Beginning in November 2010 and continuing sporadically every few months, ALL Questers have been invited to take a “vacation” to a world that they might never have seen before. All they have to do is visit Brooke—our uber-gracious southern belle who serves as travel agent in OTAK Village—during the appropriate month. Brooke will give them a special, one-month-only ticket to the featured vacation spot. That ticket is good for as many visits as they’d like to take that month.

Brooke will also hand out a fun OTAK mission to guide their trip, full of suggestions about things to do and see while there. If Questers complete this totally-voluntary mission before midnight on the last day of the month, Brooke will add a special stamp to their QA Passports.

These tourist missions are just-for-fun only, encouraging students to thoroughly explore the spaces and learn a little something about them… and maybe convince their teachers to assign the units so that they can return sometime. But even though these aren’t teacher-assigned missions, we all know that the best vacations are those where you learn a little something new, right? So what kinds of things do Questers learn on their QA vacations? Glad you asked!

In November they get to visit a virtual copy of Mesa Verde National Park, exploring ruins and learning a little about the Ancestral Puebloans who built it. In February they’re off to the gothic village of Ingolstadt, patterned after Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. There they can climb into creepy tombs, look for skeletons, and learn interesting trivia about the author, the novel, and even the Hollywood version of the Frankenstein story!

Now it is May, and the vacation locale for this month is Taiga Park. Here Questers do some hiking, fishing, and cave exploring in order to earn a Junior Ranger’s badge. And in September… well, that vacation is still in the planning stages, so you’ll have to check with Brooke to find out more.

Oh, and one last thing: No vacation is complete without a souvenir or two. Questers can buy a tourist t-shirt, especially designed for each locale and ready to wear with pride. Who could ask for a better holiday?

Credit: Christian F. Burprich

Lately, I have been working towards internationalization of Quest Atlantis resources such as missions, dialogue pages and quests. The impetus for this challenging task is being driven by the team’s desire and vision to provide a more localized experience for our users whose native language is not English. For brevity, I will use the acronym i18n in lieu of internationalization henceforth. This blog post is largely about how I have and am going about modifying the exisiting system to support i18n. Subsequently, unveil new tools that we have introduced to support the translations .

To adopt i18n, the first thing I had to do was convert our database to support a unicode-compliant character set. UTF-8 is perhaps the most popular one  particularly because of its backward compatibility with ASCII text. For example, without unicode encoding capability of the database, the following piece of Simplified Chinese text: 现在，您可以继续史诗！(Translation: You can now continue with Epic!) would appear to be stored incorrectly as: ???????????.

It is just not a matter of storing and retrieving characters from all types of languages in the database correctly. The web pages that are rendering the text retrieved from the database needs to inform your browser that you are viewing characters that are encoded in the UTF-8 format. The 2D aspect of Quest Atlantis, i.e., the web pages that drive the game play narratives, dialogues with NPC, your Q-Pod, Q-Pack, the teacher toolkit etc  are at their core a collection, a very large collection, of perl scripts. There are over a thousand of these scripts with lines of code amassing over 300,000. I suppose you can somewhat gauge the magnitude of trying to introduce i18n to such a large codebase.

Last year, I did some work in creating the translation interface for our dialogue pages, but it wasn’t quite done right. Particularly, because the feature is only available to users with designer rights in our system. Since, we would like to welcome participation from people proficient in non-English languages to translate our resources, we came up with a new Translator role to facilitate this, whilst ensuring the original English content does not get subjected to edits.

During the last 3 years, we have been making piecemeal efforts to migrate a lot of these perl scripts into Ruby-on-Rails space for quicker development of new features and easier management of our game design and project support tools. Therefore this time around, I created the  missions translations interface in rails.

The 1st screenshot on the left is what the translation interface for missions now looks like. As you can see the original content appears on the right-hand column and the translator will simply to fill in the corresponding translations in the left-hand column fields.

The 2nd screenshot on the left showing the Spanish translation of the missions page. I have also added in provisions for languages like Arabic and Hebrew with right-to-left directionality to appear properly.

An exciting feature that I added to make the work of translators easier is integration with the Google Translate API. Each field that is translatable has the translation icon available to auto-translate. It is very possible that the auto-translate feature will miss the grammatical correctness, colloquial and cultural nuances of the translated-to language. It will nonetheless save the translator a substantial amount of time where s/he can just focus on fixing the auto-translation rather than having to write the translations from scratch.

The translations will be subject to admin approval, whereupon approval, the mission translation will appear in the live space provided the user’s language preference matches that of the translated-to language.

