Being Me Key Features
In the paragraphs below, outlines will be provided in relation to the Being Me economy and also for specific components within the system such the being me inventory, the studio and the expertise exchange.
Being Me Currency
The being me currency is called nom [placeholder for better name/ i.e. genius/genie/ ?]. Each student starts with a specific amount of noms in his/her account that he can use to ‘buy’ lab time in the game school, or help from a mentor in the expertise markets. Students can also unlock features in their avatar inventory or studio gallery. Students obtain noms by uploading content in their studio space, by visiting other studios and also by providing with feedback their peers and initiating collaborations in the expertise space. Finally, in-class competitions framed as missions could be run monthly. Those may be rewarded with noms distributed analogously to the students depending on their ranking. For example students in a game design class have build a game in a level editor. After designing their levels, students play them in class and fill in evaluations for their peers. Depending on these evaluations, each student gets an amount of num awarded at the end of the class by the teacher.
Being Me Inventory
In the beginning of the 6th grade, students sign up in Being Me and create an account. They start by customizing their avatar through a selection of features. When students first sign up for an account, they can only select from the apprentice features. These features are also divided in subcategories such as Writer, Scientist, Game Designer, Painter, Athlete but also Researcher, Project Leader ,Presenter. As children progress in the Being Me space they can create many avatars each one representing their learning identity at that point. These avatars are stored in the Being Me Inventory and can be selected to be displayed in the main avatar window depending on what the student is focusing within the curriculum in a given time.
So for example, on a students profile page, his Being me avatar could be Master Mathematician because today he is focusing on fulfilling quests that are related to Maths. Next to his profile picture is a status bar that provides (similar to Twitter or Facebook) the students current status. So for example: master mathematician Nick is: lol. Also the features in the avatar inventory are updated with new objects that could be unlocked with Nom Currency. Finally, teachers can also have a Being Me page.
Studio
The Studio is the Game Schools virtual world space. Here students can create rooms to display and store media and other digital materials developed during assessments within the curriculum. When students first log in their account a set of pre existing rooms can be found. These rooms are empty and represent different courses in the curriculum. So for example there is the Science Lab, were students post their physics or math related work. In addition to the above, students can create their own rooms. They can also modify their rooms by making use of Nom Currency.
The studio rooms can also host visitors. These are other students or teachers that post recommendations or give feedback to the projects that the student is working on. The information collected by the visitor’s input can also be chosen to be displayed publicly or be kept in private between the visitor and the host student.
Expertise exchange garden
In relevance to the above, the expertise exchange space can be thought as a big common area that connects each students in a studio space in order to promote collaboration and cross interaction. The space promotes the power of collaboration as well as the idea that as students possess both expertise and weaknesses. In that realm the following options appear in the exchange garden. Firstly there is a display of your skills as displayed in your Being Me Inventory. So for example those could be Master Mathematician, Master Character Designer, Senior Project Manager and Apprentice Inventor. Next to this option another one is displayed with Weird skills that can be added through text and don’t appear in the Being Me inventory. Those could be: basketball player or cook or book collector. Analogously to the above there is the Who do I need option. There students post what skills they need in their team or for their project. So for example a student could need computer assistance, or a master in game design. Additionally a What do my friends have appears and also groups of experts that a child can address for help. In relevance to the above a current teams space declares the pending and also fulfilled collaborations. Finally there is the buy expertise option were children can use Being Me Currency to get advice on a topic from mentors within the school. All the above options are displayed as trees that grow through collaboration in the expertise exchange garden.
