announcements

This week marked the launch of an online social learning network, custom-designed by the Institute of Play for the game-based learning school, Quest to Learn. A creative, resourceful and stalwart team of designers, programmers, project managers and wellness experts collaborated to bring Being Me to life. Being Me’s features enable students to engage in a range of practices from self-reflective moments where they track how they’re feeling to more community-oriented activities where they participate in online discussions or share perspectives. Being Me supports Quest’s trimester-long focus on team work and how elements interact to create relationships within systems. It will also have an active role in Q2L’s afterschool space, providing opportunities for students to post, rate and comment on their work with the support of their adult mentors.

Cinglevue and The Institute of Play have entered into an exciting partnership. Cinglevue will be working with the Institute of Play and Quest To Learn to pilot and develop CingleVue's Virtuoso solution for transformational learning. This solution incorporates a suite of web-based tools that include Oracle Student Learning, Learner Analytics, eSIS and Learner Enterprise. Together we hope to innovate around building shared wisdom, empowering the individual learner, engaging the entire extended learning community and enabling immersive collaboration.

• Oracle Student Learning is an enterprise level teaching and learning environment that allows easy high quality individualized learning paths with the ability to assess students against a multitude of assessment frameworks;
• Learner Analytics allows teachers, administrators and learners make sense of the all of the formative and summative data that is collected through Oracle Student Learning and provides comprehensive reporting capabilities to deliver a rich and holistic understanding of the individual learners
• eSIS is a fully web-based student information system.
• Learner Enterprise provides connected and open spaces where knowledge can be constructed. Communication and productivity tools enable efficiencies in the learning and teaching cycle.

Electronic Soundscapes was the second event in the Institute of Play and art and technology center Eyebeam's Super Art + Design Challenge Wednesday collaboration. Featuring sound designer Hans-Christoph Steiner and 20 Quest to Learn sixth-graders, the three-hour workshop probed the conceptual, technical and sonic dimensions of computer-generated sound and noise. Beginning with the simple question, "What is sound?," Hans showed students his own projects and introduced them to pure data—a real-time graphical programming environment that can be used to create computer music. Hans guided students through the sound creation process, masterfully creating a simple, inviting and fun point of entry into a complex and intimidating environment. Hans challenged students to create and control electronic sounds using their computer mouse by the end of the day. As students sampled their voices and filled the room with their own noisy soundscapes, it was clear that yet another design challenge had been successfully met.

Produced by the Mobile Learning Institute and featuring the hard-working Mobile Quest campers, this video was completed during the preparation of the Mobile Quest games festival. Mobile Quest was a week-long game design camp where 5th graders made games using N85 smartphones. Focusing on the phones' GPS, bluetooth and code-reading capabilities, the Mobile Questers worked with game designers and mobile application developers to learn about game design, smartphones and data literacy.

To find out more about Mobile Quest, check out the Mobile Quest blog for photos, videos and the downloadable Mobile Quest Curriculum Kit PDF.