OPEN has formed a strategic partnership with Indiana University as an exclusive licensee of Quest Atlantis. OPEN is now offering the standards-based Quest Atlantis (QA) online 3D learning environments to classrooms and corporate sponsors worldwide.
The QA learning and teaching program combines strategies from the commercial gaming environment with lessons from research 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.
Each Quest is connected to local academic standards and to our team's seven social 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.
The Partnership
The world of Quest Atlantis is brought to you through a unique partnership between OPEN and IU School of Education.
Since its inception, OPEN has been an innovator in the use of technology in education and has used videoconferencing, the world wide web, film and other forms of new media and technology to bring students together from around the world and create cross-cultural communities of students and educators.
Dr. Sasha Barab and his visionary team at Indiana University, with the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the MacArthur Foundation, NASA, and other partners, have been working on developing the best and most academically-rigorous 3D online learning and teaching program known as Quest Atlantis (QA). Quest Atlantis has grown to a community of over 20,000 members worldwide and is implemented in schools in countries such as Australia, Singapore, China, New Zealand, Canada, and the USA.
IU and OPEN have come together to scale Quest Atlantis to the broader educational community, while co-developing new real-world learning applications such as the Virtual National Parks program, sustainable energy programs, and more. OPEN was recently awarded a US Department of Education Grant to create several more Virtual National Park Environments including Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and World Heritage site and with Cousteau Ocean Futures and US National Parks – the Northwest Hawaiian Islands National Marine Sanctuary. We already have some large-scale QA deployments and new in the schools in North Carolina and New Jersey (thanks to Food Lion and NASA), and invite schools from other parts of the U.S. and the world to explore the QA learning and teaching space and join our growing online community of learners. Please contact QAinfo@oneplaneteducation.com
More on the Value of 3D Learning Environments for Education
Teachers and Administrators please read the Federation of American Scientist (FAS) led (visit http://www.fas.org/gamesummit) study on the importance of 3D learning environments “gaming” strategies and technologies to best prepare our children for the 21st Century Global Economy.
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