Leah's blog

For the past week, the Quest to Learn community has been participating in "boss levels," a concept inspired by video game boss levels in which players harness hard-won tools and skills to face an epic challenge. At Q2L, boss levels are a two-week intensive period in which students and teachers work collaboratively on a capstone project that integrates the skills, content, resources and experiences acquired during the previous 10 weeks of the trimester.

Building on the trimester's focus on the relationships between the different elements of a system, the inaugural boss level challenge is for students to build Rube Goldberg machines or complicated machines that accomplish simple tasks. Each team of 8-10 students is charged with building a different machine that will be judged according to their performance, appearance, creativity and use of materials. Some of the assignments include creating a machine to: feed a turtle, turn off a light switch, press play on a CD player, turn on a faucet, hit the spacebar on a keyboard and turn on a power strip. While students build in small teams each morning, in the afternoons they reflect on their practice—writing scripts, documenting their work, and creating video podcasts.

To see and hear the daily reports from the frontlines of the Q2L boss levels, check-out our archive or subscribe to the Quest to Learn (Q2L) Boss Level podcast!

The third, and final, Super Art + Design Challenge was waged by fashion designer and fairytalefashion.org founder, Diana Eng. Diana descended on Q2L with lights, construction paper and a photo back-drop for her "Superhero Costume Design using Crazy-Cool Paper-Folding Techniques" workshop. After showing students examples from her fashion collection and her weekly online research videos, Diana launched into the intricacies of paper-folding and the importance of paper prototyping. After explaining that deployable structures were constructions that change easily, students brainstormed and came up with some ideas for some wearable deployable items.

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.