I reviewed the article about Quest Atlantis found at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02504859#page-1 and several points caught my attenton. First of all, this seems like a great idea to implement at 10 years ago. The technology was just becoming readily available for a project such as this one. The quote in the article that really caught my attention was based upon the layout of the game, "quests - engaging curricular tasks that are connected to academic standards and our social commitments." (Barab, 2) The term "quest" is mostly associated with hack and slash sword and magic based fantasy games. In fact, the first Massively Multi-player Online Role-playing Game (MMORG), Everquest, was based upon characters completing these "quests" for progression. So I believe that the authors were insightful to use the same style of progress for an academic game as commercial games. The format would be in a way that video game players would understand and take interest. A link to understand the term in a general way for gaming is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_(video_gaming)
Reference:
Barab, Sasha et al. "Making learning fun: Quest Atlantis, a game without guns" Educational Technology Research and Development 2005, Volume 53, Issue 1, pp 86-107
Nice analysis of how the educators tried to draw on the characteristics of games that kids find highly motivating!
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