GlassLab Games

Suite of online classroom games developing 21st Century skills

Overview

GlassLab Games is a suite of online games for K-12 students addressing a variety of classroom topics. GlassLab Games is currently in Beta release, and offers 3 products. Two of the three products are currently free, with the company expecting to charge a flat fee for the full suite of products in the future.

GOALS

GlassLab Games is a suite of online games for K-12 students addressing a variety of classroom topics. The suite was developed in order to make high quality and easily implementable games available to teachers everywhere.

APPROACH

As of November 2014, GlassLab Games offers 3 games:

• Argubot Academy: Students make claims and use evidence to develop supporting arguments. The game is available on iPad and was released in September, 2014
• Argument Wars: Students recreate the arguments of landmark US Supreme Court cases by evaluating evidence and logical claims. The game is available via browser and requires flash to play, and was released in August, 2010
• SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge: Students serve as the mayor of a town, and work to balance environmental change with the needs of citizens. The game was released in November, 2013, and can be downloaded to a PC or Mac

In all three games, students develop 21st Century skills, and work toward achieving Common Core prescribed skills.

In each game, students sign up for an account, and can play right away. Each program uses the game mechanism itself to assess students in real time. The results of these assessments are displayed for the teacher on a dashboard.

Playfully also provides lesson plans for teachers for using each of the tools.

IMPLEMENTATION

Each game can be implemented in a 1:1 or many-to-one classroom. See section above for tech requirements for each game.

PRICING

As of November 2014, Arugubot Academy and Argument Wars were available for free; SimCityEDU requires a license to play. In the future, the company plans to provide access to all games on the site as well as reporting features for a $5/student/year fee. Teachers, school or district leaders, or parents can choose to pay the fee.

WHO IS USING IT

Since launch, GlassLab Games have been played by more than 5,000 students and used by over 1,000 teachers in more than 30 schools. 

Product Brief