Tag Archives: institute of play

Off the Wall Learning Gets Playtested and Shared

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This is cross-posted from the Institute of Play blog, and written by Ilena Parker.

Early in December, a group of mentors attended an Institute-led professional development workshop on best practices in developing and distributing informal learning activities geared at youth.

The mentors were all members of Hive NYC Learning Network, a group of museums, libraries and other youth-facing non-profit learning organizations that work together to create new learning practices. They were there to playtest the latest from Institute of Play: a new approach to challenge-based activities called Off the Wall Learning.

Off the Wall Learning is an engaging way to share informal learning activities that represents the dynamic nature of the activities involved. By presenting a self-directed activity straight to the learner, the Off the Wall Learning series provides a shared experience to both youth and mentors that creates richer opportunities for them to interact.

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The Off the Wall Learning project kicks off with the highly visual Off the Wall Challenge posters, produced in partnership with Hive NYC. At the workshop, Hivers rolled up their sleeves and got their hands dirty playtesting the first activity poster – the Water Filter Challenge. With empty water bottles, coffee filters, gravel and other household supplies, teams worked to design a filter that could clean a cup of water in less than a minute. Check out this slideshow from the workshop to see what the teams came up with.

After a successful playtest, Institute designers and informal learning developers shared a template for content development and visual design of learning activity posters, which we used to create the first two Off the Wall Challenge posters. You can download our posters below, as well as an editable template that you can use to make your own Off the Wall Challenge. We’d love to see what you come up with – please send your designs our way!

Download the Off the Wall Process Template

Download the Off the Wall Water Filter Challenge

Download the Off the Wall 20-5-2-1 Challenge

Guest Post: Hack Jam at Institute of Play

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This post was written Leah Gilliam, Program Manager for Information Learning at Institute of Play.
Art + Design Challenge Wednesdays is a weekly series developed by Institute of Play at the game-based learning school Quest to Learn. The program activates imaginations about everything from engineering and 3-D modeling to turntablism and green design.
One of the most popular workshops so far has been the November 9 visit from the Hackasaurus team where middle-schoolers discussed the importance of the web and how they too could make their voices and ideas heard via this medium.  The session started with an introduction to hacking as creative expression with kids hacking the Robot dance by inserting lots of chair sitting and relaxation poses.
When asked to identify some unique characteristics of the web, one of the most immediate and impassioned answers related to the web as a platform for discovery, where they can take on roles courtesy of games and virtual worlds like Minecraft. As the session progressed and participants explored different sites  and tweaked their code, a challenge was issued to hack an existing website to make it better represent their personal interests. Engaging their X-Ray Goggles, the youth immediately took matters into their own hands.
Since October, Lorenzo, a 10-year old ball of energy and ideas, has invented a sustainable water filter, messed around with the open-source programming environment Processing and modded a drawing app for the iPad.  He’s also a stalwart Quest to Learn Minecraft club member, and at the Hackasaurus workshop, he turned his sights to the Institute’s website and an image from an earlier Art and Design Challenge workshop. Within ten minutes, he had not only successfully re-coded the page to reflect his Minecraft obsession but had also shared his work with the website’s designer, Institute of Play’s Communications and Design Strategist, Bob Holling.

Institute of Play website BEFORE

Institute of Play website - AFTER

The icing on the hacked cake? Showing Lorenzo how to create a link in the email that masked his new URL with the the URL of the Institute of Play—nicely played.

My experience at the Hive London Pop-Up

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My name is Helen and I am a graduate student at Teachers College Columbia University studying Instructional Technology & Media.  I have been interning with Hive NYC since September helping out Chris and Lainie with the Hive operations as well as contributing to the Hackasaurus project with Jess.

When I first joined the Hive, I had already heard a lot of good things about the Mozilla Festival, such as the birth of Hackasaurus last year in Barcelona.  Therefore, when Chris invited me to tag along with them to attend this year’s Mozilla Festival in London, I was ecstatic!

It was a great opportunity for me to meet more like-minded people who are also interested in educational technology.  I was especially happy that I had the chance to work closer with Hive NYC members including the Institute of Play, Radio Rookies and DreamYard, as well as Hive Chicago.  I was extremely impressed by the members’ energy as I saw them in action.  My previous encounters with the members have always been in a formal setting so it was not until this trip that I got to see the members work with kids directly.  Their positive energy quickly melted away the initial awkwardness of the first group of teenage boys as they hesitantly approached each table.

Cydney from DreamYard helps youth design their own digital hang-out space

Sanda from WNYC Radio Rookies showing youth how to create radio podcasts.

More photos from London!

Within minutes the students were roaming around collecting interviews for Radio Rookies, molding furniture in their creative space with DreamYard, redesigning board games with Institute of Play and hacking away using Hackasaurus X-ray Goggles.

This was also my first time facilitating Hackasaurus workshops with youth.  I was really impressed by how fast kids picked up hacking strategies.  Once they learned the power of hacking, their imagination had no limits!  Here are just a few sample Hacks that the kids have done to the Google Search bar.  Impressive, eh? (p.s. I am also Canadian)

Besides helping Chris and Lainie with holding down the fort at the Hive London Pop-Up, I still got to participate in a couple of learning sessions as a festival participant.  I learned how to “Hack the DJ” with awesome DJ/musician Ian Forrester @cubicgarden, brainstormed some wacky P2PU design challenges, and co-created a Storify page with Sanda from Radio Rookies when we attended the Storify Learning Lab together.

This Storify page pretty much sums up my experience at Mozilla Festival.  I am sad this year’s festival has come to an end but I know this is just the beginning of more wonderful collaborations to come.

That's me and the Mozilla Firefox!

–Helen Lee @heli_tomato