Contest Sponsored by Constellation Challenged Students to Design the Next Great Video Games for STEM Learning

Legends of Learning, Inc., the leading game-based learning platform in the United States, has announced the grand prize and runner-up winners of the Game-Based Learning Design Competition sponsored by Constellation. The competition was the first of the Legends of Learning’s Summer and Fall game-based learning competition series designed to engage kids at home with interactive and collaborative team-based STEM competitions during virtual/remote learning.

“We are honored to announce the Grand Prize and Runner-Up winners to the Game-Based Learning Design Competition,” said Joshua Goldberg, Co-Founder of Legends of Learning. “After reviewing hundreds of submissions, our team of judges believed the creativity and thoughtfulness of the winning game design concepts and their ability to blend the educational material into the game mechanics were superb…For the thousands of students who participated in the contest, we appreciate the time and thoughtfulness that every student put into their submission and encourage them and other students throughout the country to participate in future competitions.”

Additionally, Legends of Learning would like to give a special thank you to all of the amazing teachers and parents who assisted their students with this competition. 

The Grand Prize Winners were:

• Conservation Team (Broward County Public Schools, FL)
• Cap02 (Montgomery County Public Schools, MD)

The Runner Up Winners were:

• The Champion (Chicago Public Schools, IL)
• Smart Science (Broward County Public Schools, FL)
• Video Game Squad (Loudoun County Public Schools, VA)
• The Adventurers (Polk County Public Schools, FL)
• Netflix & Poptarts (Latin School of Chicago, IL)
• The Program of Pie (Loudoun County Public Schools, VA)
• StARKE MÄdChEn (Lexington City Schools, VA)
• OakleyIndie (Eastmont School District, WA)
• Arc Code (Merrill School District, WI)
• Greenhouzer (Fulton County School System, GA)
• Dynamic (South Suburban Montessori School, OH)

About Legends of Learning

Legends of Learning is the leading game-based learning platform in the United States, with over 2,000 curriculum-aligned games covering K^t-8^th grade science and math.  Legends of Learning believes that by working with our human nature to learn through experience and play, we can accelerate the pace of learning for humanity.  Legends has over 2 million students using the platform in all 50 states and D.C.  Whether you are a 4^th grader learning about Fractions or a 7^th grader learning about Cell Structure, you can learn more effectively through games on the Legend of Learning platform.

About Constellation 

Constellation, an Exelon company, is a leading competitive energy company providing power, natural gas, renewable energy, and energy management products and services for homes and businesses across the continental United States.  Constellation’s parent company, Exelon, is a FORTUNE 100 company that work​s in every stage of the energ​​​​y business: power generation, competitive energy sales, transmission, and delivery. Exelon employs approximately 33,400 people nationwide and does business in 48 states, D.C., and Canada.

About the Constellation E2 Energy Program

Developing Tomorrow’s Energy Leaders, Today

Through the E2 Energy to Educate grant program, Constellation offers students in grades 6-12 and college opportunities to experience problem-solving today’s and tomorrow’s energy challenges. Grant funds support projects designed to enhance students’ understanding of science and technology, and inspire them to think differently about energy.

Welcome to the 2020s. As a new decade begins, new technologies will emerge. The recently concluded CES show showcased some emerging trends. You can see that there is not a lot of focus on technology to help teach and learn, developed for teachers and students.

As a parent and a former student of the public school system (Go Baltimore County Schools!), I am keen on creating technology to make US schools smarter, this is why I founded Legends Of Learning. Making it easy for kids to learn the school curriculum using science games and math games.

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank the over 1 million users who log in and use the Legends of Learning platform every month in class. In schools where Legends is used regularly, we have seen student grades improve as a direct result of using our games. Making classwork and homework more fun is working. 

Educators in the US today are heroes –  teachers, principals, counselors, and administrators who are all working towards preparing kids for their future. Many choose to educate kids as a career path because they are passionate about inspiring kids to learn in a safe and comfortable environment. It is certainly a win-win if educators get access to technology resources that resemble what the kids already love to play with at home, at the same time allow students to meet educational goals with added energy and enthusiasm.

