TORONTO, ON – February 19, 2010 - Spongelab Interactive, an Ontario-based educational gaming company, with its third major international award, earns critical acclaim by making science fun! Spongelab Interactive has been awarded first prize in the Interactive Media category from the Journal of Science and National Science Foundation’s 2009 Visualization Challenge for the second consecutive year. This award is published in the February 19, 2010 issue of the Journal of Science (Science: Vol. 327. no. 5968, p. 949) and featured on the National Science Foundation’s website.
Spongelab Interactive’s Genomics Digital Lab, breaths new life into students’ exploration of science and learning in the classroom and at home. Recognition from the National Science Foundation’s 2009 Visualization Challenge award along with Spongelab’s win of the United Nations World Summit Award in September 2009 for e-science and technology marks the third international award from a global body promoting the best in digital learning technologies; putting Canada on the map.
Spongelab Interactive is pushing Canada to become a leader in technology-based learning
Award winning Genomics Digital Lab (GDL) is an integrated on-line learning environment where users experience the world of biology through discovery-based learning. GDL (version 4) is currently being used in over 50 countries around the world, illustrating a demand for new technology-based and game-based teaching tools. Spongelab continues to promote the use of immersive learning technologies to school boards and districts across Canada to increase funding commitments for the use of leading-edge interactive digital learning tools in their secondary schools and in the mean time plans to continue to keep costs minimal for individual users and classrooms. “At the high school level, one of our biggest problems across North America is that enrollment in science & math is tanking, especially among girls,” said Dr. Jeremy Friedberg, one of the founders of Spongelab Interactive. “Well-designed educational games are an amazing way to reconnect with students in an engaging and relevant way.”
GDL was developed as a series of curriculum-aligned games, modules, and interactive simulations covering an array of topics in biology. To meet the needs of students, teachers, and schools, GDL is designed to be fully accessible online from home or school through a web browser, with no downloads, or installation, and provides teachers with class management tools and integrated real-time assessment.
Game-based interactive modules get teens interested in molecular biology
Genomics Digital Lab (GDL) is the first in a series of game-based interactive modules designed to effectively engage both teachers and students in learning about biology. GDL is built around a custom learning environment, and employs rich, high-quality- 3D graphics designed to captivate and immerse users in the biology they’re studying.
Encompassing varying levels of difficulty, one of the many games engages students in a discovery process to ‘save’ a dying plant by identifying the correct air, light and soil conditions. GDL is built around discovery-based and self-directed learning where users are highly engaged and learn by ‘doing’ and by “playing the biology.” For example, students can choose to feed their plant water, salt water, vinegar, or soda to discover the impact on their plant: will it flourish or shrivel?
In other games, students use their imagination to come up with an “artificial leaf” or they can learn about how plants are the source of our food, fuel and everything in-between. ‘Transcription Hero’ allows students' to take on the role of an enzyme to transcribe DNA. Download Transcription Hero for free at www.genomicsdigitallab.com.
About Spongelab
Spongelab Interactive is a leader in advancing the integration of cutting edge technologies for teaching and learning purposes. Their mission is to educate learners in the sciences by building content rich immersive teaching tools designed around discovery-based learning, accessible to educators and learners at school, at home and in the general public. Spongelab Interactive builds their own products and offers custom production services for the global education community. Their unique approach around integrating educational design with advance web & gaming technology is planting the seeds for continued innovation of advanced communication and education products. Spongelab is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
To see the award published in Science, please visit www.sciencemag.org or for more information on the 2009 Visualization Challenge, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/winners_2009.jsp
Contact:
Dr. Jeremy N. Friedberg
Spongelab Interactive
662 King Street West
Toronto, ON M5V 1M7
contact@spongelab.com
www.spongelab.com