Hacking HSTRY; Emerson's ENGAGEMENT LAB gamifies citizenship

On June 3rd, StoryCode Boston is happy to present Emerson College's civic-minded ENGAGEMENT LAB, and HSTRY's new platform for the digital classroom.

Additionally, be sure to catch local digital storytellers and designers at the PechaKucha (http://www.pechakucha.org/cities/boston/events/531665ab4f5c293870000001) talk this Thursday at Oberon in Cambridge (free to the public)! See link (http://www.pechakucha.org/cities/boston/events/531665ab4f5c293870000001) for their speaker details.

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The Engagement Lab (http://engagementgamelab.org/) is an applied research lab at Emerson College focusing on the development and study of games, technology, and new media to enhance civic life. The Engagement Lab works directly with its partner communities to design and facilitate civic engagement processes, augment stakeholder deliberation, and broaden the diversity of participants in local decision-making. The Engagement Lab is also the home of the Design Action Research for Government (DARG), a project in collaboration with the Mayor's office of New Urban Mechanics for researching and evaluating civic innovation tools created in cooperation with the city.

Christina Wilson is the Project Manager at the lab, including being the community liaison for Community PlanIt, an online game that helps planners in government, NGOs and other agencies to gather public input for long-range strategic planning, while rallying around awards fo local causes, connecting with others in the community, and gaining a sense of empowerment in the process of active civic engagement.

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Hstry (http://www.hstry.co/) relives historical events through a first-person perspective to bring history to life in the classroom. Interactive timelines, collaborative social features combine to make Hstry engaging and fun for students, while being effective and practical for teachers. Hstry is now providing interactive storylines of historical events for both elementary and secondary schools across the globe in line with their vision to become the leading digital learning platform for history. On May 3rd HSTRY held the first ever historython (http://www.hstry.co/blog/hacking-history-at-the-historython) in Boston to develop their new platform.

Thomas Ketchell was born in St. Leonards-On-Sea (UK) but grew up in France and Belgium. After working in Australia for a year, he went on to clinch his BA in History & Chinese Studies. His desire to help the environment brought him to East Africa in 2010 where he built biogas systems. Biogas projects use cow dung to provide clean cooking gas in rural parts of Kenya, where forests are being cut down and wood for cooking is disappearing rapidly.

He went on to do a postgraduate in Business & Development, and ended up living and working in China. Whilst living in Beijing, he experienced the dreadful quality of the air on a daily basis. Wanting to alert people back home what it was like to breathe in this dirty air, he decided with his colleague Steven Chiu - to re-enact on social media the 1952 Great Smog of London. The success of this re-enactment led to worldwide coverage, which encouraged both Steven and Thomas to co-found Hstry, and the rest is... well you know :)

Hope to see you there!