Institute of Play

Institute of Play
Formation	2007
Type	501(c)(3) corporation
Headquarters	New York City, New York, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Executive Director	Katie Salen
Website	instituteofplay.org

The Institute of Play is a 501(c)(3) corporation founded in 2007. Based out of New York City, the Institute’s mission is to promote game design, games and gaming as a model tool to enhance personal and social development, in particular learning in secondary school students.^[1] Within six months of its formation by a group of game designers from gameLab, the Institute of Play received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to develop Quest to Learn, a New York City public school designed around game design principles and based on over thirty years of learning research.^[2]

Initiatives

Quest to Learn

Quest to Learn (Q2L) is a public school in District 2 of the New York City Department of Education and is the result of a partnership between Institute of Play and New Visions for Public Schools.^[3] Quest to Learn is based on the model of "game-like learning," in which the curriculum is based on and mimics the design principles of games, increasing interactivity and fostering systems thinking. "[It] is organized specifically around the idea that digital games are central to the lives of today’s children and also increasingly, as their speed and capability grow, powerful tools for intellectual exploration."^[4] The school's curriculum is co-designed by teams of teachers, curriculum specialists, and game designers. At Quest to Learn, students both play games and learn to make them.^[5]

Q2L opened in Fall 2009, beginning with a founding class of sixth graders, and added another class of sixth graders in Fall 2010. It will continue to add grades until 2015, when it will become a full middle- and high school.^[4] The school is located in the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex on West 18th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, which it shares with a number of other small schools.

Mobile Quest

In conjunction with the school, the Institute of Play also hosts a week-long summer camp called MobileQuest, which is entering its third year. The Mobile Learning Institute, a Pearson Foundation program, supports the camp, which focuses on mobile game making platforms and devices. The curriculum introduces campers to basic ideas in game design utilizing the mobile phone platform.^[6]

Chicago Quest

In August 2011, the Institute of Play and the Chicago International Charter School opened a charter school – a privately managed public school^[7] – in Chicago based on the same model as Quest to Learn, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,^[8] and the Digital Youth Network, based at DePaul University.^[9]