For missions we have added in support for the following languages:

• Chinese
• French
• German
• Hebrew
• Italian
• Korean
• Spanish
• Turkish

Please contact our team if you are interested in supporting us translate to the language(s) you are proficient in. I am currently working on introducing this translation functionality for Quests and Dialogue pages, so stay tuned for new updates!

We kept our core characters, Maq and OTAK, and even grew their roles. OTAK has evolved several times during the lifespan of Quest Atlantis: from an artificial intelligence that lectured Questers and had all the answers to a frightened little boy who couldn’t possibly handle the responsibilities of running New Atlantis. Now, with the latest version, OTAK has become a young man who feels the weight of a lot of responsibility and isn’t always so sure what to do… but steps up when called upon to do so, and continues to mature as the story progresses. And Maq the Gnome has evolved as well. In his first iteration, Maq had plenty of personality but little in the way of agency or goals. Now he has agendas of his own that are clear but not simplistic. His relationship with OTAK is not easy and hits many bumps along the way, but is committed and loving nonetheless. Our hope is that Questers can more easily identify with these more realistic depictions of characters… maybe even seeing some of themselves and those in their lives in these characters.

When the decision was made to change the back story and introduction of Quest Atlantis, it was immediately apparent that the Epic Missions would have to change as well. Epic is a collection of missions that Questers “earn” as they luminate… it serves as both a reward and a continuation of the storyline. Because the old QA storyline was now defunct, those old Epic missions just didn’t fit any more.

Enter Aegea, the home of the new Epic mission collection. Aegea is a previously unknown island on New Atlantis, far removed from Emissary Island. Not only are the people very different from the usual New Atlantian in looks, with their olive-green skin tone and blue hair, but they also evidence a sad lack of commitment. This new version of the Epic missions has become a vehicle for Questers to witness what happens when NONE of the Social Commitments are honored in a community. Other than a few unique individuals, the Aegeans, when Questers first meet them, are a selfish, unhappy, and bland people. Few of them care about others, the community, or the environment, and any individuality or creativity is frowned upon or openly mocked.

Questers first encounter Aegeans in the new Commission Missions during the QA introduction… it was the main reason for rewriting the Commissions along with the Introduction this past summer. Letting Questers get a taste for the problems in Aegea, while at the same time focusing on a single Social Commitment in a community that desperately needs the help, turned out to be a serendipitous pairing that enhanced both trajectories.

As Questers continue to luminate they earn additional missions that propel the Epic storyline along a path of transformation. Questers are active protagonists who model good acts and committed lives to the citizens. By the end of the trajectory (after the eighth lumination), the Quester has transformed Aegea from a gray, lifeless and unpleasant village to a vibrant, busy, and healthy community. Not only do attitudes change, but the physical space changes as well… once again embodying the QA commitment to transformational play. Questers experience the thrill and hardship of employing the Social Commitments in bringing together an entire community to save itself. They feel the sting of loss and the joy of cooperation. Most importantly, they do it themselves, making their choices and seeing the consequences of those choices.

Aegea, before and after Questers transform the space

ONE FINAL NOTE: Because we believe this new Epic collection is such an important addition to Questers’ growth in Quest Atlantis, we have added a new resource to support it, this time for teachers. Our new Epic teacher’s guide provides not only a description of the story and educational goals of the experience, but it includes a new feature: a set of optional QA trajectories of Quests, missions, and units, grouped by academic subjects and the number of lumins each delivers. We hope our QA teachers will find these sample trajectories useful as they plan their QA curricula with an eye to helping their students luminate and earn the Epic missions quickly.

Janis & Ed

These new interactive Quests are smaller than a mission and should only take a class period or two. These Quests no longer appear as spinning disks; instead, they are given out by Quest-Givers. These Quest-Givers represent Questers who have shown great devotion to one of the social commitments and now work to help the emissaries and OTAK. They are easily distinguished by the spinning Quest disks above their heads. The Quest-Givers, along with the teen council, offer some exciting new in-game role models for the kids to look up to.

Writing some of these Quests has offered great insight into all that goes into developing Quest Atlantis. It wasn’t easy giving each Quest-Giver a unique personality or trying to establish a basis for why students are completing the Quests. I struggled a lot at the beginning making sure that I had a reason for doing the work, not just “do this Quest because I’m a Quest-Giver and I said so.” I now have way more sympathy for just how much work our designers,  Janis and Ed, put into creating our entire units!

We hope to continue adding more interactive Quests in the future. I have a few I’m working on that are almost ready to go. The eventual goal is to have the majority of our Quests contain some interactive element. There’s no reason to have such a lively world and static work!

