This chapter considers broad issues related to videogame design and art educational policy issues. Discussed are Science, Technology Engineering, and Math (STEM) funding proposals, and recent moves to add the arts to this equation. Following this is a discussion of Quest to Learn, and their curricular structure, which incorporates complexity thinking, and relates to STEM, but deals more with game design as opposed to specifically being about videogames. The paper closes with recent statistics on videogame sales, and youth media use, making the argument that videogames are becoming part of a larger network of gaming experiences, and are not limited to one particular mode of delivery.
During the 2011 U.S. State of the Union address, many Democrats and Republicans sat side by side as they paid respect to the recent Tucson, Arizona shooting victims, President Barack Obama highlighted the role that education might play in economic recovery. In this speech he referred to the ‘Sputnik moment’ that is upon the current generation of Americans, stating that “We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” (SOTU 2011).
As part of his educational agenda – specifically his Educate to Innovate reform plan -- President Obama emphasized the importance of student achievement in the areas of Science, Technology and Engineering, and Math, also known as STEM. The STEM coalition aims to prepare U.S. public school students for careers in these fields, as well as strengthening the role that these fields play within the U.S. public school system:
Encourage and inspire more of our best and brightest students, especially those from underrepresented or disadvantaged groups, to study in STEM fields; Improve the content knowledge and professional skills of the PK-12 STEM teacher workforce and informal educators; Recruit and retain highly-skilled STEM teachers; Improve the resources available in STEM classrooms and other learning environments; Encourage partnerships between state and local educators, colleges, universities, museums, science centers, STEM research and development organizations, and the business, science, and technology communities that will improve STEM education; and encourage better coordination of efforts among federal agencies that provide STEM education programs (STEM. http://www.stemedcoalition.org/objectives/)
STEM educational approaches are currently being explored in public educational systems around the world. In the United States, STEM is being promoted to ensure that American schoolchildren remain competitive in a global marketplace. Recently, the Obama administration has taken up STEM as a central component of not only educational reform but also economic reform. As President Obama stated in his 2011 State of the Union address: “Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform, reform that raises student achievement, inspires students to excel in math and science, and turns around failing schools that steal the future of too many young Americans, from rural communities to the inner city” (SOTU, 2011).
While the comments made by President Obama cited above certainly touch upon a number of important social issues, from gun violence to poverty to the funding of public education, the issue that I will address in this chapter is that of STEM. This contemporary educational movement finds itself in the nexus of these issues for reasons that I will discuss. Many have been critical of the emphasis on math and science in STEM educational approaches, seeing the potential for reification of high-stakes testing and the political components of the No Child Left Behind. Others see STEM as a blatant attempt to hand over public education to commercial interests, preparing members of a 21st century workforce instead of helping to raise well-rounded global citizens.
Some art educators have criticized the absence of the fine arts from this conversation. Prominent advocates such as John Maeda, former president of The Rhode Island School of Art and Design, have suggested that the Arts should be added to STEM, creating STEAM. One of the goals behind the STEAM movement is to use the arts to highlight interdisciplinary connections that exist between the academic ‘silos’ of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math1. Proponents of this move have started to look to interdisciplinary forms of artistic production and design to explore potential educational opportunities for critical forms of social engagement and meaningful interdisciplinary interactions.
One example of current STEM programming that has made an attempt to incorporate art and design concerns is the National STEM Video Game Design Challenge. This competition was started in September 2010 by the Obama administration, and featured three competition categories: Middle School, Collegiate, and Developer (www.stemchallenge.org). The National STEM Video Game Design Challenge has been endorsed by businesses such as Microsoft, nonprofit organizations like the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, and the U.S. Department of Education. The $300,000 competition, has, at the time of this writing, completed its fourth annual contest. It aims to reinforce science and math standards, and incorporates three unique options for entering: creating a game design script, making a playable game in Gamestar Mechanic, Game Maker, or Scratch, or designing a game in what they term an ‘open platform’ such as Flash, Game Salad, or Kodu (stemchallenge.org).
The STEM/STEAM debate raises issues regarding the reconceptualization of the field of Art Education; as I have indicated, it begins to touch upon numerous questions regarding video game design and art educational practices. One question that is made all the more pressing in an era of limited funding for art education is as follows: If digital game design concerns were included within the larger disciplinary structure of art education, might the arts find more support within the funding structures and general cultural acceptance of STEM? And, if art educators were to affiliate themselves with STEAM approaches, and gain increased visibility and potential grant funding, what would be lost in the process?
