21st Century Scholar

Over 400,000 young people live in foster care in the United States. By the time a foster youth reaches high school, his likelihood of experiencing multiple residential placements is extremely high—most high school-aged foster youth have lived in over five placements. With each residential move, children are often required to change in schools as well. [...]

Several weeks ago I had the honor of hosting a presidential session at AERA. Henry Jenkins, James Paul Gee, and S. Craig Watkins joined me to discuss how the conference theme—education and poverty— intersected with new media literacies. The session was designed around the premise that social media, the Internet, and online games have the [...]

After many months of brainstorming, working with students, designing, developing, iterating, creating art and music, researching and oh yes, PLAYING … we are ready to share Collegeology Game’s latest game: FutureBound. You’ve read my posts about Application Crunch and Mission:Admission—two games targeted at high schools students and designed to cultivate college application strategies. This latest [...]

A group of four students sit huddled around a lunchtime table at a Los Angeles high school close to USC. It’s the middle of fourth period. I’m zipping through the quad after just finishing a fast-paced playtest session of the new game we’ve been developing with our collaborators from USC’s Game Innovation Lab. The new [...]

My children attend a no-tech school. It’s no-tech not because of an articulated philosophy shunning all things digital, but rather because it’s a charter school and they don’t have the funds to provide computers in the classrooms. I actually love the “old-school” student-centered, constructivist approach they have been exposed to. The teachers are so creative [...]

As many of you know, four years ago, the Pullias Center for Higher Education and Game Innovation Lab embarked on a collaboration intended to significantly improve low-income and first-generation students’ access to college information and support. Using game-based strategies, our educational researchers partnered with game designers to develop Collegeology Games, a suite of games designed [...]

2013 brings a new focus to the Collegeology project: middle school. Mission:Admission, the high school college application game we launched last year, is still generating players—and we are still continuing to research the impact of the game on students’ college-going efficacy—but the design team has been hard at work on our third project, a game [...]

Last week we launched Mission: Admission to a national audience. In the first week, we generated 700 new players. Our team is excited to see how students react to the game. I asked Foshay Tech Academy senior, Abigail Montejo, to share some thoughts on her journey to college and on playing the game. To check [...]

It’s college application season! Check out this press release on the launch of Mission: Admission on Facebook and how its filling the college counseling void for under-served high school students.

Last week I attended the NACAC (National Association for College Admissions Counselors) annual conference in Denver. It was my first time attending the conference and I loved it—and not just because I woke up to snow one morning and the other morning had the most phenomenal mini-doughnuts at a funky breakfast-all-day joint called Jelly. I [...]