CGS and Allen Institute Bringing Collaborative Brainpower to Neuroscience

brain Today, we’re pleased to announce our newest project in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), we are pleased to announce plans to work with a growing community of citizen neuroscientists to develop a game whose ultimate goal is to produce a “periodic table of the neurons.” The effort will use crowd-sourcing to accelerate the discovery of 3-dimentional neuronal structures, while getting students and other non-“expert” citizens who participate excited about discovering some of the mysteries of the human brain. Read the full press release to learn more about the other creative new efforts announced by the White House yesterday to get more students and adults excited about science and space.

Our new project will join our well-established crowdsourcing efforts such as Foldit and Nanocrafter, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to continue our efforts to lend our expertise in the growing realm of citizen science.

Additionally, our Foldit community has some news regarding a special puzzle challenge via the Bardwell Lab at the University of Michigan.



What’s Happening This Fall

RainyCampus_35Fall quarter is under way, and the office here is humming with activity – we can’t discuss all of it yet, but we have some exciting new projects in the works. Until then, we can check in on our current projects and give you an update on where we’ll be next.

Foldit continues to lead the way in crowdsourcing mentions, with mentions and write-ups recently by Scinexx (German science magazine), Huffington Post, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In case you missed it on Twitter, Foldit is also giving followers a sneak peek behind the scenes every Friday until the end of the quarter. We’re doing this by sharing pictures in the lab taken by one of our scientists. In Nanocrafter news, we’re fixing some of our most interesting bugs and reintroducing early challenges for the community to see how effective our changes have been. If you haven’t been by lately – give Nanocrafter a look!

Coming up, these fresh events for your calendar!

  • Pacific Science Center Life Sciences Research Center on November 6-8, 2015. Foldit scientists will be on hand each day during this event to provide hands-on science and face-to-face time! Entry to this event is included with the price of general admission – FREE for Pacific Science Center Members.
  • Computing Open House, 1pm – 5pm on Saturday, December 5th, 2015. This fun event for middle/high school students and families kicks off the start of Computer Science Education Week every year, so we can’t wait to see you there.


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!



Teacher Toolkit Available!

CGS-logoJust in time for the school year, the Center for Game Science is pleased to announce the debut of our Teacher Toolkit. On this site you can find a growing collection of lesson plans, Common Core compatibility charts for several of our current titles, and some hands-on games- for when you want to be low-tech. We look forward to working with teachers to provide a resource that is not only easy to navigate, but useful!

With this, we would also like to announce the debut of our official Pinterest channel, and look forward to sharing great things we discover with teachers easily there, too.

As a reminder, we are still on the lookout 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. Do you have expertise that marries traditional learning with interactive technologies? Apply through the UW Hires site today!



CGS Added to “Great Websites for Kids”

cgs-verticalGood news! The Center for Game Science has been added to the Association for Library Service to Children’s list of “Great Websites for Kids”, a compilation of “exemplary websites geared to children from birth to age 14”. Newly evaluated and accepted sites are added to the database only three times a year. The Association for Library Service to Children is a division of the American Library Association and serves as a quality resource for parents, schools, and libraries to find appropriate learning themed sites.

You can see our listing here.