All work (and play)
Bloxels for 4th graders–game design thinking
Using an app-based game-creation platform called Bloxels, I tasked 4th graders with making the most fun game they could–for an audience of their classmates, the wider school community, and…
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Horizns – an augmented reality, collaborative storytelling game
Playable by anyone aged 12 and up, Horizns is a narrative-based, augmented reality (AR) game ultimately designed for collaborative storytelling in grades 7-12 ELA and/or Social Studies classrooms. Players…
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“What Is an American”? 3D-printed monuments of unsung heroes from the American Revolution
During the 2018-19 school year, The Town School’s the 4th-grade faculty significantly reworked their Social Studies curriculum. The result was a year-long consideration of the question, “What is an…
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Computational thinking with Fox Makes Friends
During the 2019-2020 school year, in their Technology classes Nursery 4 (N4) and Kindergarten students worked on a project designed to expose them to some fundamental concepts of “computational…
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Minecraft Club – From Treehouses to Statues of Nonexistent Heroes
During the 2018-19 school year, The Town School’s Lower School Science teacher and I ran a Minecraft Club for 1st-4th graders. The Club met before school once a week…
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Training simulation dialogue tree
This dialogue tree was written (in 2016) for (though unused by) a health simulations and training company. The simulated conversation was designed to be used to train pediatricians on…
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Digital Citizenship – S.O.S.
During the 2016-17 school year at The Town School, I was tasked with expanding the digital citizenship curriculum for grades 2-4. This same year, some grades in the Lower…
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“Through My Eyes” – Oculus Rift + interactive fiction (+ Harry Potter)
Designed to serve as a robust and unique supplement to traditional language arts curricula, the content for TME’s story spaces is comprised of select, “unexplored” scenes from print books…
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Teaching design at the AMNH… with POV Mad Libs!
During a Game/Mobile Design internship at the American Museum of Natural History I worked on a program called “The Neanderthal Next Door,” which was a 27-session youth program for…
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“The Mural” – a point-and-click adventure game about restoration
An art conservator, Miranda, is hired to clean and preserve a mural painted by an uncle whom, prior to his death, she hadn’t seen in over twenty years. Miranda’s…
Keep readingChoose Your Own (Grammatical) Adventure – Ambiguous Pronoun References audio narrative
Challenge: “Create an audio piece that uses narrative to help teach a topic you know well, but that is typically narrative-free.”
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“StoryPix” – a digital storytelling card game
StoryPix is a platform-agnostic, digital card game designed for middle-school-age children and older. It is an image-based storytelling environment that both visualizes and verbalizes the multitude of ways that…
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“Mama Hen Is Sick!” – an interactive fiction game
Setting: the not-too-distant future, in a factory that grows and processes vat-grown meat, the mass of which is named “Mama Hen.” The processing is attended by three dozen human…
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Narrative and wearables – the Digital Creator Jumpsuit
The class was asked: “How can you enable kids to experience an artistic or scientific concept on a visceral or kinesthetic level?” Our answer to this question was the…
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Making art history come to life with “Frieze Tag”
An augmented-reality app/game that brings classical art to life and turns students’ art into classics.
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“The Great Mural of Our People” – a MinecraftEdu + Makey-Makey design
“Empowering narrative-making in others” + tangible computing
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“OPEN: the Journal” – an app designed to help close the word gap
A few years ago, I read Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid (2007) and was floored to learn (amongst other things) that “[a] prominent [1995] study found that by…
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Interface critique – the Vtech Rhyme & Discover Book
This toy describes itself as an “interactive baby book,” and is meant for kids from 6 months to 3 years. In general, it’s got some interesting features, but I…
Keep reading“Why So Quick to Blame Video Games?” (blog post)
“No one at any major news outlet understands the third variable problem.” This is Erin Robinson, a neuroscience researcher turned independent game developer, explaining why news coverage that ties…
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Review of King of Texas (incl. interview with Patrick Stewart!)
This is a short review I did–in 2002–for Time Out New York of the telefilm King of Texas, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, starring Patrick Stewart–whom I got…
Keep reading55-word story
ON MISSION “Stalin wanted a new army that was brutal and pliant,” McCauley whispered. “Some scientist suggested human-ape hybrids. Stalin agreed. Women volunteered.” “BS,” hissed the kid, gripping his…
Keep readingGrant proposal excerpt (the Child Mind Institute Biobank)
This is an excerpt of a larger grant proposal I wrote for the Child Mind Institute’s Biobank
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