Although not all of our Quests have been converted to interactive Quests at the moment, a good selection has. I invite you to try out one or two with your students! To find the new interactive Quests in your toolkit, look for (IQ) after the Quest name. You can also check out some of the  starter Quests recommended by teachers on the QA Teacher wikipage, http://quest-atlantis-teaching.wikispaces.com/. Feel free to leave your own impressions as well!

What is Family Quest?

Family Quest is a new program within the context of Quest Atlantis that brings parents and children together in an afterschool, school, or home context and engages them in intergenerational play. The game starts out with a new adventure, one wherein families find themselves stranded on a mysterious island with the Lindemans, fictional family friends. It is up to the parent and the child working together to get past the challenges that come in their way, and help Maq, the gnome, to revive the Tree of Life (see our website for more information).

Why were we interested in bringing parents and children together around a video game?

Research suggests that family relations undergo major transformations to accomodate the cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and social changes children go through during the transition from childhood to adolescence. Around upper elementary and middle school, children become active participants of different communities and create their own practices outside of their family life. Consequently, parents and children spend less and less time together around collaborative activities when, in fact, parents continue to play an important role in children’s learning.

The typical ways of engaging with digital technologies create situations where children and parents do not have to interact. In fact, parents and children often engage in different activities with technology. Parents use cell phones and the Internet to facilitate communication with their children and to coordinate activities and daily life routines. Children, on the other hand, spend extensive time online, multitasking (e.g. chatting, downloading music, internet surfing), and connecting with their friends. In addition, parents monitor their children’s activities with technology and the Internet but rarely do they see participation in technology as a way to learn and connect with their chilren. Creating a game environment that support collaboration between parents and children provides opportunities for family connection and dialogue that might not otherwise less likely to occur.

What are the design considerations behind Family Quest?

Family Quest is intentionally designed to balance between entertainment and education in that it brings lessons learned from video game design and research on motivation and learning to meet the needs of parents and children to have fun and learn together. In addition, our research suggests that game scenarios that involve personally meaningful dilemmas are likely to provide opportunities for parents and children to engage in transformative conversations (Siyahhan, Barab, & Downton, 2010). We included several dilemma game scenarios that require parents and children to work together in Family Quest and encourage them to discuss social and personal issues.  

Family Quest is a great way for parents to connect with their kids. It is also a great way for teachers and facilitators to bridge home-school-community relations.

Excited? Experience yourself how a video game can support family learning and bonding:

Parents can request an account on our website and play the game with their children.

Teachers & Facilitators can ask a Family Quest facilitator to support you in setting you up as a center to run Family Quest program.  

For more information, download the Family Quest brochure,  get an account by visiting our website or contact a member of the Quest Atlantis Family Quest team at atlantis@indiana.edu.

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.

Research has shown that even very young children have beliefs or intuitions of right and wrong. In the game world of Crypto, questers must decide whether to respect the island’s rules or uncover its secrets, particularly, whether to take artifacts out of the jungle or leave them undisturbed. This is a key dilemma in archeology; to whom to artifacts belong, and where should they be displayed? On the one hand, countless countries have been robbed of precious artifacts and keys to their history by other nations who are more powerful or have more resources. On the other hand, if artifacts stay only with the site where they were discovered, then peoples around the world lose an opportunity to better understand others’ histories. These tensions are exactly what the questers are asked to contend with.

As an example, one character, Archie, offers the quester cols in exchange for artifacts they remove from the island and deliver.

He also notes the importance of allowing others to learn about the important history of the island.  Thus questers may choose to take artifacts either for personal gain, or in the interest of spreading knowledge about the island. Alternatively, players who feel that the island should be able to keep its secrets, or feel that Archie has immoral intentions, may choose to leave the artifacts in the sand.

By providing a space for children to make choices based on their own beliefs about right and wrong, CryptoCoordinates allows them to personalize the narrative of the island and contribute their own perspective. It’s important to note that the space does not instruct students about “what is right,” but allows children to grapple with these moral questions on their own, determining what they individually feel is right or wrong. When a variety of characters and rules are presented (as in Crypto), there is no obvious right or wrong choice.

Rather than providing answers, games can offer narrative tensions and difficult questions so that individuals propel themselves forward by advancing a moral argument. Adding a moral tension into a narrative creates a path to the player’s own beliefs and intentionality. The player must exercise their intentions in order to progress within the game.