Our goals for 2020 are :

1. HOMEWORK: Help teachers assign standards-aligned homework that students can complete using the ultra-gamified Legends of Learning: Awakening
2. MULTI-TOPIC ASSIGNMENTS: Make it easier for teachers to assign multiple topics at once
3. DATA: Provide school districts and principals data and reports that help them see the impact of using Legends of Learning on improving engagement and scores

We would love your feedback if you are a user of Legends of Learning. You can send me an email at vpolikov@legendsoflearning.com or contact us via the chatbox on our website.

If you have found our learning platform useful, please help us spread the word by referring other educators to us.

Every school and most classrooms engage in year-end testing and assessment preparation. Learn how to play to prepare for assessments!

Whether preparing for a unit test, ACT Aspire exams, or a state-standard assessment, students go through repetitive content reviews to help boost their scores. The real issue with test prep — in addition to the redundancy — is teaching to the assessment. It can be counterproductive, leaving students disenfranchised with science or math (or any other subject). That’s where play comes in.

Building playful experiences around an assessment can produce the opposite effect. Anxiety melts away and the likelihood of success increases.

Play in the form of science and math games (check out Legends of Learning’s test prep offering), class exercises or competitive projects offers a means of engagement. It provides a chance for students to enjoy the content because they receive it in a more relatable context.

The Importance of Play

For almost 200 years, experts have touted the power of play in youth development. Friedrich Froebel invented kindergarten in 1837 to “use play, games, songs, stories, and crafts to encourage children’s imagination and widen their physical and motor talents.”

Views about play continued to evolve through the 20th century. In an Atlantic article examining Sigmund Freud’s views on childhood, Bruno Bettelheim writes that “play is the child’s most useful tool for preparing himself for the future and its tasks.”

In the 21st century, play has become a critical part of learning with the “serious games” and game-based learning movements. At the same time, educators have begun questioning traditional assessment methods. However, until the education system moves away from standardized testing on a state and national basis, traditional exams and assessments remain.

Play can help make the necessary test preparation much more enjoyable and effective. At Legends of Learning, we work with many teachers who use our games for assessments and test preparation. One of the best ways to let students play is to let them enjoy a game as part of their test preparation. Hopefully you agree, too!

Browse our Library of Games

Earth Day is upon us, and many teachers are putting the finishing touches on their “Earth Week” lesson plans. One of the more popular tools to educate students is to create an Earth Day quiz. Legends of Learning has two ways to make that easy for teachers.

1. Deploy Legends of Learning Question Games

The Legends of Learning Platform allows teachers to better find the specific type of content they prefer. Question games, ideal for testing knowledge, are marked with the letter Q. Instructional games, which help students achieve content mastery, are denoted by the letter I. So if you want a Question game, simply find the topic you will be teaching in our system and look for the Q games.

You’ll notice that games are rated by both teachers and students to help you find the best game possible, based on quality of instruction and how much fun they are for students. Also, teacher reviews offer further insights on how best to use the games. You can offer your students multiple Q games in a single playlist (tips on building playlists here).

2. Create an Earth Day Quiz via the Assessments Feature

If you prefer to complement games with an Earth Day quiz, or you don’t want to launch a game at all, you can use our assessments feature. Assessments let you add a specific number of questions as an exercise for students. The questions are drawn from our teacher-vetted library of assessment items, aligned to standard science curricula like NGSS, GSE, SOL, and TEKS.

You can add assessments either as a standalone playlist, before or after a game, or between games. Afterward, you can view student performance data (and download it as a spreadsheet) by clicking the “Question Data” button. You can also see individual student and class-wide answers while the playlist is live, which lets you adapt your class time based on real-time performance.

Also, make sure to check out our mega-resource guide with more than 150 Earth Day activities, games, ideas, and lesson plans.

Are you looking for useful Earth Day activities and content that you can plug and play into your lesson plan for next week? Good news. We’ve built a master resource center that offers you a series of content and tools to make your classroom’s Earth Day an engaging meaningful experience:

• 6 Earth Day games that are ungated and ready to play
• 2 lesson plans that dovetail with these games
• 5 game playlists
• 35 curated Earth Day activities and resources
• 100+ STEM activities and ideas

Here is a little more on each offering:

Earth Day Games

Science games are, of course, one of our favorite such methods. If you’ve ever used Legends of Learning, you know that we have games covering every science lesson.

