All too often the great tales of momentus Quest Atlantis value are left in the classrooms from where they emanate. In 2011 we will move to strengthen our sharing of practices. Our Teacher Connection Meetings continue on the first Thursday of the month, in three timezones (Asia-Pacific, USA/Canada and Europe) over skype and inworld. In these meetings we often troubleshoot, share stories, invite guest speakers and generally enjoy the company of other QA educators. The 2011 kick off  meeting will take place on February 3rd with invited guest speaker teachers in each region sharing their expert practice.

In the early part of this year we will be offering training for teachers wishing to use our new interface to develop and share their own Quest activities in the world. Teacher contributions will keep the curriculum of QA culturally diverse, dynamic, topical and globally relevant. There will also be a virtual buoy camp to gather all our facilitators together in a refresher/celebration of the global distributed leadership of Quest Atlantis.

Questers in our Student Congress, a world built and designed by students, are are working  hard right now to prepare for a February launch of that world. This is a place for students to step up and be the designers, leaders, and managers of their own virtual world experiences and learning. Watch out for announcements on this as it promises to be one of the most exciting additions to our Quest Atlantis community.

From my perpective this Edublog award represents so much of what makes QA exciting, and is a much deserved token of how mature our program and community are.  

Let’s all pull together to make 2011 another winning year!

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.

The Student Congress will evolve in a disused world once intended for teacher professional development.As such it has a shell of buildings and landscape that the currently forming team of students and teachers can leverage, adapt and reshape to suit this new purpose.

The basic  idea of the congress is that students, who have luminated to a certain level, would be able to access this world where they can take up leadership roles and further share their knowledge and commitment with Questers about the globe. There they will be the designers of activities, be able to teach each other new skills like machinima and take their online communication to a new and more reflective level.

If you are a QA teacher and want to explore the world in question you can find the teleporter by walking past Brianna in Teacherville, toward the grass huts to a sign that directs you to Student Congress.

You can join us or follow how this proposal and world are shaping up at the Student Congress Wiki. The audio of the team discussion is also linked inworld at the Teachers Lounge of Islandview Elementary, Teacherville.

We heard from some members who had recently implemented QA units. Teachers like Karen Mann (Kazzm) working in an Australian High School who, having completed the Plague Unit twice (both old and new) offered praise for the strengthened curriculum outcomes in the new version. We heard from Judy Tyler (judyler), having just completed the Taiga unit working with a Illinois middle school science class,  who shared her excitement about the learning gains made by students and the in-depth teaching and learning surrounding this unit.  Cheryl Hill (libbycat50) reported on how excited her elementary/primary students have been about their new co-questing.  Cheryl’s school in Australia is collaborating with Martha Eaton’s (meaton) whole grade 4 in a school in North Carolina to complete curriculum activities with remote buddies. The students have been emailing, blogging, videoconferencing and talking in preparation and even though the school year ends in a few weeks for the Aussie group, they have requested their teacher support them in further collaborations over the holiday break. We hope to hear from some of these teachers as guest bloggers right here in the very near future. They certainly have stories that you will want to hear.

In light of each of the teacher reports we discussed how integral teaching is to the success of QA and how important quality planning, preparation, scaffolding and feedback are to student engagement and learning gains.  The teachers mentioned here are masters of these skills but we need to know more about the ways teachers enhance the program. That’s why we have 2 research projects happening in the Mesa Verde and Plague units to see in more detail how and in what ways contexts and teaching impact the value of these units.  Special teacher connections will be held in December and January for these global projects so watch out for those announcements.

We also heard back from our new buoys who have been developing local teacher training programs.  Mary-Ellen Davis (soulstar) in Virginia Beach had run her first face-to-face training and a highly praised VSTE conference presentation while Jesus De Leon (MrD) and Janine McGrath (Mcgrath4th) were preparing to start their first blended teacher training program for Seminole County in Florida. This distributed leadership has become vital to QA’s scalability and we are eternally grateful to all our buoys about the globe who voluntarily give their time, expertise and high standards of professionalism to the program.

Some initial discussions also took place in the UK connection and later over twitter to develop strategies to attract more schools in the UK.  We are looking to the local expertise of colleagues Drew Buddie (wellfan) and Dale Jones (djones ) and the MirandaNet educational community to bring leading UK schools and districts into QA.

To know more about these events and the projects that QA teachers are currently engaging in, come join the Quest Atlantis Teaching Wiki where you too can take up a leadership role in our burgeoning community.

We host the Teacher Connections in 3 time zones traveling about the globe in QA’s Teacherville and over Skype.

The next Teacher Connections will happen Thursday January 7th in your timezone!

1. Asia-Pacific Teacher Connection 7.00pm – 8.30 pm Sydney **(09.00 am GMT, 9pm Auckland, 5pm Singapore, 5pm Perth, 5pm Kuala Lumpur, 5pm Beijing, 6pm Tokyo, 2.30pm New Delhi)
2. Europe and Africa Teacher Connection 18.00 GMT (London 8pm, 9pm Johannesburg, 9pm Zagreb, 10pm Ankara, 12pm noon Los Angeles, 3pm NYC, 7am Friday, Sydney)
3. Americas Teacher Connection 5.00 pm PDT/Los Angeles (01.00am GMT, 8pm NYC, 8pm Raleigh, 8pm Santiago, 5pm Vancouver, 12 midday Friday, Sydney)

The theme park in Taiga provides both content and game support to teachers.

