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PRESS RELEASE – IB SCHOOL MAKES A GAME OF SUCCESS

Steve Waddell • Mar 25, 2010

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Contact
Steve Waddell
I Support Learning, Inc.
877-828-1216 phone
913-764-4668 fax
swaddell@isupportlearning.com

IB SCHOOL MAKES A GAME OF SUCCESS USING INNOVATIVE CAREER-THEMED COURSE IN GAME DESIGN

Olathe, KS – March 24, 2010 – I Support Learning, Inc.│edmagineer (ISL) announced great success in an International Baccalaureate in the Minneapolis, MN area.

Karen Griebenow teaches technology at Robbinsdale Cooper High School, an International Baccalaureate school, minutes away from downtown Minneapolis, MN. She knows her students, they know her. And she’s been nominated for Teacher of the Year for the past two years running.

Karen attributes it to her relationships with the students. “I get the chance to work with each of them personally, and we work through whatever it is they need help with.” Her Middle Year Programme, aimed instruction in of technology in a rounded, full manner, is full to the brim. She teaches four classes that can’t fit another student in.

In her class, she teaches Video Game Design, a curriculum built by I Support Learning, where students find themselves in an interactive, instructional environment. Karen calls it, “self-directed, self-paced software with an innovative, fun, real-world environment.”

Students follow the story-based career themed learning, ultimately designing and creating a video game to meet a customer’s need. As the students simply put it: “It’s a video game that teaches us how to make video games.”

Karen heard about I Support Learning and their Video Game Design program a couple of years ago, looking for a program to fit the IB Programme. Hearing about them from another teacher in the area, she decided to research the program.

“It fits the MYP framework perfectly,” Karen mentions. “It’s completely aligned with all the aims and objectives of the IB mission, like incorporating the Design Process, so it was easy to get it implemented.”

From there, her classes grew quickly in size, and now she’s running at maximum capacity as her school is now moving to make MYP school-wide and year-round. Karen couldn’t be happier. Her principal is ecstatic with the success he has seen in her classes.

She teaches because of her students, and the relationships she forms with them. “It’s exciting to learn from them. The MYP framework encourages critical thinking and global citizenship, and the Video Game Design program brings out all of that.”

“The students’ favorite thing is to play each other’s games. They always go around, trying out the games and giving recommendations. Right now I have students that are going and doing outside research to figure out how to do more advanced things with their games.

They’re going above and beyond what’s required in the class, just because they’re interested and want to make the best game possible.”

“I Support Learning has always had great support,” Karen mentions, “Any time we’ve ever had an issue, we’ve always been able to get someone on the phone. Even my students, when they want to ask a technical question, have picked up the phone and gotten an answer.

What Karen enjoys most is the freedom it gives her to teach and help students learn. “This program facilitates the teacher’s ability to talk to each student, without the rest of the class waiting while you address a single student’s question.

Since the students are engaged and working at their own pace the whole time, you can help students learn, one at a time, and build that relationship that will encourage that student’s growth.”

I Support Learning, Inc.│edmagineer is an educational curriculum designer specializing in career-themed career simulations that fulfill national Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) standards, with products in hundreds of schools, colleges and vocational schools across the United States.

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