Terra is a not-for-profit game that we built collaboration with the NSF and UC Davis. Designed to help teach kids about activity levels, fitness and health - we built it to be played by the entire class, in a web browser!
How did it work? Kids were given a FitBit pedometer, which tracked their steps and helped them understand how much exercise they were getting each day. Then, they used the steps they had collected as productive energy within the game. Working together, they each terraformed a patch of an ailing, foreign planet - with the goal of making it a viable home.
We created this game alongside Cynthia Carter-Ching and her team of researchers at UC Davis, who are interested in looking at how games can help make kids more active. Working within the Sacramento school system, we tested this game at 2 different schools and learned a whole lot about how and why games are great for teaching kids to think differently about systems. You can read a bit more about our experiences working on it here.
