Students are at the centre of the story in this collaborative and gamified water management experience. The Future Water Story is an interactive experience that explores the challenges of water management in an increasingly uncertain world.
Created in partnership with s1t2, the Future Water Story invites students to work collaboratively, making decisions to shape the future of a fictional town.
The game space
Students are greeted with a Welcome to Country and a specially designed introduction video screened on a huge 3.5m circular LED inset into the floor, in a building that was once the old Cocoroc Town Hall. Through collaboration with Traditional Owners, the space has been transformed, with indigenous symbols melded in, to tell the story of the land.
Students are split into small groups and allocated to one of 6 multi-touch tables throughout the room. These tables can track up to 50 touches at a time, more than enough to allow small groups of visitors to interact collaboratively.
Decision making
Working in small groups, students are given a series of decisions their community group is responsible for. Together they sort through hundreds of pieces of evidence, from community opinions, facts, statistics, news articles, reports, graphs, and more.
Collaboration
Their group discuss options and make a collaborative decision on how to move forward. Sometimes, students need to find a way to work with other groups, forging partnerships that allow them to make more powerful decisions.
Gamification
With every decision, students feel the consequences of their actions as they balance water as an empowering and limiting force in their quest to make their town the best it could be. After each decision, students come together to see the results of their choices on the LED display which delivers real-time game metrics. The educator leads a reflection to help students understand the impact of their decisions, and think about the best way forward.
Real world implications
After students have completed this interactive experience, they then tour the real-life Western Treatment Plant where they can see the working impact of everything they’ve just learned.
The Future Water Story is curriculum-aligned and enables students to get the best learning experience.
Click below for the complete learning outcomes and planning documents as well as the booking link.