We asked teachers to share their favorite games that cover Earth Day-related topics, then we made the top 6 Earth Day games available for anyone to play, without requiring a Legends of Learning account. The goal is to spread Earth Day knowledge far and wide by making these resources as available as possible.

Earth Day Activities and Lesson Plans

Along with games, we also wanted to offer more comprehensive lesson materials for your classroom. Scott Beiter, a true education superhero, put together a take-home Energy Efficiency and Conservation project to help students understand the relevance of their everyday lives in the science behind Earth Day.

Caitlin Unterman, another bona fide Legend, built a Water Cycle lesson plan to incorporate Legends of Learning games seamlessly into Earth Day class discussions. Other super teachers have created lesson plans for the rest of the Earth Science subjects offered on our site.

In addition to these teacher-generated resources, we’ve compiled a list of 101 STEM activities (many of which are relevant to Earth Day), plus 35 more Earth Day-specific resources that you can mix and match with your lesson content.

Resources Across the Web

There are countless other phenomenal science resources across the web. We curated some of them into two lists, Earth Day specific activities and general STEM activities that you can use anytime.

Some other organizations we greatly admire have published their own fabulous Earth Day content, such as National Geographic and Earth Day Network. For a more complete list, visit our official Earth Day Activities and Ideas page.

Just as conserving the earth is necessarily a collaborative effort, so too is teaching students about it. We hope you find these resources helpful, and if you have other favorite Earth Day resources, please share them with us!

Earth Day is all about treasuring the world around us and recognizing the importance of preserving it. Learning the science behind all of this is the best way for students to appreciate the vitality of our planet.

We just published 6 free Earth Day Games as part of our overall effort to support teachers educating their students about Earth Day. Why would we do this, you ask?

While most of our games are gated and require a free teacher account to play, Earth Day represents a pivotal time of year in the science classroom.

As spring makes its way into our lives, students start to spend a lot more time outside after a long winter. With so much media focused on Earth Day itself, the combination creates the perfect opportunity to engage students with earth science, as well as crosscutting concepts in life and physical sciences. Plus, let’s be fair, it’s one of the last lessons of the school year before most teachers go into test preparation and final exams.

So while we have literally hundreds of games about Earth Day-related topics, we thought it made sense to offer some openly available game-based learning content. Our goal is to help teachers and parents discussing Earth Day with their students to better enjoy this teaching moment. The games were selected by some of our teacher ambassadors, two of whom also created lesson plans published on our Earth Day Activities and Ideas website.

By the way, the Activities and Ideas page also provides access to more than 130 STEM activities and projects that you can engage in this Earth Day. So yeah, we want students to have a memorable, meaningful Earth Day experience. Our games are just part of that blended lesson plan.

Of course, we hope teachers will like the science games, too, and give them a try for their other lessons and test preparation. A legendary win-win!

Regardless, check out our 6 Free Online Earth Day Games here.

The massive hive mind of science educators has populated the Internet with countless STEM activities. With Earth Day less than three weeks away, we decided to curate 101 of the best STEM activities, ideas and resources across the web in this new downloadable white paper.

Incorporating STEM Activities For Earth Day

Probably the best thing about science class is that, more than any other subject, there’s room to have fun. Getting students to be curious about the world around them is a hugely important endeavor, and a creative one. There are so many different ways to incorporate Earth Day into science lessons. With 101 STEM resources in addition to our 6 free online Earth Day games and 3 Earth Day resources, there are no excuses. Now you can make Earth Day a great teaching moment.

At Legends of Learning, we love the idea of piquing students’ interest with video games. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle in teachers’ lesson plans. Sometimes you’ve got to get your hands dirty. While you’re teaching for Earth Day, and any other lessons coming up on the agenda, hopefully some of these activities will turn into lasting science memories.

Top Ten Favorite Activities

Here are ten of our personal favorite STEM activities from the 101 STEM Activities and Resources. We hope you’ll find some of them especially relevant to Earth Day. You can check out the other 91 here!

