Meet the six Zed Omegas.
I sometimes find myself saving the most daunting tasks on my plate for later… and later… and later. Which is unfortunate because often they’re the ones that most need doing. This is by way of explaining why I’ve written so little on this blog about the intersection of games and education.
Many of my close friends are teachers or former teachers, so I end up having a ton of conversations about education and I knew it was something I wanted, maybe even needed, to blog about since it’s an important part of the games for change movement. But every time I went to broach the topic, I felt a strange need to capture it holistically, which as I said, felt too daunting. I needed a way to sidestep the long-running debates about iPads in the classroom, Khan Academy, Quest to Learn, and gamification, and wet my toes with a less weighted topic.
So when I got involved with an alternate reality game called Ed Zed Omega, it was the perfect opportunity to broach the subject. For those of you who don’t know, an alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that can unfold over the course of a day or a period of months. Often alternate reality games use multiple media as part of their storytelling, which can make the experience more immersive, and players’ actions and contributions can shape the course of the story.
Ed Zed Omega follows the stories of six high school students who want to drop out. For various reasons, they feel like school isn’t getting them where they want to go. When their guidance counselor finds out, she challenges them to one last semester of self-directed study to figure out for themselves why school isn’t working for them and what their ideal education might look like. The game was designed by Ken Eklund (of World Without Oil) and Andi McDaniel.
Ed Zed Omega launched a couple of days ago and it will run for three months. The characters have already taken to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr to share their thoughts, their goals, and the drama that begins to unfold after they announce to friends, family, and teachers that they’ve made the decision to drop out .
The game aims to get players to bring their own ideas to the table. This could take the form of offering one of the six teens some advice based on your own experiences, to propose ways you think school in general could be improved, share an inspiring quote, photo, or video, or some combination of the above. The result will be a crowdsourced discussion of what the future of education could and should look like.
If you’re reading this, chances are you have a teacher to thank for that, which means everyone has a story to share. Whether good, bad, or ugly.
