Twenty-First Century skills like creativity, problem solving and collaboration are acknowledged as fundamental in the technology-driven knowledge society. Increasingly, education is being called on to support the development of such skills from the earliest years. This paper examines a promising methodology for this purpose, Learners ’ Digital Game Building (LDGB) and more specifically the design and construction of digital games by learners working together in collaboration. Advocates of Game-Based Learning (GBL) have long espoused its wide-scale adoption as a pillar of modern, learner-centred education. LDGB takes this a step further: when students design and make games rather than just play them, they invest themselves holistically in the learning process. The authors believe that setting LDGB within an explicitly collaborative framework will not only enhance educational affordances, but will also prove an effective way to nurture learners ’ capacity to collaborate fruitfully, which itself is a key Twenty-First Century Skill. The paper discusses the theoretical basis for LDGB and describes its actuation in a European research project called MAGICAL. The project aims to generate tools, resources and teacher know-how for implementing collaborative LDGB activities, and to verify the validity and applicability of the methodology in primary and lower secondary school.

This paper presents a design study on the research and development of Gamestar Mechanic, a game-based learning project where children learn 21st century language and literacy practices in the context of learning key principles of game design. Using a design research methodology for the overall project, and a case study methodology for individual testing and theory refinement iterations of the research, this paper presents a detailed account of the first two years of research and design of the game, in hopes of providing researchers, educators and instructional designers with some insights on the development and assessment of 21st century learning environments. In 2006 former vice-president Al Gore released a movie documentary called “An Inconvenient Truth ” (Guggenheim, 2006) in which he presented a substantial amount of scientific evidence regarding the contribution of humans to global warming. Aside from warning us about the potentially catastrophic consequences that our failure to address this