STEM/STEAM, ART EDUCATION, AND VIDEOGAMES
In order to explore this question, I will continue the previous discussion of STEM educational initiatives. As previously stated, one of the most high-profile STEM initiatives is the National STEM Video Game Design Challenge. The Video Game Design Challenge website states the following: “Game-based learning has emerged as one of the most promising areas of innovation in making STEM topics more engaging for America’s youth.(n.p.)” They quote from the 2006 Federation of American Scientists Summit on Educational Games (2006), which proposed that students can learn much from the varied aspects of game design and play, and that these skills can help Americans to compete in a changing global marketplace.2
The STEM Video Game Challenge organizers also refer to the previously-referenced ‘post-Sputnik’ moment.3 Organizers feel that tapping into the cultural relevance of videogames is a way to reach young people “on their own turf.” However, as art educators who have encouraged connections between classroom practices and visual/material culture have found, the incorporation of personal themes and idiosyncratic practices is always accompanied by a shift in meaning which often results in the diffusing of the potency found in the source (Wilson, 2003; McClure, 2011). Can the teaching of videogame design in the spaces of art education respond to and reflect the engaging characteristics of videogames, reaching young people on their turf? Or, is the inclusion of videogames, with the concomitant call to clean up inappropriate imagery and gameplay, meeting them, instead, on a simulated field of play? Does videogame design in art education equate with meeting young people on Astroturf?
Videogames are continually the object of scorn in the general media; there are often similar concerns in some educational settings (Gee, 2003; Shaffer, 2006). Although the gaming landscape has recently become quite diverse, including variants such as casual games, newsgames, serious games, and educational games, the panelists judging the contributions to the STEM Videogame contest would remove “engaging and well-balanced” games that depicted the following: romantic liaisons while “extravagantly spattered with blood” (Dragon Age II) (Douglas, 2011); battling “hulking baddies [that] have gone “almost feral” (Gears of War III) (Lang, 2011); performing a move called “Brutal Melee,” which consists of “cutting throats, stabbing eyes, [and] snapping necks.” (Killzone III) (Dyer, 2011); and participating in “drunken expletive-wrought banter” (Bulletstorm) (Samuel, E., 2011)4 though they might find these ‘innovative and creative.’ Explicit, misogynistic, and violent content is part of many popular videogames, as the previous list of four of the top five pre-ordered videogames from the same period as President Obama’s State of the Union Address indicates; to remove these aspects is to dramatically alter the gaming experience. This is an issue that parallels the challenges posed by works of art that contain similar themes, though the main difference is that individuals are playing these experiences, actively choosing to splatter, cut, stab, snap, romantically liaison, and drunkenly banter.
The interactivity of videogames indicates a marked difference in the diagram of artistic engagement; videogames formalize the interaction the viewer and the artist, and create opportunities for feedback that can directly influence the gaming experience5. This form of display fits more within the ‘demo or die’ model as described by Peter Lunenfeld (2000) than traditional forms of art educational critique. The ‘demo or die’ form of critique comes from the field of high-tech business, where funding is granted or denied, and value is therefore conferred, based upon an interactive demonstration of the software. It is a performative, interactive experience that has little to do with the Modernist studio critique, where the artist is responsible for explaining and validating the meaning of the work. The interactivity that videogames enable also raises serious issues about the interrelationship between creativity, violence, and the ethical force of art (Jagodzinski, 2007).
Video game design in art education is doubly challenged by the biases of digital media and interactive media; using the computer is not considered to be ‘creative,’ in the sense that it has been historically-conceived, at least since the era of creative self-expression initiated in the early-20th Century. In addition, the viewer becomes the user through the process of interaction, and therefore participates in the process of making meaning, frustrating the notion of creativity even further (Sweeny, 2010).
These are challenges that art educators will face if videogames are to transition from being subject matter to medium. These challenges are not unique to art education, however. Videogames are continually being held up as representing the pinnacle of creative expression as they simultaneously lead players down some horrific road to ruin. In the State of the Union address discussed earlier, President Obama called for innovative educational reform, which includes videogame design, while there were media reports of information on the personal life of the accused Tucson gunman Jared Lee Loughner, including that he played the MMORPG Earth Empires (Good, 2011). Once again, the media had a talking point that they could rally around: Videogames are bad6. Simultaneously, the president was making a call for Americans to out-innovate, out-build, and out-educate, through the very same media: videogames are good.
