Quest Atlantis

This week's lead teacher meeting was taken by Sue Partridge from Tasman School. She introduced us all to Quest Atlantis and shared her experiences with this virtual world. As far as we know, Sue's students are currently the only kids in the South Island currently lucky enough to be part of this world.

Quest Atlantis (QA) is a learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse students, ages 9-12, in educational tasks. It has been developed by Indiana University and could be relevant to New Zealand teachers as a model of an online project. QA builds on strategies from online role-playing games and combines strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. Includes unit plans for teachers.

Everything to do with Quest Atlantis is free, and of a very high standard. There is an extensive amount of background reading required - Sue uses QA as part of her reading programme - and even the story books are provided free. Before teachers can gain access to the full Quest site, they are required to complete a small amount of PD - approximately 1.5 hours a week, for three weeks. This is done online with a professional and other new users. This sets you up really well to embark on the Quest, and ongoing support is freely available.

While the amount of reading, research, comprehension, problem solving and analysis is considerable, there are also a lot of other lessons to be learnt along the way. Students choose to work in worlds such as:

• Unity World
• Ecology World
• Culture World
• Healthy World

They then choose Quests to complete from these seven arms:

• healthy communities
• compassionate wisdom
• diversity affirmation
• environmental awareness
• personal agency
• creative expression
• social responsibility

The messages contained in the various quests sit incredibly well with the key competencies of the new curriculum. With over 500 Quests currently available (teachers may allow as few or many of these as they wish), students will never get bored. Quest Atlantis is constantly being upgraded and kept to a high standard.

I was incredibly impressed with Quest Atlantis, and believe it has tremendous potential for:

• capturing the interest of reluctant readers
• engaging boys
• extending students
• developing thinking/analytical skills
• problem solving
• social interaction

Users of Quest Atlantis need to download software to their computers, and then work online. While online they are able to interact with students from around the world who are online at the same time. Note that while the Quests are online, there is a considerable amount of research and drafting that can be completed without the computer.

Teachers have full access to students accounts, and can check what they have been doing at any stage. This looks to be a very safe environment for students, while still offering them the excitement of being involved with people from around the world.

For more information, have a look at the Quest Atlantis website.

Here's a wee intro into the legend of Atlantis: