During the weekend of October 2-4, sites around the country are going to take part in the first nation-wide Climate Game Jam, an effort to get lots of people designing games that communicate climate science and spur the players to fight climate change. A partnership of NOAA, the White Office of Science and Technology Policy, …
The “cooperative shouting game” called “Spaceteam” has been a part of the culture of my Digital Learning team for a couple of years now, ever since my friend Manu turned me on to it. If you have never played, you need to download the app to your phone or tablet, get 2-3 friends together immediately …
Barry Joseph of AMNH, Eve Gaus of the Field Museum and I have published episode two of Object-oriented, the podcast on digital learning at collections-based museums. In this episode we focus on a topic near and dear to my heart: games-based learning. While lots of other blogs, podcasts, and articles have thoroughly examined and deconstructed …
“Mission Fishin” is a digital game created by a team of teens at the California Academy of Sciences last year to educate the public about how our scientists collect specimens in the field. The game focuses on how one of our scientists, Dr. David Catania, collects freshwater fish specimens. I know, sounds riveting, right? Well …
Geocaching is one of those nerdy activities I have been hearing about for years, but never really tried. Last week, we were doing a staff retreat involving exploring a nearby neighborhood, which included a geocache component. I took that as my chance to finally give geocaching a go. I did only a few of the …
I’m home with some illness, weak but not incapacitated. So I’m in perfect shape for trying out new digital products. Enter “Elegy for a Dead World,” a cross-platform digital game designed to inspire creative writing by the player. I came across “Elegy” in one of my feeds and decided to give it a go. Here’s …
Last Saturday, youth participants at the Science Game Design Workshop completed and shared out their game prototypes: “Oil Spill!” and “Trash Island.” The youth had a great time iterating on their game designs, testing them out with other teens, and presenting their (nearly) finished products to aquarium biologist Pam and game designers Chris and Jeff from …
The California Academy of Sciences invites high school students to participate in a Game Design Playshop on November 8th and November 15th. Ethicist Mark Budolfson and award-winning game designing Chris Bennett will lead teens in designing tabletop (board, card, dice) games around important, natural science issues like climate change and ecology. Students will combine science …
To get this blog started, I wanted to provide some background on what the Digital Learning program at the California Academy of Sciences has been doing since it was launched about three years ago. Over that time, I’ve loved getting to design fun and engaging youth programs that combine my interest in tech and my …
Welcome to my new blog, RangerRik.com! This is where you will find my thoughts and activities from my work as a digital learning educator and program developer at the California Academy of Sciences. This is also where I am going to share out lots of the awesome work, tools, approaches, conversations and events happening …