FableVision & WNET Debut New "Born-Accessible" Cyberchase Game

Join the CyberSquad for Batty "Echo Explorers" adventure!

Hacker’s up to his usual tricks (or treats) and has created a bat-tastrophe! As you wind down from your Bat Week and Halloween celebrations, join FableVision in keeping this fall fun and fang-tastic with the launch of Echo Explorers! If you’re as batty for these winged creatures as we are, you’ll want to check out this born-accessible game, created in partnership with WNET and Bridge Multimedia and based on the popular, award-winning PBS KIDS show Cyberchase.

Digit’s cousin Brigit has a problem: the adorable bats that usually pollinate her cactus apple flowers are missing! It turns out Hacker has trapped them in caves. It’s up to the CyberSquad to rescue the bats and help Brigit’s cactus apples grow again. To free the bats, players must enter a series of dark caves and use echolocation, as well as their skills in mapping and coordinates, to locate machine parts hidden on a grid. Once they locate all the machine parts, players can smash, break, and chomp through the various cave walls and progress through the game levels. 

Echo Explorers is versatile fun for any child. Inspired by the Cyberchase episode “Missing Bats in Sensible Flats,” this online game was created for kids of diverse learning abilities and physical, social-emotional, and cognitive differences. Echo Explorers can be tailored to each child’s unique needs and sensitivities through built-in accessibility panels available at any point in the game for easy adjustments.

Accessibility is incorporated into the art and visuals of the game, with high-contrast and color-blind friendly colors as well as easily-readable text sizes and fonts. Players also have the option of decreasing in difficulty, staying at the current level, or moving up a level of difficulty after each completed excursion. To navigate the game, keyboard, mouse, or eye-tracking technology can be used as controls. As with all PBS KIDS games, captioning is included. 

Echo Explorers is ready to play now! The game is mobile and web-friendly to be used on phones, tablets, and desktops. For more information about how to set up and integrate Echo Explorers in your classroom or home, click here. So play now on the PBS KIDS website and games app—the bats are waiting, and the CyberSquad wants all kids on board!

National Manager Day Highlight: Make That Paper!

Happy National Manager Day! This year, FableVision is planting the seeds of the future with Make That Paper: Careers in Forestry, our new web game created for Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) Education and the Georgia Forestry Foundation (GFF). Whether it’s harvesting trees, landowning, or managing a mill, forestry workers—especially managers—play a huge role in maintaining sustainable forests and manufacturing the many forest and paper-based products that we use regularly.

In Make That Paper, high school students learn about the forestry industry and develop their career readiness and problem-solving skills. As they step into the role of a forestry manager, students play through a series of simulated workplace management challenges. They must alternate between job interviews, written communication through emails, and on-the-job challenges to successfully, efficiently, and sustainably manage a forest and production of forest products. Students choose from three positions—landowner, harvest manager, or mill manager—and use best practices when interviewing candidates, hiring and managing employees, and responding to workplace problems and crises. In each career path, players receive the responsibilities and requirements to succeed in their role and sort through emails, conversations, and other information to make decisions that benefit their company. 

The real-world skills that students receive through gameplay leave a lasting impact on students’ career readiness and view of their future career paths. By highlighting these lesser-known career paths, FableVision hopes to educate young minds and introduce them to the world of forestry and see if they have what it takes to “make that paper!”

So this National Manager Day, as we celebrate the managers across the country who help companies to run smoothly, check out Make That Paper: Careers in Forestry, available to play now on GPB’s website! And be sure to check out our other projects created in collaboration with GPB, such as Gasha Go, a colorful math game for grades K-3, Lights, Camera, Budget!, a financial literacy game for middle and high schoolers, and Georgia Race Through Time, a Georgia history learning game for eighth-graders. All four games are free to play and available online!

National Bullying Prevention Month Spotlight: Galaxia

Whether it’s online, on a playground, or on a planet far, far away, bullying has a serious, often long-lasting, negative impact and creates an unsafe environment, especially for children. In order to change the culture around bullying, prevention and intervention are key. In addition, we need to start conversations surrounding this issue to make a difference in communities everywhere.

This National Bullying Prevention Month, as part of FableVision’s mission to move the world to a better through positive media, we are proud to highlight a new interactive game: Galaxia. This resource, created by National Health Promotion Associates (NHPA)’s Botvin LifeSkills Training and FableVision, is aimed at middle school students and designed to help prevent bullying in all its forms.

Galaxia introduces students to a fantastical, extraterrestrial world where all the characters are aliens, but their problems are surprisingly similar to their teenage counterparts on Earth. Students select one of two customizable avatars and interact with their fellow alien students and teachers at their outer space boarding school. With the National Health Promotion Associates’ evidence-based Botvin LifeSkills Training prevention curriculum integrated seamlessly into gameplay, students encounter various conflicts centered around peer pressure, bullying, communication, social skills, and substance abuse, and learn important coping mechanisms and skills for dealing with anger, anxiety and building resilience.

An EdTech Awards 2020 Cool Tool Finalist, Galaxia allows students to learn and practice how they would react to real-life challenges and see the consequences of their actions and decisions in a safe (outer) space. The gameplay options span three years of middle school (grades 6-8), and players use their social-emotional skills and understanding of the Botvin LifeSkills Training to respond to each situation and progress through the story. Depending on how they choose to handle different situations, players get different outcomes for the storyline to creates a uniquely personal experience.

While National Bullying Prevention Month reminds us all that we have more work to do in bringing awareness to the issue and supporting those affected, educating and sharing resources that work to prevent bullying and empower people to stand up for others, are things we can all do every day of the year. 