President Obama had run into this bind once before. In his 2008 presidential campaign, he spent $44,500 on in-game advertisements in games such as EA’s Burnout Paradise, a campaign strategy that his Republican competitor John McCain did not match7. Beyond acknowledging the influence that contemporary videogames have, the Nintendo Wii-owning Commander-in-Chief has admitted to playing Wii Bowling with his daughters, Malia and Sasha, perhaps to compensate for his traditional bowling skills, or lack thereof. In an address to the NAACP in 2009, however, he urged the crowd to “put away the Xbox, and put the kids to bed at a reasonable hour.”8
There is of course nothing contradictory about valuing videogames while advocating for a reasonable limit to daily use. All too often, however, the discussion of videogames in the larger culture leans heavily to one side or the other. In order for art educators to move past simplistic binaries that either demonize or deify, we must come to terms with the fact that videogames are both empowering and immobilizing, good and bad, simultaneously. There may be games that are more engaging, incorporate a great deal of historical content, allow players to wrestle with ethical choices, have better graphics and are less offensive, but all videogames are built upon similar premises: videogames actualize the decision-making process of the player, allowing her or him to participate in the process of meaning making in a highly visual goal-based environment. What I am arguing for is an approach to playing games with a critical agenda, viewing games with a deconstructive eye, and, most importantly, making games that reflect the complexity of these approaches and positions.
It is in the making that the robust educational possibilities are grasped, which is seen in the vast differences between other forms of media creation; looking at a painting is different from painting, talking about sculpture is different from sculpting, etc. The shift that is currently taking place in videogames is that players are increasingly making games as gameplay. As game development crosses the threshhold of programming and enters the drag-and-drop era, as seen in games such as Wario Ware DIY and the Little Big Planet series, and game development programs such as Gamestar Mechanic, players are becoming programmers, and the possibilities for gaming are expanded beyond the stereotypical solo white male in a darkened room, lit only by the flickering of the TV screen or monitor. Gaming is increasingly mobile, social, embodied, and expressive. The boundaries between looking, talking, and making are blurred in the process, which offers art educators a new model for production, if we are willing to explore game design in art educational practice.
In addition to the argument that game design reinforces critical thinking skills and interdisciplinary models of creativity, another argument for the inclusion of game design in education in general, and art education specifically, is that videogame development is a thriving part of the new economy (2006 Federation of American Scientists Summit on Educational Games). While this is true, many critics of STEM funding argue that engineering and computer programming jobs are quickly disappearing in the United States9, either being outsourced to the growing economies of China and India or disappearing altogether (Sirota, 2010)10. If this trend continues, it may still provide opportunities for the ‘creative class,’ although videogames rely heavily upon technological expertise that is finding funding and support in China and Japan. (Florida, 2005).
Accompanying changes in the private sector are shifts in the types of games currently being played and developed. As previously mentioned, newer forms such as casual games have recently gained in the overall market share of videogame sales. In 2015, video game sales were $115 billion (USD). Approximately half of these sales are attributed to console games, leaving the remainder divided between PC games (21.6B), mobile games (22.01B), and handheld videogames (16.4B) (Statista, 2015). As these figures indicate, the definition of what constitutes videogame play and design is undergoing a gradual shift, away from now-traditional console play and towards mobile gaming. The Kaiser Foundation recently reported that total media exposure of young people has increased from six hours and twenty-one minutes in 2005 to seven hours and thirty eight minutes in 2010, with 20% consisting of mobile media (cell phones, iPod, handheld videogame players, etc.)11. In 2015, The Pew Research center reported that nearly three-quarters of teens surveyed had a smartphone, and 92% go online daily. As media habits continue to shift, art educators should be aware of possibilities for designing games for mobile media12. In fact, the STEM Video Game Challenge also includes a separate challenge for experienced game designers, asking them to develop games for mobile media aimed at pre-K-4 audiences13.
It is in mobile gaming that art educators may find numerous opportunities for fruitful connections to the histories of performance art, happenings, as well as new media art in general (Sweeny, Patton, 2009). Mobile gaming can reintroduce the body into the gaming equation and open up possibilities for honest and necessary conversations regarding physical space, constructed identity, and interaction. Mobile gaming can shift the emphasis away from programming and coding and towards embodiment, spatial engagement, and play, even though coding in art education can also be empowering (Knochel & Patton, 2015). It might offer art educators the ability to take back ground lost to computer programming and technology education in the teaching of videogame design in the public schools.
