Tuesday, January 21, 2020
The Field Day Lab team is excited to announce the latest opportunity for teachers to participate in a new teacher fellowship. Middle school and high school teachers can apply to participate in the fellowship to support the development of a game dashboard for Welcome to Lakeland. The game is designed for students in grades 7-12 to build a town and manage the resources without destroying the surrounding lakes.
Selected teacher fellows will bring their teaching expertise to help the Field Day Lab create the dashboard, which can then serve as a model for other games to support student learning.
Field Day fellowships honor teachers as professionals, providing meaningful communities for teachers to share their expertise, learn, and co-design different aspects of games for learning. Teachers receive a stipend, have their travel and food paid for, and can receive professional development credit.
The fellowships allow teachers to build relationships with content experts. Teachers can also take back information to their students about unique career opportunities. For example, during the last fellowship for designing the concept for a shipwrecks game, teacher fellows worked with underwater archeologists at the Manitowoc Maritime Museum and learned how to use special paper and pencils to draw in the water.
Additional teacher fellowships will open later this spring for a game called Aqualab, focusing on science practices.
Currently, educators can explore the Field Day website to learn more about free games--all co-designed with teachers and created for classroom use. Sarah Gagnon, communications and creative director for Field Day Lab, encourages teachers to use games for teaching and learning purposes, especially when stepping into new topics. “Games can be more than rewards for kids after doing hard work. We suggest they use games as an introduction to a topic,” she said.
“For classrooms, this is a free way to experience a simulation of a simplified version of reality. It can inspire a kid who may not be in a subject--help them get that moment of ‘oh, this is interesting, this is exciting,’ even if they don’t understand the technical details of it yet.”
Teachers can apply for the latest teacher fellowship by February 10.
For more information, visit the Field Day website and sign up to receive updates from Field Day.