Hello again from the GEARS team.  Two new products have been launched by our team recently.  To start, we’ve released the pilot version of “Little Lincoln,” a comprehensive kindergarten through second grade online curriculum. This new product combines many mediums to present children with online and offline content ranging from games to picture books.  Through the multimedia experience and the colorful characters of the fantasy world of Midlandia, students are introduced to all of the state standards for grades kindergarten through two.  Also, we’ve recently updated ARC: The Impending Gale to include an entire second series of quests effectively doubling the game’s length.  ARC now offers two full semesters of content for each of its four courses.  As well, ARC’s new missions feature exciting new gameplay and story objectives that add to the excitement while reinforcing curriculum in Geography, Pre Algebra, Earth Science, and Spanish.    Soon GEARS will be releasing even more exciting educational content that expands on the idea of community in educational software.  The GEARS team hopes that all of our students are enjoying our new software offerings and will continue to check back for updates from the gears team.

Thanks to everyone for making 2007 such a great year for ARC and the GEARS team! We are very much looking forward to a terrific 2008 as we launch ARC: The Impending Gale to a wider audience at the end of January, and follow that up with its sequel in June. Our most recent addition was a new content zone, the Pueblo Ruins, and some exciting new features including voice chat in the ARC Headquarters zone. Enjoy, keep the great feedback coming, and we hope to see you in-game.

Hello again from the GEARS team.

ARC: The Impending Gale has been released to more students and educators. We’re happy to keep making improvements based on your feedback.

Today’s patch addresses minor issues with the game including clarifying quest text and objectives, and adding live scoreboards to the ARC Camp for Exploration and Rescue Mission activities. Today’s patch also revamps the chat system to add more functionality.

Initially the new chat system may appear a bit challenging, but it offers many requested features and allows students to better stay in contact with their friends and other players.

A brief tutorial on the new chat system is below. If you have any difficulty, let us know on our forums. (http://gears.nndsonline.org/board/)