As previously mentioned, our immersion activity was to take part in a Quest Atlantis Professional Development Workshop. Quest Atlantis was designed to create a context for learning, in which learning, working, helping and playing co-exist. It aims to engage children ages 9–14 ‘in a form of dramatic play comprising both online and off-line learning activities, with a storyline inspiring a disposition towards social action’.  The essence of the storyline (which is extended to a novel and comic book) is as follows:  Despite its technological development, Atlantis is slowly being destroyed by the reckless heirs of their recently deceased ruler. They are only interested in progress with no consideration for ancient knowledge and customs or, in fact, the needs of their own people. In an effort to save their civilization, a council was formed and OTAK was developed –a virtual environment that serves as a technological portal between Atlantis and other worlds. Students enter the OTAK and move within different worlds, which feature a number of villages from which a series of challenges (quests) are launched. The underlying premise is that by solving the quests students (called questers) will help to restore the Atlantian knowledge.
The first workshop (each lasts an hour, the next one is tomorrow night), saw us enter the OTAK from the students’ viewpoint. We roamed through different worlds and tried our hands at a number of quests (finding and commenting on information – every time a student is required to reflect on an experience, a word processing window pops up in which the students type their thought through responses). As homework, we had to enter the world in our own time and complete some more missions. Teachers can either work with pre-existing quests (there are quests for each KLA – currently around 600) or you can post your own. Completed quests need to be evaluated by a teacher before the kids proceed anywhere, so there is a level of human intervention, but they are not necessarily aware that this is NOT a game, as the whole interface and concept is more reminiscent of a Playstation game.  According to the Seminar Leader, Bronwyn, Quest Atlantis strength is that it caters to a broad range of learners (gifted and talented students benefit from being able to explore further). Tomorrow, we shall go “behind the scenes” and learn about the magic us teachers can create to encite our students to learn (in our case: to use language).

If you are interested and would like to know more about Quest Atlantis, visit their website, with plenty of video-based information and example quests. If you would like to participate in an upcoming seminar and qualify as a Quest Atlantis approved teacher (meaning you would be allowed to use it in your school next year), contact Bronwyn: bstuckey@intraceptives.com.au