By Janice Molloy

What if, instead of competing with video games for kids' attention, schools learned from them? Would students approach the classroom with the same enthusiasm and openness to learning that many reserve for digital environments?

Quest to Learn, a New York City public school that opened in 2009, is exploring these and other questions. According to Katie Salen, one of the founders and a keynote speaker at the 2011 Systems Thinking in Action Conference, "We looked at how games work--literally how they're built and the way they support learning--and we thought could we design a school from the ground up that supported learning in the way games do."

The curriculum is designed around "missions." At the beginning of each 10-week session, kids are dropped into complex challenges that they have no ability to solve. That mission is broken down into a series of smaller challenges that provide interdisciplinary, just-in-time learning.

As in a game environment, students always know where they are, how far they have come, and what they have to work on. As Salen says, "Games understand how to incentivize players to want to get better." In the process, students become active problem solvers, using trial and error to figure out solutions to complex problems in collaboration with others.

Quest to Learn's ultimate goal is to increase students' engagement, equip them with strategies to become lifelong learners, and help them acquire 21st-century skills and competencies such as teamwork, creative problem solving, systems thinking, and time management. As a sign that this approach is gaining momentum, a second Quest to Learn school is opening in Chicago in the fall.

Video About Quest to Learn
NPR Story: School Uses Video Games to Teach Thinking Skills
Video of Katie Salen by the New Learning Institute

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after tomorrow," counseled Mark Twain. It's true that procrastination sometimes pays. But the sooner you register for the 2011 Systems Thinking in Action Conference in Seattle, WA, the more chances you will have to win one of several valuable prizes.

Every two weeks between now and the end of October, we'll randomly pick a current conference registrant to receive:

• Roundtrip airfare from anywhere in the Continental U.S. to Seattle
• 3-night stay at the Seattle Westin Hotel during the conference
• 2 coaching sessions with time management expert Marilyn Paul (for 2 winners)
• 10-view pass to the new Pegasus Media Library
• VIP lunch in the Pegasus suite at the conference (for 4 winners)
• Set of Story Cards by Carla Kimball
• Subscription to the Applied Systems Thinking Online Course
• $75 gift certificate to the Coldwater Bar and Grill in the Westin Seattle Hotel

By Janice Molloy

Are systems thinking tools, such as behavior over time graphs and causal loop diagrams, too difficult to be generally useful? That's the rap they sometimes get--they're overly technical, overly complex, and overly abstract.

An article in the New York Times,"We've Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint," did little to dispel that image. Accompanying the piece was an intricate "spaghetti diagram" illustrating the interconnected variables of the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan. The graphic was widely derided around the blogosphere for its mindboggling level of complexity (although at least some commented that the situation in Afghanistan is indeed mindbogglingly complex!).

But the beauty of systems diagrams is that they don't need to resemble entrails to provide insight. Case in point: A video shown at the 2010 Systems Thinking in Action Conference in which three first-grade boys use feedback loops to discuss and resolve a conflict on the playground. Seeing the boys analyze the causes of their disagreement and come up with ideas for how to resolve it was a highlight of the conference for many attendees.