The Being Me team continues its hard work and has recently turned its attention to developing the applications that will fuel the platform's in-game narrative. In Being Me, as students engage in quests to help save the flagging Wiedanru population, they unlock different applications whose features grant extra abilities to the community.

Here's a sneak peek into some of the applications that the team envisions...

Pixels are tiny bits of energy that are released when students perform actions on the site, such as logging in, commenting, or posting information. Each player's pixels are stored in a "bucket," and also in a communal "wells," where pixels can be collected, shared and "thrown" in order to maintain balance in the systems underlying the Wiedanru world.

The Expertise Exchange is a knowledge bank that represents the Quest to Learn community's skills and interests. The Expertise Exchange enables users to share expertise, and receive help in areas where they have a "need to know." Through the Expertise Exchange, students learn to: participate constructively in discussions about work, ideas and problems; respond to the requests of others; receive and incorporate feedback; assess the level of their own expertise; problem solve and identify resources to achieve specific learning goals.

The Monitor, is an application which tracks and displays the emotional states, balance of energy and level of expertise of the Q2L community. Students can use the monitor's data visualization features to decipher and diagnose what is happening with themselves as individuals, and explore how their individual "state" relates to those of the larger community.

The Moodtracker is a puzzle of different and often conflicting emoticons that students use to create their daily, socio-emotional self portrait. The Moodtracker allows students to track their emotional growth to help them recognize different mood patterns, over time.

Finally the Echospot is an online diary, a safe and private space for students to communicate with mentors and record a videos in response to specific prompts.

Related Link:
Bits and Bytes from the Being Me team

Last month, the SMALLab-NY team—Katie Salen, Mike Edwards, Kyle Li and Claudio Midolo created one of three GameBot pieces that were unveiled at the GameBot exhibition held at Arizona Science Center.

In the GameBot exhibition, humans and robots came together for interactive gameplay exploring the social, technological, and sustainable dimensions of robotics.

The New York team's entry 'Swarm!' challenged players with an other-worldly call to arms: "Chaos reigns in the dark reaches of the universe! Your spaceship has wandered into a hive of space hornets. Repel the angry insects with your energy."

All three gamebots were developed as part of SMALLab, the K-12 Embodied and Mediated Learning project at Arizona State University, and created through a collaborative effort between teams of artists, game designers and scientists from Arizona and beyond.

We are delighted to announce that Quest to Learn will be located on the M47 campus at 225 East 23rd Street in NYC. In close proximity to our partners, the Institute of Play and The New School, Quest to Learn is accessible by public transportation via the 6, R, and W trains and the M23 bus line. We look forward to welcoming our new students this fall!
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Creating a dystopian sci-fi narrative, designing game mechanics involving pixels and buckets and creating applications that allow students to track the activities of their peers, exchange expertise and amend the exquisite puzzle of their moods, are just a few of the applications that the Being Me team has been developing in support of Quest to Learn’s wellness-focused social network.

During the past month, the Being Me team has been designing a series of applications to support students in holistic work on issues related to socio-emotional, physiological and community development. The emphasis has been on empowering students to see themselves as integral parts of a larger community, helping them to understand, "I matter within this community and I contribute to its overall wellness and abilities."

Being Me’s game narrative fuels this journey of self-discovery. The narrative involves the kindhearted and industrious Wiedanrus, an endangered species who live on the planet Qetesh. Faced with their declining civilization and inevitable extinction, the Wiedanrus contact the Quest to Learn community to help them revive their once-thriving community. The story encourages students to form connections, work together, and to be reflective about their own lives and their roles in growing a healthy community. As the narrative unfolds, students participate in quests to support the Wiedanrus and unlock different applications along the way.

Sound exciting? Stay tuned for more updates soon!