Gaming is often a love/hate word among families these days. More specifically, kids love playing them and parents hate the amount of time their children spend playing them. But what if you could harness that digital fascination with games that increase student knowledge in several core subjects? That is precisely what the K20 Center is doing with its own online game, McLarin’s Adventure.

According to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (2005), children, ages 8 to 18, spend more time (44.5 hours per week) in front of computer, television, and game screens than any other activity in their lives except sleeping. Imagine if those kids spent that same amount of time studying core subjects or researching topics in science, technology, engineering and math?

That is where trillionaire Jonathon McLarin can help. The K20 Center, under the direction of Scott Wilson, associate director, STAR Schools Project and his digital gaming team, has created McLarin’s Adventure, an online game that challenges students’ science, literacy, and math skills to gain a seat on McLarin’s next exploration team.

McLarin’s Adventure is set in a survivor story mode where gamers explore an uninhabited, uncharted island to test their skills at finding necessary resources. Through a series of tasks, student teams must work together to apply math, bioscience, geography and geology to maneuver through the game. McLarin will send the winning team into outer space to explore colonization of other planets.

While the kids perceive McLarin’s Adventure as a way to play online games with other kids in school, it is really a learning tool called digital game-based learning. Digital game-based learning combines school content with computer games to engage students in authentic, or hands-on discovery, learning. It is designed to balance subject matter with game play to enhance the player’s ability to retain and apply subject matter to the real world.

While online gaming is not a new concept, digital game-based learning as an educational tool is still in the research phase. There are only six research centers in the US, including the K20 Center, that are working on digital game-based learning; and the K20 Center is the only center that built the gaming engine as well as the game.

To help students’ access the online game the K20 Center gave each school ultra mobile personal computers (UMPC) preloaded with Microsoft office. In addition to playing McLarin’s Adventure online, students have the ability to use the UMPCs for homework and other computer tasks. By the end of this year seven urban and rural schools in Oklahoma will receive more than 1,400 UMPCs.

Funded by a three-year grant from the U. S. Department of Education, the K20 Center’s digital game-based learning program is designed to benefit the student, school and research. While the students are busy applying physics to map an unchartered island, or using other sciences to advance their avatar, teachers can monitor each student’s progress online and see what subject areas need further instruction.

Preliminary research on virtual worlds has shown that kids engage deeply in virtual environments, gaining a conceptual understanding of school subjects. And since many kids are already comfortable online, educationally-oriented virtual worlds could offer a huge potential to aid learning. This information coupled with data regarding the success of digital game-based learning could give researchers a detailed blueprint on how to create America’s next generation of learning tools.

So while students will jump at any opportunity to play an online game, particularly during school, the results of McLarin’s Adventure could indicate digital game-based learning is a valuable educational tool and should be incorporated into school curriculum-a love/love proposition for kids and adults.