Well, now you can!   We’ve recently introduced our PD theme parks, areas in Teacherville to help teachers experience an abridged version of the Unit while learning how to best support their students’ use of the curriculum.  Each theme park will allow teachers to try out a special Mission based on the Unit where they can learn about the narrative, the most consequential student moments, as well as gain insights into how to best support students in their understanding of the material.  Teachers can try the Unit on for size, literally, as they put on a  Native American outfit in Mesa Verde or try on the campaign hat in the statistics Unit.  How fun would it be to join your students in the 3D space wearing a Native American outfit as a teaser?  Seeing your teacher wearing a news reporter hat or a squash blossom necklace might be just the ticket to generating a little more excitement about an upcoming QA Unit.

Teachers can submit exemplary Quests to share with others

More importantly, teachers get a full understanding of the Unit in a VERY short time!   These new PD missions take only 20-30 minutes to experience, but are chock full of teacher tidbits, videos and content.  In the theme park itself, we’ve even added additional supports, such as teacher forums where teachers can share insights from their use of the curriculum, examples of exemplary Quests and other background materials to fully prepare you for teaching the Unit.  We encourage teachers to post on the forums or submit these example Quests — either Quests that were wonderful from the start, or Quests that became wonderful after feedback.  This is one way teachers can share their successes with others in the QA community, as well as develop an idea of what kind of work can result from these Units.

A short immersive experience…additional resources…community support…the price of this ticket could be extravagant, but you’ll be admitted for free upon entering Teacherville!  These theme parks are always open, and after jumping a board to take the ride, teachers may find themselves better prepared to support their students in their exploration of the curriculum. 

Cotton candy is optional.

Collaboration for Florida QA teachers

 In addition, a private wiki called Quest Atlantis Educators of Florida provides a secured area for QA Florida educators to collaborate in the alignment of the quests and missions of QA with the latest Florida State Standards. The final product is a current aligned lesson which can be uploaded to the individual teacher’s school or county website to be used by other QA teachers. Florida teachers are invited to request an invitation to join this wiki which is managed by Jesus R. De Leon, one of the Seminole County QA teachers.

Facebook as well as Linked-in groups are also being formed to promote the Quest Atlantis Educators of Florida initiative…if you are a Florida educator or administrator please join our groups to continue to spread the QA news!

Finally, a professional workshop called “3D Virtual Worlds in Education: A Look at the Virtual World Experience of Quest Atlantis as a pedagogical approach to impact 21st Century learners“ is to be presented at the Florida Association of Teacher Educators (FATE) Conference to be held at the Advanced Technology College, Daytona State College in Daytona Beach, on Friday and Saturday, October 9th and 10th . The theme of the conference is The ART of Teaching New Millennium Learners: Access, Resources and Technology and it will explore how teachers, teacher educators, district professional development facilitators, and others work together to make informed decisions which impact student learning in virtual schools and promote collegial dialogue among instructional professionals at all levels regarding distance education.

Video teaser for FATE conference presentation

Quest Atlantis educators presenting in the workshop will include Roxanne De Leon from Full Sail University, Deborah Gordon from St. Mary Magdalen School in Altamonte Springs, Florida and Jesus R. De Leon from Seminole County Public Schools.

It is obvious that the Central Florida Quest Atlantis educators are excited, eager and ready to make a difference with the education of our 21st Century learners!

Recently I was leaving Indiana after a very fruitful time working in the Quest Atlantis team and I spied this t-shirt at the airport and just could not resist.

Tshirt bought at Indianapolis Airport

Those teachers who have trained online with me as will surely raise a giggle because some of our most fun professional development classes explore building in the 3D world where we partake of the joys of inworld cow tipping.

Part of what excites teachers, as they begin to learn all the facets of QA, is the opportunity they and their students have to construct, collaborate and develop.  While our cow tipping session is a bit of playful craziness it is emblematic of what QA offers and in more than just building in the virtual world. Teachers like their students are taking ownership and constructing more than simple 3D homes. Teacher teams have been forming to build in Free4All and this is proving to be a new and integral part of our teacher community development.

We also currently have teacher groups  working around the world on a Google Site for  Quest Writing to develop new quests to add to the worlds of QA. Quest are already being written in topics such as the social commitments, robotics, indigenous heritage and Modern languages – French and hopefully Spanish.

We are about to put together a proposal with a  small group of teachers to take  a disused world and re-purpose it as a student congress with several dedicated areas for such as Quester presentations, inworld machinima development, and Quester showcases.

Our successful monthly Teacher Connection meetings will restart on the first Thursday of each month and that makes September 3^rd our very next meeting. More notice of meeting times in your timezones will be coming to QA teachers through our email listserv, tweets and Quest Atlantis Teachers Facebook Group.

We have started building a wiki for teachers to develop a to map quests and missions to local outcomes and standards and to share out ideas for implementation.

If you are already a QA teacher, or keen to come join us soon in one of our online or face-to-face training programs, you are invited to join any and all of our teacher community activities and events. Many of these activities are just getting of the ground and they will become valuable and successful resources with the support of a critical mass of professionals like you!

~ Bron Stuckey

PS no cows were harmed in the training of Quest Atlantis teachers .