However, shifting away from videogame design as presented in competitions such as the STEM Videogame Challenge would also make it more of a challenge for art educators to participate in the funding structures that STEM education provides. With this in mind, I suggest that art educators interested in incorporating videogame design into current practices look to all possible models for such incorporation, regardless of the acronym used. While it might be more inclusive to look to STEAM-based approaches, it is clear that STEM has a prominence that STEAM lacks. The decision to follow STEM or STEAM is one that is fraught with challenges that are not of a design nature. They strike to the heart of questions of visibility and viability in an age of increased scrutiny of US public education.
In closing, I would like to suggest that digital game design can offer art educators numerous opportunities to innovate, build, and educate. As I have discussed, videogames represent the synthesis of interdisciplinary models of collaboration and creativity. The development of innovative technologies such as the Apple iPad have been due, in no small measure, to the gaming applications that show the full possibilities of such mobile technologies. Art educators have the ability to take part in the collective development of these innovative art forms, incorporating design challenges that ask students to design apps that have functional value beyond the limits of the classroom walls. In addition, art educators have the opportunity to address issues of social justice and engagement through game design, in a manner that other disciplines might overlook.
Digital game design is inherently about the construction of playable experiences, which allow individuals to engage in active problem-solving and dynamic learning experiences. As a constructivist endeavor, digital game design is about building, testing, and rethinking experiences in a recursive manner. The possibilities for the inclusion of social issues and critical forms of expression in art educational settings through game design are numerous, and in need of further exploration and critical examination.
Finally, digital game design represents a new model for learning, as is being explored in the Quest to Learn school which opened in 2009 in Manhattan. Funded in part by the MacArthur Foundation, Quest to Learn is led by New York City educator Elisa Aragon and Parsons Professor of Design and Technology Katie Salen. The program features an interdisciplinary curriculum based upon games and learning14. This curriculum looks to video games both specifically and broadly, exploring how game-based experiences relate to systems thinking and complexity theory.
Art educators should pay close attention to systematic, forward thinking models for educational reform such as Quest to Learn, while at the same time exploring opportunities for local, small-scale integration of game design. Video games represent numerous educational opportunities while also pointing towards the challenges of digital, interactive media in art educational practice. If art educators were to actively and critically address these opportunities, the result may be a reinforcement of the relevance of art education in the 21st century.
This research was previously published in Convergence of Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Global Civic Engagement edited by Ryan Shin, pages 331-341, copyright year 2017 by Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global).
Chiong, C., & Schuler, C. (2011). Learning: Is there an app for that? New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center.
Douglas, J. (2011) Dragon Age II. Retrieved from http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/unnameddragonageprojectworkingtitle/news.html?sid=6297988&mode=previews
Dyer, M. (2011) Killzone 3 Review. g4tv. Retrieved from http://www.g4tv.com/games/ps3/63796/Killzone-3/review#ixzz1FNBDddTn
Florida, R. (2005). The flight of the creative class . New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers Inc.
Jagodsinski, j. (2007). Videogame cybersubjects: Questioning the myths of violence and identification (Implications for Educational Technologies). Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 53(1), 45-62.
Kaiser, H. J. (2011). Kaiser Family Foundation Report: Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8 to 18-Year-Olds. Retrieved from http://www.kff.org/entmedia/8010.cfm
Knochel, A., & Patton, R. (2015). If art education then critical digital making: Computational thinking and creative code . Studies in Art Education , 57(1), 21–38.
Lang, D. (2011) Newest gears of war arrives Sept. 20th. Kansas City Star. Retrieved from http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/28/2688701/newest-gears-of-war-arrives-sept.html
Lunenfeld. (2000). Snap to Grid. A User’s Guide to Digital Art, Media, and Culture. MIT Press.
McClure, M. (2011). The child as totem; Redressing the myth of inherent creativity in early childhood art education. Studies in Art Education , 52(2), 127–141.
Obama, B. (2010). Remarks by the president to the NAACP Centennial Convention. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-the-NAACP-Centennial-Convention-07/16/2009/
Pew Research Center. (2015). Teens, social media & technology overview. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/
Samuel, E. (2011). Bulletstorm. Videogame review. Retrieved from http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/2011/03/01/2011-03 01_bulletstorm_is_a_testosteronefeuled_firstperson_shooter.html
Shaffer, D. W. (2006). How Computer Games help Children Learn . Palgrave. doi:10.1057/9780230601994
Statista. (2015). Videogames Revenue Worldwide from 2012 to 2015. Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/278181/video-games-revenue-worldwide-from-2012-to-2015-by-source/
Wilson, B. (2003). Three sites for visual cultural pedagogy: Honoring students' interests and imagery. International Journal of Arts Education , 1(3), 107–126.
