class discussions, and even playing along through the five Epic Missions unlocked through lumination moments. We hope that you all find the new experience as powerful as we hope it to be, putting a significant meta-wrapper around the more academic missions and units that you and your students complete. And, as always, I thank all the team members who worked so hard to make this happen.

On a related note, here is a video produced by kids to state what they want. See the No Future Left Behind Video.
Too many disenfranchised students are being left behind in large-scale comparison studies that focus on moving the mean and that treat standardized test scores as the most important outcome goal. We need curriculum that repositions

• the role of learners (from consumers of someone else’s content to change agents who see and care about school content),
• legitimizes content to be learned (from facts to be memorized to conceptual tools that help transform personally interesting dilemmas), and
• provides contexts in which students have impact (from situations only relevant to adult mathematicians, scientists, etc. to compelling storylines whose outcomes are in the hands and minds of the learner).

We need a curriculum that creates an invitation such that ALL children can come to value academic content and see themselves as people who use it in legitimate ways.

Click below for slide shows produced by designer Ellen Jameson of some of the new 3D updates, and a comparison of new and old versions:

      In particular, the current scenario requires students to learn about what factors combine to constitute a civilization (permanent structures, division of labor, farming, art, writing, etc) and to interrogate the sophistication of indigenous cultures in America. These topics were highlighted in part based on feedback from Larry Wiese (Park Superintendent) and other Mesa Verde staff who manage the actual park in Colorado, and who played our designed virtual park experience. Over the course of the revised unit, students uncover evidence in the daily lives, culture, agrarian practices, and ruling structures of the Puebloans, which help them decide whether or not the ancient people of Mesa Verde should be considered a civilization or whether the pilgrims were the first true civilization to occupy America.
      In our first implementation, while students were engaged, our research showed that they learned little content and the motivation was determined to be limited in establishing legitimacy of the academic content. In particular, the initial narrative rested on the premise of negotiating whether Columbus discovered America, a tension revolved quite quickly through game play. To complexify the learning scenario and make the narrative tensions endure over the entire two-week unit, we added the theme of ‘Civilization.’  The questions at the heart of the curricular drama now are whether Columbus was the first civilized presence in America, what constitutes a civilization, and what factors might lead to the fall of a civilization? Answering these questions involves a trajectory that is spread out over two weeks as students work/play through the game missions.
     A particular focus of this unit was to immerse students in a virtual replication of Mesa Verde National Park, using actual 3D models adapted from a partner who uses laser scanning techniques and 3D imaging software to produce perceptual simulations of real-world locations. More than a perceptual reproduction, it is important to note that our designs involve fictional elements that are deemed pedagogically useful such that the final production has perceptual realism, narrative realism, and interactive elements similar to other media-based historical fiction accounts but with an added pedagogical focus. For teachers already using Quest Atlantis, we encourage you to assign this unit to your students and for new teachers you should apply for an account and go explore this exciting world. Thanks to our partner, OPEN, for raising the funds to make these important updates.