The Game School

Overview
More masterful in the world today than they were yesterday a generation of gamers has pointed the way toward a powerful new model for learning institutions of the future. Soon New York City will be home to a new 6-12th grade public school that will use game design and game-inspired methods to teach critical 21st century skills and literacies. Opening in fall 2009, the school is being created in collaboration with New Visions for Public Schools, a not-for-profit organization that works in partnership with the New York City Department of Education to improve academic achievement in the City's public schools. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently awarded a grant of $1.1 million to help with planning and development.

The new school has been conceived as a dynamic learning system that takes its cues from the way games are designed, shared and played. All players in the school-- teachers, students, parents and administrators--will be empowered to innovate using 21st century literacies that are native to games and design. This means learning to think about the world as a set of in interconnected systems that can be affected or changed through action and choice, the ability to navigate complex information networks, the power to build worlds and tell stories, to see collaboration in competition, and communicate across diverse social spaces.

Together, the Institute of Play and New Visions will ground the development of the school within the unique context of New York City, ensuring that the school’s curriculum meets rigorous graduation standards. Students will design games and game-inspired materials, learn about the history and culture of games and play, build communities, and produce knowledge around the materials and relationships that result. Such an approach allows young people to explore the learning space of games and game driven pedagogy and gives them a platform on which to build the technical, technological, artistic, cognitive, social, and linguistic skills they need to graduate from high school prepared for college and the world of work.

The project will also serve as a demonstration site, integrating gaming research developed through the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative into the development of Regents-based curricular pilots, toolkits to be used by students and teachers to design activities and experiences, and interactive spatial prototypes. The development and planning process will provide a context for synthesizing a body of work around the ways students are learning, making decisions, participating, and creating knowledge. Products created throughout the process will be made available to the larger education reform community for sampling, testing and refinement.

Read more: Mission | School Creation Team