In games and in classrooms, asking questions in which there is no right answer opens up spaces for conversations that are often lost when the focus is simply on questions with a predetermined answer. We have seen that students exhibit a variety of beliefs and support their beliefs in many different ways, many unimagined by the designers. They often either elaborate on game elements (“What if there’s a curse? You might get your head chopped off!”) or real world elements (“What if it’s illegal?” or “I like my secrets to be left alone.”). They may instantly personalize the experience by judging an action or concept as right or wrong, and are empowered because their opinion cannot be deemed right or wrong. As a consequence, asking more difficult questions (questions without answers), in games or otherwise, may prove more motivating and engaging than questions without the same tensions and with existing answers.

Math World: Before and After

 Here at Quest Atlantis, progress runs two ways.  On the one hand, we constantly look forward, designing and prototyping new ideas on a daily basis.  Simultaneously, we’re also mindful of the work we’ve already done and the ways that it can be improved, often based on the feedback and experience of thousands of Questers who push our work in directions we never thought of.  This emphasis on the user experience – and adapting to it – is applied to everything we do, from missions and Quests, right down to the physical layout and aesthetic of each world.

Since its original construction in early 2008, the Ander City unit (technically named “Math World”) has undergone multiple evolutions, each time adding new Quests, plot elements, and missions…  and all the 3D components that go along with them.   As previously mentioned, this dynamic process is one of Quest Atlantis’ strengths, but at the same time, it presents a unique management challenge: that of tracking the ebb and flow of ideas and elements that go into a constantly evolving world, and attempting to streamline them.  With Math World, we decided to streamline through a complete overhaul of the physical environment, while keeping the most recent version of the narrative fully intact.

To that end, the first goal of the redesign  was to imbue Ander City with a “sense of place,” or a physical identity and history.  After reviewing the unit narrative, and its emphasis of issues of parks, baseball, and bicycles, I decided to evoke a small-town motif, and create a unified aesthetic that would evoke that response in players, without ever explicitly stating it.

After assembling a collage of reference photos, I was able to identify reoccurring patterns that would act as visual cues – things that seem to scream “small town.”  One-to-two story buildings.  Lots of brick. Old, white, wooden churches.  A bandstand in the park.  Brick everything.  A 200 year-old town hall.  Did I mention brick?

Another major aesthetic change was the introduction of the autumn season to the world – orange and yellow leaves, falling from the sky and settling on the ground.  While this was a relatively simple effect to achieve on a technical level, the result is a further enhancement of the mis-en-scene.  By introducing something as simple as falling leaves, we have created a climate and a time of year for Ander City, further enhancing the Election Day-based narrative.  Moreover, in the final version of Ander City, when players are able to see the effects of their choices, the seasons will have progressed:  the trees will be green, the leaf piles will be gone, and summer will be in full bloom, creating the sense that the players are participating in a dynamic world.

The Town Square

In addition to the visual enhancements, Math World underwent a number of structural improvements as well, most notably the relocation of the park to the center of the world.  As the fate of the town’s park is a major narrative point for Math World, it made sense to have it centrally located, so that the players would feel more invested in their decision.  Additionally, the park now serves as a central hub for players, creating a space for players to interact and discuss the challenges facing Ander City.

The third benefit of this centralized placement is that it allows users to quickly navigate their way around the town – the wide open space makes it easy to locate a player’s next objective, especially when coupled with distinct physical structures.  Just as omnipresent Cinderella’s Castle in Walt Disney World helps park guests orient themselves, we have included several unique buildings that are visible from any location in town –the church, the town hall, the diner—allowing efficient player movement (and making it easier for teachers to help students find their way!).

Finally, throughout the redesign process we were extremely conscious of ways to improve the performance of Quest Atlantis on student computers.  Due to the widely varying hardware configurations in schools around the world, we simply had to take our best shot at making Math World as resource efficient as possible.  While I’ll spare you the more mundane technical details of “vision limiters” and polygon counts, you may find it interesting to note how many of the buildings are simply flat fronts.

Math world: A unique view behind the scenes.

At the same time we were striving to create the illusion of a living, breathing town, we also were aware that it would be a huge waste of computational resources to actually build a complete town, so we did what Hollywood has been doing for years…  we cheated.  Borrowing a page from the production design adage “only build what the camera can see,” we’ve create a world where walls only extend halfway around the house, roofs are floating in midair, and trees “on the horizon” are actually 1/10^th scale models placed 20 feet away.   As a result, we’re able to achieve a 20 frames-per-second rate even without any hardware acceleration, which is nerd-speak for “hey!  It runs pretty smooth!”

I hope you’ve enjoyed this somewhat lengthy look behind the scenes of the upcoming Mathworld revision – if you’d like more of these types of design-specific write-ups, just let us know in the comment section below.  See you in Ander City!

