Microsoft 2009 European Innovative Teachers Forum (4of10) – The Climate Mystery

This is the fourth in a series of ten posts about my experience last week at the 2009 Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum in Vienna.

The second keynote of the conference was delivered by Christian Fonnesbech (Director of Congin ApS). It was titled the climate Mystery – dramatic learning & entertainment

The Climate Mystery is an on-line learning game that is about mixing education with entertainment - it's free to schools and is a new type of ‘edutainment’. It’s not the first time that Microsoft has invested in edutainment our Scottish Partners in Learning Small Business Game project is a good example of this. 

The Small Business Game (www.sport4life.biz) is an educational game where you run your own football franchise store (The Sports Store). The game is linked to the Scottish school curriculum and designed to teach you enterprise skills. It’s definitely worth having a look if you have not seen it!

Anyway, the climate mystery is a new type of game and takes the levels of interactivity further than the Small Business Game. It’s been developed by Congin (an Austrian Company) and one of the things that I liked about Christian’s explanation of the game was when he said, ‘how do we keep children’s attention? – simple, stories remain as motivating as ever!’ I have always been a strong believer that the power of the narrative and the strength of the mystery will always remain very captivating for young people.

So what is the Climate Mystery? Basically, it’s an on-line documentary that children and adults can watch. The idea is that episodes are released over a number of weeks and viewers get more and more absorbed into the story. There is also an opportunity for viewers to interact with the characters and further interact by playing simple on-line games.

An on-line community also supports the Climate Mystery and there are opportunities for people to interact, ask questions and play games. As the story progresses the community has to make more and more decisions to support each other but to also understand the effects of climate and change and ultimately save the world!

I really liked the sound of this and I hope that the marketing for this great free resource will be really good in order to get as many schools involved as possible.

For more information about the Climate Mystery visit the site (www.climatemystery.com) and register a note of interest. Teachers can also email: climatemystery@congin.com for more information.

Comments

[WoW Accounts]

It seems like Climate Mystery would be a really interesting game. Thanks for the posting with the link. I would like to try this one out.

[wow account]

the change in climate is our responsibility. it is time for action.

[grace]

the change in climate is our responsibility. it is time for action.