Atlantis Island + Robot Cards
Two playful, open-access resources created by bringing together data education, creative design and robotics.
Data Education in Schools × Dog and Fox Design × National Robotarium
All together now!
Data educators, computer scientists, designers, roboticists and playtesters, all brought together at the National Robotarium.
Pictured are Serdar Abaci, Kate Farrell, Antonia Sewell and Jasmeen Kanwal from Data Education in Schools, Elspeth Maxwell from Dog and Fox, Blair Wilson from the National Robotarium, and some of our youngest, but very important, collaborators.
Here’s what we made
Two different ways to get hands-on with big, current questions. Robot Cards gets children exploring data through play, sorting, comparing and investigating. Atlantis Island turns the hidden infrastructure behind AI into a world you can play with, question and debate.
Serious subjects. We had fun with them
Bring different ideas to the same table, and see what happens.
Kate Farrell
Curriculum + Game Design
“How can we help learners use data to make their lives and the lives of their communities better?”
Elspeth Maxwell
Creative Lead
“I love that moment when there’s an idea and I can immediately start to see what it could become. My role is to take that spark and give it a visual and physical form, so we can build on the momentum and see how far we can take it together. The strength of these projects is that they’re a true collaboration. We couldn’t have done it without each other.”
Antonia Sewell
Computer Science + AI
“It’s so amazing being able to bring our vision to life together. I’m so happy we were able to take the idea of Robot Cards from concept to finished product - and they look beautiful!”
Jasmeen Kanwal
Data Science + Education
“Often art and design is considered an afterthought when developing educational materials. Working with Elspeth over the years, we’ve come to realise how important it is to incorporate from the very beginning, as thoughtfully-designed materials make the resources easier to use, and more likely to be used. We’ve had feedback from many teachers that the excellent design has also meant that children are more engaged with the resources and love using them!”
Robot Cards
Pick a robot. Any robot.
Visiting the National Robotarium informed our approach, opening up the sheer variety of robots and what they can do. To create the visual world for our robots, Elspeth took inspiration from the warmth and friendliness of Pepper, one of the robots we met there, developing a playful and approachable look for the cards.
Put the cards in a classroom and you immediately see the reaction. Children start sorting the robots by height, speed, cost or function, looking for patterns and relationships, or inventing completely new ways of grouping them. The card pack includes different activities and possibilities, but there isn't one route through it. Part of the fun is deciding what to look for and seeing what you discover.
And from there, children can begin imagining robots of their own.
Atlantis Island
A game about data, energy and survival.
Atlantis Island began with Kate Farrell's idea for a roll-and-write game that could open up conversations about artificial intelligence, data centres and the infrastructure that makes the widespread use of AI possible.
Players arrive on Atlantis Island as the CEO of their own AI business. As the game unfolds, they make choices about the data centres, energy and resources they need. But the stakes are high. Can they build a successful business without destroying the very island it depends on?
The game is the beginning of that conversation.
Over to you.
We made these to be used. Robot Cards and Atlantis Island are freely available to download and print, or you can get your hands on a physical copy. Pick them up, play, and start conversations of your own.
Explore Robot Cards
Explore Atlantis Island
Created together in Edinburgh. Open to everyone.
Left to right: Susan Heaton, Kate Farrell, Antonia Sewell, Elspeth Maxwell, Jasmeen Kanwal and our young collaborators.
Photography
Susan Heaton: all professional photography on this page.