• 12. How to Make a GAK Glacier – Science at Sea – Investigation
  Bring together the good old combo of borax and glue and observe how it flows and breaks. Turns out, it behaves much the same way as a glacier, so you can teach students about Earth’s ever-changing ice masses.
• 17. Pitch Switcher! – Experiment
  Build a simple string instrument to examine the relationship between vibration and pitch.
• 29. Greenhouse in a Beaker – Experiment
  Examine the relationship between Carbon Dioxide and thermal energy. Consider how this affects Earth’s atmosphere with the emissions of greenhouse gases.
• 36. Shoebox Geologist – Simulation (Hands-on)
  This activity from the National Park Service helps your students study the geologic time scale right inside a shoebox!
• 43. Extract DNA from Spinach! – Investigation
  Exactly what it sounds like. Get a close look at the genetic material of spinach, no microscope necessary!
• 63. Make Ice Cream in a Baggie! – Creation
  A delicious way to explore states of matter and freezing points. One of the sweetest STEM activities around!
• 80. Triboluminescence Experiment – Investigation
  Use wintergreen candy to generate electricity inside your mouth and find out how friction can generate light with certain substances.
• 86. Water Filtration Challenge – Experiment
  Build and test handmade water filtration systems with this guide from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab!
• 89. Wind Turbine – Creation
  Generate actual electricity with your own wind turbine! Then, talk about clean energy sources and
  what they mean for the future.
• 98. Cultivating Habitat – Investigation
  Head outside to your school garden and learn about biodiversity with this guided activity from the Smithsonian Gardens.

Reach Out To Legends of Learning Today!

Do you have a favorite science activity that didn’t make the list? Let us know!

See our Earth Day Activities and Ideas page for free games, additional resources and lesson plans!

Last October, we formed a partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder’s PhET Interactive Simulations project. This month, 15 PhET simulations went live on the LoL platform!

“PhET is a fantastic resource,” said Teresa Cobble, an eighth-grade science teacher from Atlanta, Georgia. “After being in the classroom for almost a decade, I still find it difficult to find resources that work together, are appropriate for the content I am covering and are engaging for the students. My students love Legends of Learning and the addition of PhET simulations will give them an even richer experience.”

PhET Simulations on the Legends Platform

Here is the complete list of PhET simulations by learning objectives available on our site:

• Build an Atom – Intro (Learning Objective: Atoms and Elements)
• Build an Atom – Symbol (Learning Objective: Atoms and Elements)
• Build an Atom – Game (Learning Objective: Atoms and Elements)
• Projectile Motion – Intro (Equal and Opposite Reactions: Newton’s Third Law)
• Projectile Motion – Vectors (Equal and Opposite Reactions: Newton’s Third Law)
• Projectile Motion – Drag (Equal and Opposite Reactions: Newton’s Third Law)
• Projectile Motion – Lab (Equal and Opposite Reactions: Newton’s Third Law)
• Pendulum Lab – Intro (Conservation of Energy)
• Pendulum Lab – Energy (Conservation of Energy)
• Pendulum Lab – Lab (Conservation of Energy)
• Capacitor Lab: Basics – Capacitance (Electric and Magnetic Forces)
• Capacitor Lab: Basics – Light Bulb (Electric and Magnetic Forces)
• Forces and Motion: Basics – Net Force (Factors Influencing Motion: Newton’s First and Second Laws)
• Forces and Motion: Basics – Motion (Factors Influencing Motion: Newton’s First and Second Laws)
• Forces and Motion: Basics – Friction (Factors Influencing Motion: Newton’s First and Second Laws)

Teachers can access PhET simulations on Legends of Learning using their free account. There is no requirement to set up a teacher account.
Sign Up Now!

NSTA 18 was a great conference. From great content to epic networking, there was much to gain at the conference. Sessions shared knowledge, meals shared experiences, and the show floor allowed for connections.

Teachers at NSTA 18

We had so much fun meeting super teachers from around the country. In addition to the above photo, here are some more epic teacher pics:

Legends of Learning Pics

Of course we were there, too, and you know we had fun. How can you not have fun at a trade show if you are a game based learning company?

In Other News

NSTA 18 also brought the formal release of our grades 3-5 science games. Some publications found the new release newsworthy, and wrote it up:

• Patch
• Tech and Learning
• Education Dive

The Ed Tech Round Up published a glowing review of Legends of Learning last week, too: “​Overall, Legends of Learning is an excellent support resource for the 3rd – 8th grade science classroom.” You can read the whole review here.

In addition, Legends of Learning was named one of the 90 hottest edtech tools available to teachers by Tutorful.