Digital Media and Education: Quest Atlantis, a 3D Virtual World for Collaborative Education

Students in North Carolina classrooms now have opportunities to participate in learning activities in an on-line 3D world, "Quest Atlantis". The project, developed at the University of Indiana, in partnership with OPEN, was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Education program. Food Lion donated the funds to enable 60 N.C. classrooms to participate in the program, initially selected from eleven IMPACT schools.

From the Quest Atlantis website:

"Quest Atlantis (QA) is a learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-12, in educational tasks. Building on strategies from online role-playing games, QA combines strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities (known as Quests), talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. A Quest is an engaging curricular task designed to be entertaining yet educational.

Each Quest is connected to local academic standards and to our team's commitments. Completing Quests requires that members participate in real-world, socially and academically meaningful activities, such as conducting environmental studies, researching other cultures, calculating frequency distributions, analyzing newspaper articles, interviewing community members, and developing action plans. QA can be integrated into many settings, including classrooms,after-school programs, public libraries, and museums."







If you are interested, read the in-depth article by the creators of Quest Atlantis, Sasha Barab and Craig Jackson, Indiana University.

From Plato's Republic to Quest Atlantis: The role of the philosopher-king
(THEN: Journal, the journal about technology, humanities, education, and narrative)

"In this article, we present a reflective account of our experience in developing a play space for learning that sits at the intersection of education, entertainment, and our social commitments...."

Additional Links:

IU receives $500.000.00 MacArthur grant to enhance student's education: Researchers will expand a video game that helps student engagement and learning

OPEN