21st Century Scholar

In my last blog post, I shared a major milestone for the Collegeology project: we launched the beta version of Mission:Admission—the Facebook game we have been working on for the past three years. My invitation extended still stands—please log on and play. It has been such fun over the last week hearing back from students [...]

I have been mulling over a question posed to me at this past AERA meeting. A well-respected scholar, after hearing about the college access games we are developing, expressed doubt over the positive effects of a game where players role play the college preparation process. “What you are saying,” he shared, “is like me saying [...]

“I should not have to learn how to type on my T-Mobile Sidekick,” a high school student proclaimed in front of a large screen projecting a PowerPoint presentation he and his peers had created. The presentation was part of a 2012 Digital Media and Learning (DML) Conference panel designed to share critical research conducted by [...]

A few weeks ago, I realized that my house seemed awfully quiet for a post-school afternoon and wondered what my almost 6-year-old son and almost 9-year-old daughter were up to. They knew they had a few things to take care of—such as finding a home for pajamas that had been hastily strewn across the bedroom [...]

In late December, Collegeology game designers Elizabeth Swensen, Sean Bouchard and I traveled to Texas  to conduct a case study at a Houston area high school. Our goal was to playtest the card game (Application Crunch) and soon-to-be launched online game (Mission: Admission) with a group of predominately African American, low-income students. We arrived right [...]

When I first starting working on the Collegeology game project, I was new to the world of games. I wasn’t exactly a skeptic—but I had a very superficial understanding of the power of games to engage, educate, and provoke action. I’m guessing a few of our 21st Century Scholars might be in the same boat [...]

My son started Kindergarten on Wednesday. The week prior, his big sister and I took him on a tour of his new school. We walked him into bright classrooms, showed him the library, and explained where he would eat lunch. He met a few teachers, saw the outdoor play structure, and visited the mural he [...]

by Zoe Corwin As many of you know, CHEPA is engaged in an exciting collaboration with the USC Game Innovation Lab.  We’re developing a suite of college access tools called Collegeology. Over the past few weeks, we have been playing the Pathfinder card game with high school students in three LAUSD schools.  Our goal was [...]

by Zoe Corwin I am happy to announce that the Pathfinder project has been awarded a $103,281 grant from the TG Foundation to conduct a study entitled “Increasing College Access through Digital Technologies.”  CHEPA is partnering with Dr. Gisele Ragusa from Rossier’s Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) on this project.  We will begin [...]

by Zoe Corwin Last Thursday night was a surreal evening in LA.  While the world watched the Lakers win their second NBA title in a row, blogmaster Stefani Relles and I watched the students we have mentored over the past year graduate from high school.  We were less than two miles away from the Staples [...]