As part of our ongoing effort to create the most effective science teaching games, we began talking to our partners about areas that they believed teachers had the most trouble teaching in the classroom. We would like to share some of the things that came out of the discussion with the community and hear your thoughts on it.

Science Pirates: The Curse of Brownbeard is a game about trying to understand why pirates on board a ship are getting sick. From an educational standpoint, the emphasis is to learn why you conduct experiments at all, and how to go about performing them properly. While the story is pretty engaging and does a good job at conveying the ideas to students, the reason we are spotlighting this game is because it is actually a compelling example that illustrates how traditional gameplay found in a lot of classic computer games is actually a scientific process itself. This can help people on the fence understand why games in the classroom can be a good thing...

Misconceptions are a hot topic in science. They affect the teaching of it. They affect politics and public perception of current events. There is a lot of difficulty in trying to reeducate people on their misconceptions. Could gaming provide an environment where we can utilize people's misconceptions and turn them into "aha!" moments?

While the ClearLab project is focused on creating science games to be used in the junior high curriculum, it is still part of Muzzy Lane's ongoing movement to create strong and valuable serious games that can succeed in the marketplace as well. To that end, it is important to understand the criteria that determine the success of a game, especially a serious one. We've come up with a process of looking at ClearLab game designs to determine their viability, drawing upon our internal team's experience and history making serious games and wish to share that with the community for reflection.

A recently released game, Cellcraft - a game to introduce students to cellular biology - is currently making the rounds in a variety of gaming blogs and attracting the attention of many scientists. This game reminds us a lot of what we were trying to do with our first prototype that led to the birth of the ClearLab Project - Cell Saver - and does something really right so we think the developers are on to something.

There are a lot of games out there (both entertainment and serious) that task the player to solve a problem, reach an objective or overcome an obstacle. There are also games out there that provide open worlds and simulations for you to see things interact where what you do is up to you. But that's about it. At ClearLab, we want to create effective games that teach science. The question, however, is whether or not these types of gaming approaches are conducive to studying science... or if they actually teach the player how to study engineering. If we viewed existing games as actually teaching engineering, could that lead us to building better science games? What if we looked at gameplay through the eyes of what a scientist actually does?

It is time to finally unveil our first game collaboration for the ClearLab community!

I'll be out in Denver next week for the ISTE Conference 2010. In addition, I will also be showing off the ClearLab project and some games at the Games and Simulation Arcade in the Playgrounds section of the conference. Come see for yourself what we are up to!

Hope to see you there.

I just returned from the Games Learning and Society Conference in Madison, WI, one of the better conferences I've ever attended. The conference drew a great cross section of academics, educators, game enthusiasts and game designers. I was pleased to see science games well represented at this year's conference.

Here are a few highlights from some of the speakers and sessions I attended:

In June, the ClearLab team will be announcing the first game that will undergo development, however, over the life of the project, more games will be planned and produced. This is where you can come in. We would like to officially invite members of the ClearLab community to contribute and submit ideas for games that could teach science. Your ideas could be part of the next ClearLab game!