Visit the Botvin LifeSkills Training website to purchase Galaxia and integrate it into your in-class and distance learning curriculum today.

3 Educational Games to Make October Magical

FableVision wishes you a spooky and pumpkin-spiced fall! Leave the lemonade and cherry popsicles behind in favor of a caramel apple and a stroll under the changing leaves. We warmly welcome the season with our new fall banner designed by FableVision lead artist Christina Kelly. As we embark on a school term that looks different from previous years, FableVision is here to help keep learning fun and festive! 

To celebrate the most mystical month of the year, we invite you to play some of our current favorite games. As you get cozy in the colder weather, fly over to different worlds from the comfort of your home. 

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Creep it real with Cyberchase Fractions Quest 

Encounter monsters and excitingly challenging math problems with Cyberchase Fractions Quest! Students join the CyberSquad to defeat villain Hacker while learning fractions and strengthening their problem-solving skills in a series of minigames. This math learning game is based on the popular and award-winning PBS KIDS show CyberChase and combines research-based methods with a high-stakes adventure story for grades 3 and 4 fractions learning. The beta version is available for free for a limited time on FableVision Games. And keep an eye out for our full release of the game later this fall!

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Leaf planet Earth behind in Galaxia 

Hang out with aliens as you stop an evil plot that’s threatening your out-of-this-world boarding school complete with futuristic laboratories, hybrid animals, and floating cafes. Created in partnership with National Health Promotion Associates (NHPA), Galaxia is a bullying prevention game that invites students to work through scenarios surrounding peer pressure, bullying, coping with stress, and more in connection to the evidence-based LifeSkills Training middle school curriculum. Students’ choices in the game affect the trajectory of their path, teaching them the impact that their actions have in order to prevent bullying in all forms. 

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Trick or treat yourself with Make That Paper 

Lace up your work boots and slip on your favorite flannel as you join a team of woodland animals to run a forestry business. Created in partnership with Georgia Public Broadcasting Education and the Georgia Forestry Foundation, Make That Paper: Careers in Forestry invites high school students to strengthen their career employability skills while learning about the forestry industry. As they soak in the woodsy fall aesthetic, students can interview Deidra Deering, collaborate with Bobbi Bear, review Gabriella Greentree’s resume, and apply forestry science knowledge to industry-related scenarios. Will you succeed in sustainably and efficiently managing your business?

Get Your Classroom “Ready Now” for the School Year

The start of this school year has presented a unique set of complications and adjustments for classrooms around the world. And as with everything—creative educators and students have risen to the challenge. To ease the transition into a new era of classroom routines, FableVision joined a group of over 70 federally-funded researchers and developers to produce a series of guides to support in-class and remote teaching and learning.

The Guides to Education Technologies that are Ready Now cover topics in early learning, math, science and engineering, social studies, and special education. FableVision is proud to feature three resources: Cyberchase Fractions Quest (Mathematics Guide), Civics! An American Musical (Social Studies Guide), and FabMaker Studio (Science and Engineering Guide). All of our resources—and the other incredible resources from other organizations—were developed through an iterative process involving multiple rounds of testing and feedback from teachers and students. They are web-based and accessible on a number of devices, with a mix of free and paid content.

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Click the above image to download the guide.

Cyberchase Fractions Quest (free for a limited time)

Guide: Ready Now Math Tools
Age range: grades 3-4

CyberSpace is in trouble, and it’s up to your students to help defeat the villain Hacker! In Cyberchase Fractions Quest, students join the CyberSquad from the popular PBS KIDS series Cyberchase and play through a series of mini-games, picking up fractions knowledge and problem-solving skills along the way. Created in partnership with THIRTEEN and the Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology, this FableVision-developed math learning game combines an engaging storyline with a research-based approach to teaching and learning fractions that aligns with the Common Core Standards for Grade 3 and 4 mathematical structure. 

The game is a result of a 2.5-year-long research project as part of the IES Department of Education SBIR program. The beta version of Cyberchase Fractions Quest is free and available to play for a limited time on FableVision Games.

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Click the above image to download the guide.

Civics! An American Musical (free)

Guide: Social Studies Distance-Learning Resources
Age range: grades 6-7

What better way to teach middle school students U.S. history and the power of the everyday citizen in creating change than through producing their own hit Broadway musical? Created in partnership with Maryland Public Television, Maryland Humanities, and Tufts’ CIRCLE, Civics! An American Musical was inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton composition notebook and teaches civics as students analyze primary sources from the Library of Congress archives to adapt true events from U.S. history to the stage. Students select the subject matter for their musical from four different history topics—the desegregation of public schools, the National Parks, the FDA, and the Chinese Exclusion Act—and must observe, reflect, and question primary sources to ensure the historical accuracy of every aspect of the show, including scripts, costumes, and song lyrics.

Civics! An American Musical is a part of the Library of Congress’ Teaching with Primary Sources program and is available for free on FableVision Games.

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Click the above image to download the guide.

FabMaker Studio ($200 classroom subscription)

Guide: Ready Now: Science and Engineering
Age Range: grades K-8

Turn any classroom or learning environment into a maker space—and you won’t even need a 3D printer! Inspire engineering in your classroom with FabMaker Studio, a web-based fabrication tool specifically designed for the classroom. With this affordable, research-based online tool, students can engineer, design, and fabricate any project, including designing their own Operation game board, a paper city that lights up, popup cards, and more.

The tool was developed by FableVision and the Reynolds Center for Teaching, Learning and Creativity, with initial funding in 2010 by ED/IES SBIR. To purchase your copy now and to learn more tips on how to use FabMaker with distance learning, visit FableVision Learning’s website.

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For more details and to learn more about the other resources in the guides, check out the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)’s blog.