CGS Fall Update

KBT_6151“By all these lovely tokens September days are here, with summer’s best of weather – and autumn’s best of cheer.” – Helen Hunt Jackson

With the return of fall just around the corner, it’s time to take a look at what’s going on now and what’s coming up in the busy days ahead as students return to campus.

Recently, we participated in the University of Washington Foundation board fall meeting by demonstrating new versions of Treefrog Treasure and Foldit currently in development. You can read a write up of the event over at the CSE blog.

In game news, we are conducting our annual Foldit Demographic Survey and also our first-ever Nanocrafter Demographic Survey, both available until October 8. Today, we also discovered this charming new ten minute video on YouTube taking players through some of the earliest levels of Nanocrafter. Take a peek and see how far you can go after that by logging in to the game today.

It has been a while since we have been out and about in the community. If you’ve missed us too, you’re in luck, as we will be attending a couple of events later this year. Be sure to your calendars for November! We’ll be back again at the ninth annual Pacific Science Center Life Sciences Research Center on November 6-8, 2015. Foldit scientists will be on hand to provide hands-on science and face-to-face time. This event is one of our favorites in our local community, and is rare opportunity to speak directly with lab scientists one on one. We can’t wait to see you there.

We would also love to visit with school groups this fall and winter to help us test features we are developing for our products. Several groups have already made arrangements, but there’s still enough room on the calendar! Contact our general email or our Community Manager directly to get started.

Our search continues for a Digital Learning Curriculum Specialist to coordinate and help create a set of modular blended instructional materials for K-12 math from a brand new perspective. Apply through the UW Hires site today!



July News from CGS

cgs-verticalIt has been a busy summer here at the Center for Game Science. Let’s take a look at some of our latest happenings!

First of all, we’re pleased to note that the Seattle Public Library system’s Summer of Learning is going well. All of our BlockStudio and Dragon Architect workshops have been filled, and with healthy waiting lists. If you want to take a peek at a number of the creations being made, head on over to our special Summer Learning page and check out the galleries – we just added Dragon Architect‘s gallery today!

Speaking of the Summer of Learning, did you know that Nanocrafter is also a part of the teen offerings this year? Best of all, the Seattle Public Library is offering all of these resources for free! There’s still some summer left to take advantage of the fun, and we encourage anyone local to the library system to do so.

The new Verigames newsletter is out today, featuring a bunch of community efforts, a spotlight on the new BBC article that came out recently, and a link to the archive of our Paradox chat. To follow all the Paradox news, feel free to join our Twitter and Facebook pages! Made by the same team that worked on Flow Jam, Paradox is a fresh approach to the now familiar problem of software verification, so if that’s your thing, feel free to check it out.

Finally, in Foldit news, we’re gearing up to bring community-driven broadcasting through Twitch in the near future, so we can share the vast range of protein folding knowledge the community has gained over the years with a much larger audience than ever before. Our new effort – dubbed “FolditTV” will be releasing it’s first schedule very soon. Our Marburg efforts are also continuing this summer with new puzzles and discussion, and you can follow along (and join in) via the Foldit site, or our social media outlets.



Foldit Players Return to Marburg Efforts

Circle with Foldit GraphicAfter a brief break from efforts late last year, Foldit players have started to revisit Ebola and the Marburg virus with new series of puzzles. As always, our Foldit team remains committed to research in this area and appreciates everyone’s assistance on these puzzles. Feedback has been steady in this area from our scientists, and we are looking forward to chatting more about these puzzles at our upcoming science chat on the 21st of June.

If you haven’t tried Foldit yet, this would be an excellent time to do so and assist with our latest Marburg design puzzle. This time, we have asked contributors to design something even smaller than the previous puzzle, by taking a shot at a 25-residue inhibitory peptide.



Summertime Updates from CGS

Muse Magazine Cover PhotoI wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.
– L. M. Montgomery

It has been a great month here at the Center for Game Science. Feel free to check out our brand new page we created to help spotlight the games that are being created all this summer with BlockStudio and Dragon Architect at Seattle Public Library Summer of Learning events! Supporting our mission to help make STEM learning available year-round, Pend Oreille County Library District recently added us as a resource link in their kids section. Thanks, Pend Oreille staff!

We are also busy processing feedback from our latest Algebra Challenge event that ended on June 5th, the Washington State K-12 Story Problem Challenge. We would like to graciously thank everyone who put out the word and participated this spring, and even if you didn’t participate this time, we would enjoy hearing your thoughts to help us shape future challenges.

Foldit continues to be a timely news topic as a noted pioneer in crowdsourcing science efforts. Check out these stories:

In other news, Nanocrafter made an appearance at the Foundation of Digital Games 2015 conference this last week to present our recent paper “Nanocrafter: Design and Evaluation of a DNA Nanotechnology Game”. Congratulations to the Nanocrafter team!

As we head into July, we look forward to meeting our annual group of summer visitors, continued testing on Riddle Books, and staying cool. Be sure you are following us on all of our channels to get the latest!



Foldit Nominated for INDEX Award

FolditCheck it out, Foldit has been nominated for a 2015 INDEX: Award, awarded biennially in Denmark.

The INDEX: Award spotlights entries from vastly different design fields showing how design can be used as a tool to solve the issues of global and local societies. Based on the proposed Millennium Development Goals and post-2015 Development Agenda set by the United Nations, Foldit is included in the Play & Learning: Digitalization challenge.

Good luck, Foldit!