Empower and Educate the Spirit of Youth with PowerUp
Parents and teachers I am happy to share with you PowerUp, a free, online, multiplayer game that allows students, geeks and adults of all ages to experience the excitement and the diversity of modern engineering and participate in building green electric power generation tech to save Planet Helios! This is a dynamic learning resource that will grab the attention of students of all ages and engage them as thoroughly as the video games they play at home.
This is a resource that can empower you and our youth to educate themselves is not dependent on or at the mercy of politicians passing funding. Perfect for home schooling families and community activist organizations working to educate our youth about deploying technology to save the Blue Planet.
"PowerUp lets me save the world the way I want to."
"I never thought there would be a game where I learn while playing with my friends."
– 15 year-old, Crosby High School, CT
Click here to go to the PowerUp home page. Kindly let me know what you think and pay it forward!
This is the link to the teacherguide.pdf
POWERUP GAME STORY
If any one out there is listening, Planet Helios is being destroyed and we need your help!
Hundreds of years ago the nations of our planet realized that the side effects from burning fossil fuels for energy were damaging the atmosphere and changing the climate. They joined together to develop and build technologies to create electricity from available renewable energy resources like wind, sun and water power. Meanwhile the planet's citizens–our ancestors– pulled together and pledged to use less energy. This ushered in a Golden Age of energy balance and ecological harmony.
But a few generations later energy was plentiful, clean and cheap and conservation was no longer in fashion. As energy consumption increased, fossil fuel-burning plants had to be fired up again to keep up with ever–increasing demand.
Now the damage has been re–done, and then some! Our atmosphere is choked with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The planet is heating up. Extreme weather threatens almost every ecosystem and all of our citizens, and storms have destroyed much of the renewable energy infrastructure including wind turbines, hydroelectric generators and solar towers. Fossil fuel plants work overtime to pick up the slack, pumping tons of poison gases into the air, and there are strange, new threats. There have been scattered reports of what people are calling "SmogGobs:" dense clouds of carbon based emissions that seem almost alive. Scientists can not explain the phenomenon - but citizens are blaming these SmogGobs for sickness and even death of loved ones. World leaders have appealed for help, but it may be too late..."
Play PowerUp today and prove it's NOT too late! Join the other brave volunteers who are heeding the distress call! You'll come from far and wide to work together putting your skills to the test in some of the most extreme environments imaginable and the stakes are high – life and death!
Playing the game, students work together in teams to investigate the rich, 3D game environment and learn about the environmental disasters that threaten the game world and its inhabitants.
Players meet Expert Engineer characters and experience the great diversity of the field. Conversations with these experts and engaging interactive activities allow players to explore ways engineers design and build systems to harness renewable energy sources as alternatives to burning fossil fuels.
Players take on the role of Engineers, working together designing and building energy solutions to save the world.
The Teacher's Guide is designed to be a classroom companion to PowerUp, providing background information for teachers and lesson plans that give students opportunities for more in-depth exploration of science and engineering concepts addressed in gameplay. Click here to download the 6 lesson plans and teachers guide .
Each of these lessons is designed to be flexible and scalable. Feel free to use the lessons and activities as raw materials and break them up, combine parts, skip parts and extend lessons with your own content. Extension activities and resources for more information are suggested. This flexibility will allow you to best adapt the lessons to your students’ needs.
The two lessons based on the Orientation Center (Lessons 1 and 2) review concepts that are integral to the game’s back story and provide students an insight into the diversity of the Engineering field.
In the three lessons based on the game’s missions (Lessons 3, 4, and 5) students will take on the role of engineers and work in groups to solve a challenge. Students will design, prototype, test and revise their solution using a low-cost collection of recycled school and household materials. A sample assessment rubric and other resources for facilitating effective Project Based Learning are included in this Teachers Guide.
Finally, working on the research project (Lesson 6) students have the opportunity to investigate how issues that are critical in the game world impact their own communities. Research projects will also provide a context for students to meet local Engineers. Students will work in groups to create presentations that can be published on TryScience.org and shared with other classrooms.
Peace and Power
This is a resource that can empower you and our youth to educate themselves is not dependent on or at the mercy of politicians passing funding. Perfect for home schooling families and community activist organizations working to educate our youth about deploying technology to save the Blue Planet.
"PowerUp lets me save the world the way I want to."
"I never thought there would be a game where I learn while playing with my friends."
– 15 year-old, Crosby High School, CT
Click here to go to the PowerUp home page. Kindly let me know what you think and pay it forward!
This is the link to the teacherguide.pdf
POWERUP GAME STORY
If any one out there is listening, Planet Helios is being destroyed and we need your help!
Hundreds of years ago the nations of our planet realized that the side effects from burning fossil fuels for energy were damaging the atmosphere and changing the climate. They joined together to develop and build technologies to create electricity from available renewable energy resources like wind, sun and water power. Meanwhile the planet's citizens–our ancestors– pulled together and pledged to use less energy. This ushered in a Golden Age of energy balance and ecological harmony.
But a few generations later energy was plentiful, clean and cheap and conservation was no longer in fashion. As energy consumption increased, fossil fuel-burning plants had to be fired up again to keep up with ever–increasing demand.
Now the damage has been re–done, and then some! Our atmosphere is choked with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The planet is heating up. Extreme weather threatens almost every ecosystem and all of our citizens, and storms have destroyed much of the renewable energy infrastructure including wind turbines, hydroelectric generators and solar towers. Fossil fuel plants work overtime to pick up the slack, pumping tons of poison gases into the air, and there are strange, new threats. There have been scattered reports of what people are calling "SmogGobs:" dense clouds of carbon based emissions that seem almost alive. Scientists can not explain the phenomenon - but citizens are blaming these SmogGobs for sickness and even death of loved ones. World leaders have appealed for help, but it may be too late..."
Play PowerUp today and prove it's NOT too late! Join the other brave volunteers who are heeding the distress call! You'll come from far and wide to work together putting your skills to the test in some of the most extreme environments imaginable and the stakes are high – life and death!
Playing the game, students work together in teams to investigate the rich, 3D game environment and learn about the environmental disasters that threaten the game world and its inhabitants.
Players meet Expert Engineer characters and experience the great diversity of the field. Conversations with these experts and engaging interactive activities allow players to explore ways engineers design and build systems to harness renewable energy sources as alternatives to burning fossil fuels.
Players take on the role of Engineers, working together designing and building energy solutions to save the world.
The Teacher's Guide is designed to be a classroom companion to PowerUp, providing background information for teachers and lesson plans that give students opportunities for more in-depth exploration of science and engineering concepts addressed in gameplay. Click here to download the 6 lesson plans and teachers guide .
Each of these lessons is designed to be flexible and scalable. Feel free to use the lessons and activities as raw materials and break them up, combine parts, skip parts and extend lessons with your own content. Extension activities and resources for more information are suggested. This flexibility will allow you to best adapt the lessons to your students’ needs.
The two lessons based on the Orientation Center (Lessons 1 and 2) review concepts that are integral to the game’s back story and provide students an insight into the diversity of the Engineering field.
In the three lessons based on the game’s missions (Lessons 3, 4, and 5) students will take on the role of engineers and work in groups to solve a challenge. Students will design, prototype, test and revise their solution using a low-cost collection of recycled school and household materials. A sample assessment rubric and other resources for facilitating effective Project Based Learning are included in this Teachers Guide.
Finally, working on the research project (Lesson 6) students have the opportunity to investigate how issues that are critical in the game world impact their own communities. Research projects will also provide a context for students to meet local Engineers. Students will work in groups to create presentations that can be published on TryScience.org and shared with other classrooms.
Peace and Power
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by W. Dan Chance on -
Hello Dr. Young, I clicked on the link for the Powerup homepage. It seems you have to download the game in order to play it. That's ok but I didn't want to do that on my computer. The concept seems good and it may raise awareness among the young that we have to begin agressively making changes to the type technology we use for producing energy if we expect to be able to breath the air or have a habitable planet. The need however is more urgent than that. We can't wait for our children to solve the problem. WE must do that. You may already be very involved in trying to move us to a green energy economy but if not please plug in and try to get politicians to help us implement wind, solar and possibly thorium-nuclear.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. F. A. Young, Esq. on -
Mr. Chance of course we have to move the politicians but we definitely have to mobilize and raise the awareness of the youth and young adults. The future belongs to the youth and their grandchildren and so on....
Unfortunately the politicians have fiddled as Rome burned and the ozone and the economy and everything else spun out of control. We see how they are playing politics as usual with saving the economy. The youth and young adults are actually moving and quite aware of the problem -- that 18 to 35 year old demographic came to life for Obama - will they maintain the momentum and take us from change to real transformation ?? Pray that they do.
Those at the political and corporate level who have been in power for the last 40 years have really screwed up! They do not have the mind set to address the real problems without there being some real input from the bottom up. It will take the man and woman on the street - not the man in the political suite. We see Wall Street has made sure they were taken care of! Who is going to take care of the American people who need it most? The Democrats talk about FDR and how he turned things around -- but they never say it really was the War that revived the economy and pull the country out of the depression!
We may be better off if a group of highly successful business people that truly had the people and the nations interest at heart were guiding us out of this mess. Politicians do not have the will power or the brain power to manage such a major financial meltdown. As you know the best brains are not sitting at a desk at the offices of the SEC -- on in the White House - the problems that have to be dealt with are way above their pay grade! We are stuck with the elected officials so for now we must make the best of it. Peace
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Permalink Reply by ed janus on -
Howdy Dr. Young- Your "Power Up" appears really well designed and has great potential for teaching young minds effective problem solving skills.I look forward to introducing it to my eight grandchildren who are learning quickly.Thanks.In regards to political power,there are great brains in the mix but lack the leadership ( until now, we hope) to look a quarter of a century ahead, instead of last fiscal quarter. Keep up the good work! Ed CA-01
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