Posted by Bron Stuckey on Jan 12, 2011 in
QA Community of Practice,
Research,
Teacher Voices
In late December Quest Atlantis won the Edublog Award for Best Educational use of a Virtual World. This award was nominated for and voted by our teachers, so that now the world knows what we all know about Quest Atlantis: it really is the best! Of the 500 votes in this category Quest Atlantis received [...]
Tags: Classroom practice, student design, teacher contribution, transformation, transformational play
Posted by Sinem on Sep 23, 2010 in
Design,
Research
Can video games support family learning and bonding? To explore the answer to this question, we designed Family Quest. 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 [...]
Tags: Family Quest, intergenerational play
Posted by Jackieb on Jul 16, 2010 in
Design,
Research
The mathematics mission Crypto Coordinates: Plotting Adventure! was first released last fall, and updated slightly in early June. Both versions of Crypto teach coordinate plotting through the context of archeology and navigation of a magical island. During implementations of Crypto, researchers observed students expressing their own beliefs when playing the game.
Tags: curriculum, Design
Posted by linas on May 25, 2010 in
Design,
Research
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 [...]
Tags: drakos, genetics
Posted by msolomou on Apr 19, 2010 in
Design,
Research,
Teacher Training
When we talk about effective instruction and positioning the learner as an active agent of change who transforms the world in powerful ways, the issue of teacher training becomes central. How do we, as educators, prepare learners to participate in such an interactive way? And also, how do we equip our pre-service teachers to respond [...]
Tags: Design, Research
Posted by michaelf on Apr 15, 2010 in
Research
Games can promote 21st century skills, such as multitasking, play, distributed cognition, networking, among others (see Jenkins white paper ). These “new media” literacy skills, social in nature, are based on traditional literacies such as writing. Today, self-sponsored writing and the universal authorship through digital network are put writing as an essential skill to be [...]
Tags: collaboration, Informal assessment, social networking, Taiga
Posted by ppettyjohn on Mar 22, 2010 in
Design,
Research
How does one test the implications of his or her ethical stance? How does one realize the potentialities of one’s ethical stance on a community, national, and global level? Often times, ethical teaching and thinking are reduced to a specialized form of rhetoric where one is required to “consider” all sides and make a recommendation [...]
Tags: Playable fictions
Posted by dstevens on Aug 21, 2009 in
Research,
Teacher Training
“For every job that must be done, there’s an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game!” Mary Poppins Dr. Melissa Gresalfi and I were brainstorming earlier this week about some new professional development Missions we’re creating aimed at helping teachers get a handle on some of our most popular [...]
Posted by Melissa Gresalfi on Aug 7, 2009 in
Research
We have spent a lot of time this summer thinking about what goes on in classrooms when students log off of Quest Atlantis….how do the stories and experiences that kids have in the game come into the classroom? We’re especially interested in the whole-class conversations that take place around the content that kids are learning; how, [...]
Tags: Ander City, Classroom practice, Modern Prometheus, Taiga
Posted by cvolk on Aug 6, 2009 in
Design,
Research
When we unveiled the new vendor economy system, we had no idea that the next month would be so exciting. I was able to follow the trail of ten students over the course of the implementation. This post is our story, a kind of telling of what happened on both hands and how we learned [...]
Tags: economy, emergent gaming, vendors