Demo or Die: The process of critique described by Peter Lunenfeld (2000) that emphasized interaction with a prototype or software model.
Interactivity: The ability to manipulate digital media, in a manner that affects the operation of the media form.
Mobility: The incorporation of physical movement into digital gameplay.
Quest to Learn: The Games-based learning charter school that opened in Manhattan in 2009.
STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics educational approaches.
STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics educational approaches.
Videogames: Playable digital games that are available on a multitude of platforms and engage the player in numerous ways.
1 . Invent and share techniques that take advantage of simple, freely available IT systems and applications to support enhanced observation, analysis and understanding of pictorial and numerical data. Build new connections between art and design disciplines and scientific fields to advance understanding of complex systems, e.g., through improved strategies and techniques for the shared perception and visualization of scientific data http://www.artandeducation.net/announcements/view/1473
2 . “The success of complex video games demonstrates that games can teach higher-order thinking skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change. These are the skills U.S. employers increasingly seek in workers and new workforce entrants. These are the skills more Americans must have to compete with lower cost knowledge workers in other nations.”
3 . To genuinely engage youth in STEM learning, we must reach them on their own turf. In much the same way that the U.S. space program in the post-Sputnik period began to spawn a generation of aerospace engineers, the videogame industry can put a new face on STEM learning that will captivate America’s youth, beginning in early childhood. (http://www.stemchallenge.org/resources/Default.aspx)
4 . Top five pre-ordered video games, February 19th, 2011. Accessed online from: http://www.vgchartz.com/article/84281/americas-preorders-chart-19-february-2011-killzone-3/
5 . Games are developed on the basis of feedback, with the premise that no time is wasted building more elaborate games that are neither fun nor easy to use. With constant user feedback, developers are assured that what they are working on, though it may change directions many times, will, in the end, be accessible and compelling. http://spotlight.macfound.org/featured-stories/entry/prototyping-our-way-to-reforming-education/
6 . “Our children are bombarded with TV programming showing a multitude of killings. Children are given games to play in which they earn points for killing people. Where are the TV programs that promote good role models? ... Children are becoming more desensitized and complacent toward their own violent acts and those of others.” (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/25/ariz-linda-gra-shootings-fueled-tv-video-games-abortion-guns/)
7 . “ In the lead-up to his election in 2008, President Obama spent approximately $44,500 on in-game advertisements promoting his candidacy, with promotional spots appearing in games such as EA's Burnout Paradise. However, since then, the Wii-owning chief executive has repeatedly criticized gaming in general, urging parents to start “putting away the Xbox [and] putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour.” (http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/littlebigplanet/news.html?sid=6241210)
8 . To parents -- to parents, we can't tell our kids to do well in school and then fail to support them when they get home. (Applause.) You can't just contract out parenting. For our kids to excel, we have to accept our responsibility to help them learn. That means putting away the Xbox -- (applause) -- putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. (Applause.) It means attending those parent-teacher conferences and reading to our children and helping them with their homework..
9 . Companies have been offshoring manufacturing for decades. Today, however, corporations are sending engineering work abroad as well, by outsourcing work to offshore vendors or assigning it to overseas divisions. If this is a seismic change in the engineering profession, so far mechanical engineers have only felt the initial tremors. The trend is most pronounced in information technology, computing, and consumer electronics, where U.S., European, and Japanese firms have hired hundreds of thousands of programmers and engineers in China, India, and other developing nations. (http://memagazine.asme.org/articles/2009/March/Shift_Offshoring.cfm)
10 . This doesn't mean that our education system is perfect. But it does mean that without reforming the trade, tax and regulatory policies that reward high-tech outsourcing and incentivize careers in finance, our schools can never be an engine of value-generating information-age jobs. To know these suppositions are preposterous is to consider a recent study by Rutgers and Georgetown University that found colleges “in the United States actually graduate many more STEM students than are hired each year.” (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/09/10/sirota_neoliberal)
11 . Over the past five years, young people have increased the amount of time they spend consuming media by an hour and seventeen minutes daily, from 6:21 to 7:38—almost the amount of time most adults spend at work each day, except that young people use media seven days a week instead of five.
