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Carolyn Scott’s Storybox Adventure Launched, Engaging Young People In Global Problem Solving

Cross-Posting from Serious Games Experts Blog


FOMENTING A SEA CHANGE IN EMPOWERED ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION TO MAKE DISCOVERY OF CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTIONS FUN AND EASY

Solutionaries, an ambitious climate change education project for young people of all ages by Carolyn M. Scott of Cool Planet Labs, released this week its Book One - The Storybox Adventure, a real world quest to restore the planet, now available for Android on Google Play.

Solutionaries was conceived as a series of interactive storybook apps - the mission of the project being to engage a wide audience in exploring, sharing and mapping climate change solutions. The series is being developed by a small team of award winning creatives and environmental educators.

Designed for elementary and middle school children and their families, this first-of-its-kind interactive experience takes players on a quest to discover seven Solutionaries (climate change heroes) who have implemented strategies to solve climate change - collectively their real world solutions could save our planet. They were chosen from a list of over 100 individuals nominated by leading environmentalists and their identities will remain a mystery until the players who participate in the interactive adventure discover them.


Follow Lily, a ten-year-old girl in who is on a quest to save the Dartmoor Warbler and its one egg. At the Warbler’s request Lily goes on a mission to find seven climate heroes who have solutions that could collectively solve climate change. Clues to the identities of the heroes are hidden in this beautifully illustrated eBook.

Participants find clues to the identities of the seven Solutionaries hidden throughout the eBook that was written by award-winning playwright Kristin Carlson, with creative direction and illustrations by Carolyn Scott.

The collaborative game play employs the SOLE (Self-Organized Learning Environment) method pioneered by Dr. Sugata Mitra, 2013 TED Prize winner, who uses Big Questions to have children explore, share and open their minds to a world of wonder. The project has adopted Dr. Mitra's child-led approach for children to collaborate and share solutions that could transform our world.

Celebrated artists from around the world have created “treasures” as part of the game play. Each treasure is dedicated to one of the seven Solutionaries. The artists include Margaret Atwood, Lily Yeh, Fran Forman, Mia Tavonatti, Giulio Menossi, Marie Gibbons and Ron Seivertson.

The Solutionaries project is part of a larger vision: to build an interactive climate change platform on the web that will allow young people and their communities to crowd source, share and map climate solutions.

The Case For Action

According to CPL (Cool Planet Labs), climate change is the greatest environmental challenge we face.  Organizations that are taking actionable steps to address climate change challenges work within a highly fragmented and often resource-poor environment: they compete for supporter dollars and actions in a very inefficient manner.  Social networking solutions and social gaming can be used to massively effect climate change action, but no single solution integrates either into a single climate change action framework. The public is bombarded with online headlines about climate change and yet there is no source of aggregated climate data and solutions that is readily available online. Current strategies for sharing information often result in overwhelm, passivity and denial.  A single effective, easy to use and fun online network that allows these organizations and their supporters to participate in massive scale online collaboration is the only way to stem the tide of this crisis and reduce the cost of doing so at the same time.

The Solution




















Cool Planet Labs is designing a climate change solution library, an engaging cross platform, web-based environment for the exchange of information on climate change solutions that can be implemented by individuals and small community groups, and a space where the community can post, access, explore, and share information on implementation.


The multi-media Library provides an interactive Google Earth-like interface that offers a rich user experience as well as wikis for tools and solutions, forums, connections to topic experts, and a mini social game series for an enhanced user experience and engagement.

The online environment is expected to engage the collective intelligence of the crowd in sourcing, exploring, and evaluating new climate change solutions, thus empowering the individual to conduct his/her own education, find his/her own inspiration and share his/her own environment and adventure.

The long term vision is to foment a sea change in empowered environmental action to make discovery of climate change solutions fun and easy.

Visit Solutionaries to learn more or download here

About Carolyn M. Scott and Cool Planet Labs

Carolyn M. Scott, Executive Director at Cool Planet Labs, is an environmental educator and award-winning filmmaker, who is passionate about mobilizing people, especially young people, to support and implement effective, action-oriented, community-based solutions to global challenges.

Cool Planet Labs is a “think and do” tank of environmental education creative leaders in the Internet, dedicated to mobilizing millions of people around climate change solutions.

They are devoted to the application of massive scale online collaboration to address climate change, including the discovery of new climate change solutions and the distribution and dissemination of existing ones. They are committed to foment a sea change through environmental action and their approach includes cutting-edge social networking solutions and proven means of building online communities.

Their social networking platform includes online simulation environments tailored to address the issues of climate change, and provides a powerful platform for social change.