Institute of Play's blog

Creating a dystopian sci-fi narrative, designing game mechanics involving pixels and buckets and creating applications that allow students to track the activities of their peers, exchange expertise and amend the exquisite puzzle of their moods, are just a few of the applications that the Being Me team has been developing in support of Quest to Learn’s wellness-focused social network.

During the past month, the Being Me team has been designing a series of applications to support students in holistic work on issues related to socio-emotional, physiological and community development. The emphasis has been on empowering students to see themselves as integral parts of a larger community, helping them to understand, "I matter within this community and I contribute to its overall wellness and abilities."

Being Me’s game narrative fuels this journey of self-discovery. The narrative involves the kindhearted and industrious Wiedanrus, an endangered species who live on the planet Qetesh. Faced with their declining civilization and inevitable extinction, the Wiedanrus contact the Quest to Learn community to help them revive their once-thriving community. The story encourages students to form connections, work together, and to be reflective about their own lives and their roles in growing a healthy community. As the narrative unfolds, students participate in quests to support the Wiedanrus and unlock different applications along the way.

Sound exciting? Stay tuned for more updates soon!

IOPers Tracy Gromek and Leah Gilliam will be presenting at the upcoming 2009 Game Education Summit to be held June 16-17, at Carnegie Mellon's Technology Entertainment Center in Pittsburgh PA.

Their presentation, 'The Dynamic Classroom: Collaborations between Game Designers and Teachers,' promises to be a lively discussion as they reflect on the Institute of Play's work with curriculum specialists and educators. The presentation will use a game-based curricular unit—the Annual Blubonian-Spanish Treasure Hunt—as a point of entry into a larger examination of the myriad issues facing game designers and educators when creating effective and dynamic classroom learning experiences. Developed as part of the Institute of Play's Summer Teachers' Institute, the Annual Blubonian-Spanish Treasure Hunt was created for first-year Spanish students in the 6th grade at a New York City public school. Read full synopsis

Katie Salen, Executive Director of the Institute of Play, was interviewed during a two-day event held at the Carnegie Foundation in March 2009. In her interview she talks about Quest to Learn, a new public 6th to 12th grade school in New York City that is being designed from ground up "around a pedagogy called game-like learning."

Quest to Learn from carnegie commons on Vimeo.

The Carnegie Commons, developed by the Knowledge Media Laboratory of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, is an intellectual community space provided to enrich and encourage exchange of knowledge about teaching and learning...More

The New York Post article, School is all Play, introduces Quest to Learn as, "A first-of-its-kind Manhattan public school that will use video games to engage kids in learning the basics of math, reading and science." The article highlights that role-playing will be a key technique for exploring subjects such as history, and that students will create and share their work through the regular use of digital media such as blogs, video chat and a custom-made social networking site. "This is the first school that philosophically is looking at the structure of games as a kind of learning model," says Katie Salen, Executive Director of the Institute of Play and a founder of the school.

During a recent interview on Minnesota Public Radio, Executive Director of Institute of Play, Katie Salen, discussed in greater detail what games have to offer education. Describing how kids learn through playing games, and how these lessons can be translated into a standards-based curriculum, Salen notes that games allow kids to "take on" identities, do complex problem solving, and often work in collaborative ways that hone crucial 21st Century skills and literacies. Salen explains how games create an environment with clear goals and feedback, allowing players to experiment, try new things and learn as they need to or "just in time." So in completing the game, kids have learned everything the game has to teach them. The school is being designed to support this kind of immersive game-like learning where traditional curricula will be taught using a mission and quest structure with each quest setup to equip kids with specific knowledge, skills and tools leading them towards solving that final quest.

In the article, Students, put down those pencils and pick up joysticks, Michael Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, talks about how "the U.S. has fallen behind in promoting the mastery of interactive tools that promote literacy; science and technology, and creativity." He suggests that in order to be the lead again, we need to let go of the old belief that video games are distractions, and acknowledge the research that has shown that "interactive game play is among the most powerful drivers for learning the skills children need for 21st century success." In this context, he points to our new school Quest to Learn, as an example of a school that plans to use game design principles to create engaging learning experiences for students. As Levine passionately argues, "We have a choice: Fight the tide by grousing about how pervasive video games are, or build upon the many beneficial ways they're rewiring the way kids think and engage the world."

Read more recent press about the new school Quest to Learn and its founding partner the Institute of Play.