Educator
Fellowships
Join us at a Educator Fellowship and design a game with us! We want our games to reach classrooms, so we’re partnering up with the experts: educators like you.
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What Can I Expect?
Design a game with us
Located at our studio in the heart of Madison, WI, each game design fellowship is a pop-up community that makes space for creating something totally new. You’ll come out for an overnight or two and join our design team.
Each event brings together an uncommon collection of artists, educators, subject experts, and designers. As an expert educator, you’ll do game design side-by-side with other experts, like underwater archaeologists, biologists, or archivists.
A new kind of Workshop
Our educator fellowships are boutique events—not normal PD workshops—that are carefully crafted to inspire you. Each event mixes the best of talks, design, tours, and inspiration like art, music and game playing. .
We’ll start with a cozy get-together, where we’ll sip drinks and chat. Then we’ll transition into two days of learning, inspiration, and design. After the event, stay connected with online meet-ups, plus a few ways to get kids involved in design work. We’ll end up with a brand new game that will reach kids across the world.
We offer four fellowships each year. Join us!
View Fellowships
Common Questions
Current Fellowships
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PolarVR Fellowship
Summer 2024 - Spring 2025
Explore how Virtual Reality can be used to bring polar research to life in your public or school library.
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Astrophysics Game Design Fellowship
Spring + Summer 2024
Join a group of public librarians, school librarians and science teachers to develop a new desktop educational game based to explore key concepts in space science.
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Aqualab Implementation Fellowship
August + Fall 2022
We are looking for 6th-9th grade science teachers to explore how Aqualab can be used to guide students in using science practices as they investigate different ocean ecosystems.
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Virtual Reality Expeditions in your Library
August, Fall, Winter 2022-2023
We’re looking for librarians in rural communities throughout Wisconsin to explore the use of VR to communicate cutting edge NSF research and engage local Latinx audiences.
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Journalism Game Fellowship
Winter / Spring 2021 [Virtual]
We’re looking for Educators who teach journalism and/or use news media and current events to teach science, social studies, or media and/or news literacy
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Aqualab Game Production Fellowship
Winter / Spring 2021 [Virtual]
We’re looking for innovative 6th-9th grade science teachers to join our team and help create a new online game called AquaLab!
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Shipwrecks Game Production Fellowship
Fall 2020 [Virtual]
Dive into this exciting new opportunity! We are looking for a group of 3rd-5th grade teachers to help create and test an online game about maritime archaeology and Great Lakes shipwrecks.
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Game Dashboard Fellowship
Spring 2020
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Shipwrecks Game Design Fellowship
Fall 2019
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Farming and Phosphorus Game Design Fellowship
Fall 2018
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Doing History with Games Fellowship
Fall 2018
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State Capitol Game Production Fellowship
Spring 2018
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Fieldwork Across the Curriculum Fellowship
Spring 2018
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Wisconsin State Capitol Game Design Fellowship
Summer and Fall 2017
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Material Science Research Experience
Summer 2017
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Material Science Game Design
Spring 2017
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Games for Humanity Fellowship
Spring 2017
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Game On
Fall 2016
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WDLC Game Design Course
Summer 2016
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Student Game Design
Spring 2016
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Science Mini Games
Spring 2016
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Field Research
Fall 2015 and Spring 2016
Past Fellowships
Aqualab Implementation Fellowship
Application Deadline: [For Early Consideration] June 21, 2022 Stipend: $500 / Teacher More Info
Aqualab Game Production Fellowship
Application Deadline: December 1, 2020 Stipend: $500 / teacher More Info
Shipwrecks Game Production Fellowship
Deadline: October 15th, 2020 Stipend: $200 / teacher More Info
Game Dashboard Fellowship
Deadline has passed
About the Fellowship
12 Wisconsin teachers came out to UW-Madison for an overnight event. They worked with data scientists, researchers, and the Field Day team to generate ideas for the dashboard.
Read the StoryShipwrecks Game Design Fellowship
Deadline has passed
About the Fellowship
14 teacher fellows came out for a unique 2-day event at the Manitowoc Maritime Museum. The teachers met marine archaeologists, game designers, and content producers. First they learned about game design and shipwrecks in the Great Lakes and got inspired by our surroundings. Then they worked to come up with design ideas for a free online game about Great Lakes shipwrecks!
