In September 2009 the Quest to Learn school in New York opened its doors to 72 students all within the 6th to 12th grade age range and the unique thing about this school is that it uses video games as a platform for learning. On their website www.q2l.org they say that the school is “Designed to support the digital lives of young people and their capacity for learning, Quest to Learn is a school committed to graduating strong, engaged, literate citizens of a globally networked world”. Quest to Learn believe they have an advantage over conventional schools, Katie Salen the Executive Director of Design for Quest to Learn says “Games are exceptionally good at engaging kids, they drop kids into complex problems where they fail and fail, but they try again and again”. Quest to Learn is the result of three years hard work and the project is currently being funded by the MacArthur Foundation.

I believe that this is a very interesting concept and if this way of learning is proven successful it could change or at least offer an interesting set of options for schools all round the world. At the age these young people are, combining education with video games seems like a great solution to extending their attention spans. What I also like about this project is the way they aren’t throwing out conventional methods of learning all together they are simply using the technology available to them to enhance the learning experience and allowing the students to take a practical hands-on approach through video game technology. It’ll be interesting to see how the students perform as they have to take New York’s standardised tests like everyone else in the state but I predict that you’ll see these young people excel.