Nanoscale Geckoman Game
90 Minutes | 5th – 12th Grades
Funded by the National Science Foundation, Northeastern’s Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) (in collaboration with Northeastern University game designers and education associates at the Museum of Science Boston), has created an educational computer game targeted at children ages 10-14. The game, Geckoman, teaches scientific principles of nanotechnology and helps children differentiate between the nanoscale and the macroscale.
The premise of Geckoman is that through an explosion of an incredible shrinking machine, budding scientist Harold is shrunk to the nanoscale. His lab partner, Nikki, helps him navigate three “worlds”, beginning at the nanoscale and growing slightly larger until returning to normal size. Before exiting each level in all three “worlds”, Harold must also pick up one of Nikki’s notebook pages, which were scattered in the explosion. The notebook pages provide short tips and lessons that are mapped to national and Massachusetts state K-12 science and engineering standards and a description of what each page on this site provides.
The primary purpose of this website is to facilitate the use of the game Geckoman to introduce scientific content in classroom instruction. The information on these web pages was organized and developed by Boston-area public school teachers who were funded by an NSF RET program (Award# EEC-0742924) and NSF NSEC Supplement (Award# EEC-0425826).