Total media exposure 10:45 (Multitasking)
20% of media consumption is mobile. total time spent playing video games increased by about 24 minutes over the past five years (from:49 to 1:13), and 20 minutes of that increase comes on cell phones, iPods and handheld video game players.
Hispanic and Black youth average about 13 hours of media exposure daily (13:00 for Hispanics and 12:59 for Blacks), compared to just over 8½ hours (8:36) among Whites. Some of the biggest race related differences emerge for television time: Black youth spend nearly six hours daily watching TV and Hispanics spend 5:21, compared to 3:36 for Whites. Other substantial differences emerge for time spent with music (Black and Hispanic youth spend about an hour more a day with music) and video games (about a half-hour more a day).
12 . Implications for industry
Design principle No. 1: Create apps that are developmentally appropriate.
• Focus content narrowly within a developmental age range.
• Design content to be relevant to what children are already learning.
• Consider children’s evolving motor skills.
• Engage children (and adults!) by making them laugh…
• …but not too much. Balance engagement and learning.
Design principle No. 2: Create apps that sustain children’s interest and learning.
• Design for shorter playtimes.
• Provide goals and incentives: Keep them coming back.
• Give kids the option to personalize.
• Involve parents.
Distribution strategies: Bringing educational apps to market.
• Lead kids (and their parents) to appropriate content:
Protect children from inappropriate content and warn parents of apps with unsubstantiated educational claims.
• Build parent expertise and promote quality:
Inform parents of the existence of quality educational apps and how to find them.
• Provide something old and something new: Using familiar characters and brands may be a way of engaging kids with new apps and gaining the trust of their parents.
• Bridge the digital divide: Ensure that children from underserved or underrepresented populations receive the same opportunities to learn using smart mobile devices as their peers.
Implications for education
• Optimize children’s time with mobile devices.
• Use mobile devices as supplemental tools.
• Surround children with high-quality educational resources.
13 . The Developer Prize challenges emerging and experienced game developers to design mobile games, including games for the mobile Web, for young children (grades pre-K through 4) that teach key STEM concepts and foster an interest in STEM subject areas.
14 . Quest to Learn
The school has been designed to help students to bridge old and new literacies through learning about the world as a set of interconnected systems. Design and complex problem-solving are two big ideas of the school, as is a commitment to deep content learning with a strong focus on learning in rigorous, engaging, and relevant ways. It is a place where digital media meets books and students learn to think like designers, inventors, mathematicians, writers, and more. Q2L brings together teachers with a passion for content, a vision for helping kids to learn best, and a commitment to changing the way students will grow in the world.
Mission Lab: Mission Lab represents a new model of an institution that we feel is critical to the future of learning: an institution that acts as a “node” within a broader learning network, connecting and synthesizing expertise and resources from school institutions, non-profit organizations, foundations, and industry.
Quest to Learn Overview:
Games work as rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others.
Design Methodologies and Q2L
Learning using a design methodology
Our curriculum creates contexts for ongoing feedback and reflection. This approach creates opportunities for students to demonstrate and share their knowledge with teachers and peers, as well as get continual feedback on their work and ideas. Across the curriculum students act as socio-technical engineers in the creation of playful systems—games, models, simulations, stories, etc. Students will learn about the way systems work and how they can be modified or changed. Through designing play students learn to think analytically and holistically, to experiment and test out theories, and to consider other people as part of the systems they create and inhabit. Game design serves as the pedagogy underlying this work.
Q2L and Technology
Technology is linked directly to the curriculum and learning objectives.
The use of technology at Q2L bubbles up out of what is done in the classroom. It is teacher driven and arises out of a need to further a students understanding. By placing the teacher as the driver, the use of technology is ensured to be compelling and in context. Technology integrators at Q2L support this approach, scaffolding teachers thus allowing them to ubiquitously and intimately integrate technology into their work with students.
Integrated technology adds breadth and depth to educational experiences.
Technology is always integrated into the curriculum only when it can help to further understanding for the students.
Technology integration is done so with purpose and with an eye on pedagogy.
The technology should always support and be supported by good teaching. If at anytime a teacher feels as if he/she would like to incorporate technology into a piece of curriculum they should always be asking themselves, “how will this technology help the learning of my students increase?”
Technology is a tool.
Technology is a tool in the school, just like any other tool. Students should know when to use it and what specific technologies are needed to serve particular purposes. That said, part of being savvy with technology is learning when it is not needed, as well.