Quest Atlantis – a virtual world experience
I have been a participant in Quest Atlantis for nearly twelve months, and I am still learning, and enjoying my learning as an educator. Quest Atlantis is based on gaming theory, and engages the participant, providing feedback and reward, both short and long term. It is an environment in which achievement is visible, is rewarded in several ways, and gives status. The social element is important, and students are able to develop social as well as learning networks with questers locally, nationally and globally.
Students earn ‘lumins’ and can luminate a system icon as a result of having quests accepted. The reviewer can also reward questers for effort and achievement with ‘spendable’ cols, or add their own reward system to the environment.
When questers have moved down the achievement path a little, it becomes possible for them to use some of their cols to rent land, and build. This is engaging and challenging for all questers (educators also have a building world).
QA is a very secure learning environment in which all educators have been formally trained before they can run a class, with all interactions logged and scrutinised. It is also however, an environment in which the educators model and expect safe online practices to be understood and used by all participants.
QA supports many different planning models, including Project Based Learning (PBL), the Maker Model (QA immediately modifies the environment, process and output required ) and the Williams Cognitive Affective as the quests and missions in the environment and the connections to real world problems and the social commitments do create an emotional response from questers. Curriculum differentiation is highly supported by the curriculum available.
There are 500 + quests which cover all KLAs, larger units of work, and system run missions. It is an environment in which participating educators can develop their own quests and units, so the curriculum can be made highly relevant, in topic, resources, process and product. There is support for questers to reflect on the processes they have employed, and how those processes have supported their learning.
This is an environment which is never static, always developing and changing, always interesting, for students and educators.
I was lucky enough in my PD group to connect with Al Upton from South Australia. We buddied up, and it is something I would highly recommend – find a QA buddy. Al acted as my online memory, mentor, friend and reviewer; all roles that meant that my early Quest experiences were positive and led to an ongoing commitment to learning in virtual worlds. Thank you Al.
3 comments June 19th, 2008
