Institute of Play's blog

On December 23, Quest to Learn's first Boss Level Challenge came to a successful close. The culmination of a semester-long investigation into the architecture of dynamic systems, the Boss Level is a two-week “intensive” where students apply knowledge and skills to propose solutions to complex problems. This trimester, Q2L students were invited to build Rube Goldberg machines or complicated machines that perform simple tasks.

After two weeks of tinkering, building, problem-solving and podcasting, it was finally time for Q2L students to not only show-off their machines but also demonstrate their understanding of rules, goals, elements and systems. Six teams introduced and ran their machines before a panel of prominent architects, game designers, television producers, designers and technologists. Joined by the Q2L community, the judges moved from room to room scoring the machines based on a predetermined set of rubrics including, performance, use of materials, ability to meet the predetermined goal, components, appearance and creativity. From toycars landing on keyboards to dominoes propelling scissors to cut string and trigger a lever, each machine was fueled by its own whimsical collection of found objects, re-purposed materials and inventive ideas.

This week, the Institute of Play launched a new collaboration with Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, called Super Art + Design Challenge Wednesdays. Presented at Quest to Learn, the program brings Eyebeam fellows and residents together with Q2L students to explore new ideas, techniques and technologies. This week's workshop, YouTube ReMix Mania, featured Eyebeam senior fellow Jeff Crouse, who showed students some of his own projects and introduced some big ideas about contagious media, robotic monkeys, participatory culture and parody. After a quick tour of iMovie and a review of effective editing techniques, Jeff challenged the group to make their own re-creations using their brand new skills and tools. At the end of the afternoon, when the students uploaded their remixes and shared them online, it was clear that they had aced the first design challenge with only seconds to spare!

As founding partner of the new NYC public school Quest to Learn, one of the Institute of Play's projects has been developing and implementing Q2L's afterschool enrichment program, Mobo Studio. Presented in partnership with the Pearson Foundation and the Mobile Learning Institute and held at Quest to Learn, Mobo Studio has a focus on digital citizenship, mobile creativity and design. Supported by a talented team of artists-experts, Mobo extends Q2L's focus on tinkering, problem-solving, creating, and inventing.

On Friday November 13, the budding fashion technologists in Mobile Fashion presented their work in a well-coordinated, tightly-choreographed fashion show. Tasked with creating a line of accessories that function as a coded messaging system, the stalwart group of six began by examining their own closets and de-coding their own personal styles. Inspired by everyone from Chanel to Pucci and guided by their mentors Pollie Barden and Jennifer Boyle, the group researched fashion history, mastered sewing machines and pattern-making and prototyped a range of design ideas. The group also analyzed the nature of code and used smartphones to investigate braille, morse code and semacode as unique systems. As a result of these investigations, the group produced the "txt scarf," a scarf that carries a phone and enables texting and the "semacode purse," a purse that both holds the phone and displays semacodes that reveal secret messages. The accessories were a big hit, bravo to our young inventors!

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.