Read the StoryFarming and Phosphorus
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
Eight teacher fellows worked with us to develop a new science game, Lakeland, in collaboration with Victor Zavala at UW’s Scalable Systems Lab. The teachers came on location in Madison, where they met with Victor, toured the campus, and went behind the scenes at Victor’s lab. The teachers helped come up with ideas for Lakeland, did user testing with their students, and gave us input that informed the final version of the game.
Doing History with Games Fellowship
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
For this unique fellowship, teachers worked with their students to “do history” with a combination of games and inquiry-based lessons. The fellows met with historians and museum educators. They used our history game, Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case, as a jumping-off point and a source of inspiration for developing inquiry-based activities for their classrooms.
Wisconsin State Capitol Game Production Fellowship
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
This fellowship brought elementary school teachers to UW-Madison to help develop ideas for a game about Wisconsin history. The teachers worked alongside archivists, historians, and game designers to build game design concepts based on historical artifacts. One of the design ideas from this fellowship grew into a level of our Wisconsin history game, Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case.
Fieldwork Across the Curriculum Fellowship
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
This fellowship invited K-12 teachers from all across WIsconsin to design fieldwork activities for their students. Teachers used SIftr, Field Day’s citizen science app, to bridge the gap between the classroom and the rest of their students’ lives. Using papers, clipboards, and Siftr, kids went out in the world to make observations and then used the data they collected to spark discussions in their classrooms.
Wisconsin State Capitol Game Design Fellowship
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
Our 3rd-5th grade teacher fellows came on location in Madison to develop ideas for a Wisconsin history game. The teachers toured the Wisconsin Historical Society, explored the Capitol building, and met with archivists. The fellows worked with Field Day’s design team and experts from PBS Wisconsin to develop a concept that would later become our WIsconsin history game, Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case.
Material Science Research Experience
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
For this on-site fellowship, teachers put on a lab coat and joined the University of Wisconsin’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. The teachers spent the summer working in the lab alongside experts. Then they designed digital or hands-on laboratory activities for their students based on their research experiences.
Material Science Game Design
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
For this fellowship, 6 middle-schools science teachers worked as part of a crack team to help conceptualize, design, and test two science games to join our Yard Games collection. The teachers met with leading scientists from the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, education experts, and the design team here at Field Day.
Games for Humanity Fellowship
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
For this fellowship, 15 teachers used ARIS, Field Day’s game design platform, to integrate game design into their curriculum. Instead of having their students write final papers, the teachers designed and implemented a project where their students built mobile games to demonstrate their understanding.
Game On
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
This fellowship recruited 22 teachers from across Wisconsin who were excited about using learning games with their students. The teacher fellows used at least two of the Yard Games with their students, reported back on their experiences, and attended online meet-ups.
WDLC Game Design Course
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
For this fellowship, two teachers—Dave Strong and Dan Rhode—worked with designers and experts to develop a game design course for high school students. The online course includes a six-part video, discussion questions, and online resources (like slides and worksheets) that teachers can print, download, and edit. This course was developed in partnership with Field Day, DPI, and WDLC. You can learn more visiting our online course
Student Game Design
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
Two innovative teachers from DeForest Middle School, Beth Stofflet and Larry Moberly, worked with Field Day to help their seventh-graders become game designers. The kids used ARIS, Field Day’s game design platform, to design digital games based on what they were learning about Africa. Beth and Larry asked their students to investigate issues like gold mining, education, or the ivory trade. By the end of the project, 250 students had created video games based on their research.
Science Mini Games
Deadline has passed
About the Fellowship
For this fellowship, science teachers from across the state came to Madison to help develop nine new online science games, the Yard Games. The teachers worked side-by-side with our design team and offered their real-world expertise to help us understand what would really work in the middle-school classrooms.
Field Research
Deadline has passedAbout the Fellowship
We worked with three awesome research fellows to refine our citizen science app, Siftr. The Field Research fellows helped us explore the best way to do field research activities in formal and informal settings. The teachers were super important in helping us create Siftr. Check out how one of our awesome fellows, Larry Gundlach, used SIftr to teach poetry:
Read the Story