Genetics is often touted as a complicated subject for most students. This is in part due to the fact that students are expected to understand the broad range of concepts over the span of one year. Firm in the belief that elementary students (specifically fourth graders and above) are capable of learning genetic concepts, the QA team designed a genetics unit. In the Drakos Dilemma unit, students are required to breed drakos, a species of Atlantian dragonfly, in order to combat the plague (Alas, it seems the Ingolstadt plague has found its way to Healthy!). This unit brings together concepts such as phenotype, genotype, dominant and recessive genes, and Punnett Square in an engaging and I dare say, fun way.

In order to breed drakos, students need to understand how the aforementioned concepts relate to one another and apply their knowledge of Punnett Squares in breeding drakos. Students are introduced to a variety of interesting characters, many of whom are best remembered due to their unique personalities.

Between the months of February and March, the Drakos Dilemma unit was introduced to two fourth-grade elementary schools in the Mid-west. Pre and post tests administered demonstrated significant gains for both classes. The results of the implementation indicated that students were indeed able to utilize the concepts effectively, while remaining immersed in the narrative. Students demonstrated a good understanding of how to use single trait Punnett Squares, while most struggle with the two-trait version.

Based on these results, a minor revision of the unit is underway in order to address the gaps in the current curriculum. This revision will include a more engaging narrative, one that we believe will provide students with the impetus to seek the knowledge that they require to achieve the intended goal of the unit. In addition to the teacher-directed unit, we will be releasing a multiplayer version of drakos – students can continue working with drakos once they are done with the classroom version of the Drakos Dilemma. This multiplayer version is less curriculum-focused, emphasizing more on cooperation and allowing more opportunities for play and col production.

Through these two implementations, it is evident that teachers are highly instrumental in fostering understanding of the curricular content. While this factor may seem obvious to many, this aspect is sometimes under-emphasized when educators and policy makers alike tout the benefits of technology in the classroom. Without teachers, the curriculum cannot be fully successful. The designed curriculum can only go so far; while students may very well learn the content, the presence of a teacher is vital is ensuring that students are critically engaged in their learning, engaging in meta-reflexivity of what is being learned. Our designs thus very much depend on our partners; the teachers who share the same vision of nurturing and enhancing the lives of children through personally relevant yet pedagogically sound experiences.

My first project was to ask my classmates if they wanted to stay in General Visibility in middle school or in Middle School visibility in Middle School. It was a very interesting experience finding out what my classmates thought. All of the students I surveyed wanted to stay in general visibility so they would not lose their lumins and cols. My classmates and I were succesful in convincing the teachers that kids should stay in General Visibility. All of my classmates were happy at the outcome.  Here is the link to my blog: Middle School Visibility vs General Visibility

The second project I did was the 2010 Earth Day Quest. Me and two other students had to come up with ideas for the quest. It was very hard because we had to make them find things in the core worlds and the Otak Hub. In those worlds, it is very hard to find things that help the Earth. We made the quest for 4+1 bonus lumin. Everyone who has done that quest so far is very happy. They feel that they are learning so much about the Earth and the Environment.

My third project was to teach Middle Schoolers about Quest Atlantis. It was very difficult because they thought that it was dumb that 4th graders were teaching them. But they didn’t realize what a hard time me and all of the other students have. They were reckless and they were not to excited to do it. I feel that because I don’t think they  have an open mind like the 4th graders. We as 4th graders enjoy Quest Atlantis because we like to explore and we have an open mind.

Right now in Student Congress, we are building areas for all of the different Social Commitments. I am the leader of the Environmental Awareness group. In my design group, we are trying to create a mission. The summary of the mission is that when you enter the area, you will find a mother polar bear and her cub. These bears will talk to you and say that the iceberg that they are standing on is the last one they could find. Also, they will mention that they cannot find food anymore . The bears see an Ecologist’s boat and ask if the avatar can go and ask them for help. The Ecologist tells the avatar to go into the town’s research lab and find out information about why the ice caps are melting. In the research lab, they talk to the main researcher.  The researcher gives the avatar  informational notes. The Avatar has to talk to different researchers to understand what the notes mean. When the Avatar talks to the last person, he/she has to go back to the main researcher and take a test. When they finish the test, then the researcher tells the Avatar to go back to the Ecologist. The Ecologist asks the Avatar what they learned. After they are done, they will earn a hat for finding out how the Ice Caps were melting. That is our design plan.

All in all, I think that being a student leader is a great honor and responsibility. I am having a great experience creating these blogs, quests, and teaching middle schoolers. I am learning a lot myself.