Sunday, November 20, 2016

Where's the Punchline?

11/19/16 Free Beacon:
The National Institutes of Health is spending roughly a quarter of a million dollars to create a video game about reproductive health.
The University of Chicago and a video game developer were awarded a joint project this summer to develop a STEM game for teenagers called “Caduceus Quest,” named after a mythological symbol popularly (and incorrectly) associated with medicine.
The study will “develop and test a serious game, Caduceus Quest, to engage youth in STEM learning, facilitate reductions in sexual and reproductive health risk behaviors, and promote asset development toward holistic, long-term well-being,” according to a grant for the project. “Caduceus Quest will be a multi-platform, theory-based, role-playing game in which players build up teams of doctors, policymakers, researchers, youth advocates, educators, etc. to solve medical mysteries and epidemiologic crises around the city.”
The link in their article is broken.  This one works.

4 comments:

  1. I think the old low tech exercise they did in my sons' middle school was very effective.

    The class was divided up into pairs, a boy and a girl if possible, and each pair was responsible for taking care of a 10 pound bag of flour for a week. It had to be in the possession of one or the other for the entire week. At the end they had to turn in the bag intact.

    Duck tape was very popular as a "diaper."

    ReplyDelete
  2. I remember my daughter's "flour baby"--can't remember if it was middle school or high school, but in Californicate it should be elementary school to prepare her for the current stepfather or boyfriend.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'll bet anybody $10 that the game they develop won't work any better than the Obamacare website (which cost billions, but still doesn't work.)

    Any takers?

    Gamergate is instructive in this regard!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I saw "video game about reproductive health" and imagined feminists blending a contraception motif with the 1980s arcade game "Missile Command."

    I wonder if Caduceus Quest got any inspiration from Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings." The protagonist Frito Bugger has returned home from his epic journey and hears a knock on his door, to be met by an entourage of all sorts of ridiculous creatures including "an airborne caduceus." The leader hands Frito a mysterious bracelet and says, "I understand that you undertake quests," at which point Frito bars and locks the door and swallows the key, and contemplates taking up Scrabble.

    ReplyDelete