NESTA Design Challenge: On the Edge

The Challenge, which is managed by GameLab London, brought together teams of five people - ideally three from multimedia design and programming, one teacher and one student - to work together to produce a prototype of a new learning resource. The catch is that they (that is we) only had three days in which to do it!

The Leeds Metropolitan University's team, "Drowned Rats" (the name was inspired by events on a very wet day in London), produced the following game. Designed as 'the maths package that will help you learn about shape and space', the idea uses an animated pet as a tool for discovering information about angles and shapes to navigate a 3D game. By answering questions relating to angles and shapes, the player helps their pet to earn food to eat, giving him the energy to progress through the different levels of the game. "The judges' verdict was very positive: 'quite an exceptional piece of work'."

You can sample a cut down web based version here...

The verdict: "A panel of experts drawn from the fields of education, technology and media considered the project outcomes following the hothouse. In assessing the projects and feeding back advice to the teams, the judges used the following broad criteria: educational design; interactive design; future potential; innovation and originality; team working and rigour."

Drowned Rats were: