T-Minus Six Days

After many weeks of preparation, we are now less than a week away from the launch of our campus ARG. This is as good a time as any to provide a bit of background on the project and explain where the idea came from.
The IU Bloomington CITL (Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning) is hosting a games and learning talk by Dr. James Paul Gee on March 23. In an effort to surround his talk with examples of games being used for learning, Maggie Ricci (instructional technology consultant extraordinaire) thought that perhaps an ARG (alternate reality game) should be one of the game types included. Maggie contacted me, Sarah Smith-Robbins, because I had designed and run ARGs for learning in the past. Then three amazing IU graduate students volunteered to help and off we went! The IU Missing Manuscript Mystery Game was born!
The game officially starts on March 1, 2012. It's easy to play. Just go to the blog of the "victim" here and dive in. Click the links to the suspect profiles and explore their Twitter, Tumblr, and blogs. Read the victim's blog entries to learn about the story. Start following the game's hashtag on Twitter #IUMM. There are lots of ways to start playing.
Meanwhile, as the game progresses from March 1-10, check in here to learn about the behind-the-scenes work being done to keep the game going, how the puzzles were created (only after they're solved! cheater), and to find examples of ways that you can begin to use similar games to learn and teach. And don't hesitate to leave questions about the game mechanics here on this blog. Meanwhile, over in Ariadne's world the mystery is about to begin!