I saw an ad on craigslist that about a new school that needed a game design teacher. I showed the listing to my wife and I said “this is my next job”, my wife said "that's nice dear, but you don't know anything about game design”. I replied “Since when is that stopped me.?”
I started working at the Institute of play which training kids with interactive game experiences that were really cool; we were developing prototypes to be implemented in in the opening of Quest tp Learn school the following fall.
The idea of using game-based learning
throughout the curriculum was
inspirational and very well thought out
by a team of professors from Parsons
School of Design and the Institute of
Play. Game designers from NYU
(notably Eric Zimmerman, designer
of the popular Diner Dash game) also
helped us create the curriculum,
formulate the goals and implement
groundbreaking practices and pedagogy
at Q2L.
Quest to learn became a model school and
garnered much publicity and acclaim. There is now a
second school called Quest Chicago modeled on the original.
Traditional classes renamed to echo the innovative approach to incorporating game based learning; math was called cold worlds, science was called the way things work, social studies was called being, space and place.
I was hired to teach game design part of the visual arts curriculum called Sports for the mind, how cool is that?
3. Personally, why do you think that Digital Media (or STEM) is important? What do you think one of the most important S.T.E.M. skills are for students my age should know going into the job market?
No one can deny that being proficient with technology is critical to getting and keeping a job in this century. However technology changes really fast so what students need to learn is to “learn how to learn” because they will be asked to adapt to the ever changing tools, platforms, media and ways of doing things in the work world. The pace of change and increasing complexity of the tools is increasing as well so students will need to be agile, flexible, adaptable, and open to new ideas so they can train themselves to use new tools as they come along if they are to be successful.