Planting the Seed for Space Exploration: a Canadian classroom game

Planting the Seed for Space Exploration is an educational simulation published by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for classroom use. It belongs to the agency's 3D education resources, an interactive platform that recreates the experience of flying on a Soyuz spacecraft and of living and working on a space station.

Students play with the guidance of a virtual astronaut, Chris Hadfield. The learning goal is the role of plants in biological life support systems, and the task is to create a virtual living wall inside the International Space Station. In 2013 the resource was expected to reach roughly 1 million elementary students.

Project Whitecard Inc. worked with the CSA and Hadfield on the build. The studio rendered authentic 3D environments and produced the learning programming and the dialogue, which runs in both English and French.

The game took a Gold Medal in the Education category of the International Serious Play Awards. The 2013 results list the other winners of that year across categories; the program hands out Gold, Silver and Bronze medals, and this entry took the top medal.

The awards program describes itself as recognizing products that use play to advance education, training and real-world impact. Eligible entries today include stand-alone games, modules inside larger learning ecosystems, XR and simulation-based experiences, and projects built on widely used platforms. Each category has three finalists and one winner, and entrants receive written input from senior judges. Submissions come from professional studios, in-house training teams, independent designers, university teams, nonprofits and student creators.

The agency's old address for its educator resources now forwards to a general page titled Youth and educators. That page does not list Planting the Seed for Space Exploration, and the agency's site shows no ordering page for it. The 2013 announcement said the resource could be ordered from the agency by e-mail; no current ordering route is documented on the official site.

The awards program continues. Sector Award winners are announced at Serious Play Europe in June, and Student and Special Award winners, including Game of the Year, at Serious Play North America in August. The awards site keeps separate winner pages for 2024, 2025 and 2026.