Festival Maker · Adventure 2
Festival Maker
A 5-lesson Adventure where students use data to design a music festival creatures actually want to attend.
The 5 lessons
Lesson 1: Welcome to Symphonia
Students enter the world of Symphonia to explore how music, creatures, and data connect, learning how the game works and beginning to use the Data Habits of Mind.
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Lesson 2: Learning to Play the Game
Students enter the world of Symphonia to learn how to play Festival Maker, working through one full round in the Chorus of Commons region — graphing tempo and loudness, matching and activating creatures, and recording their first playlist on the website.
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Lesson 3: Playlists & Loot
Students continue gameplay in Symphonia, using tempo and loudness data to activate creatures, build evidence-based playlists, and collect loot for festival design.
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Lesson 4: Build Your Festival
Students design and build a 3D model of their music festival using the data, playlists, creatures, and loot they collected during gameplay.
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Lesson 5: The Music Festival
On the festival's final day, students prepare to present their festival designs, share them through a whole-group share-out or a gallery walk, and reflect on how their music, data, and loot informed their design choices.
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The arc
Students travel to the magical land of Symphonia, where music-loving creatures are preparing for a grand music festival. Working in teams, students play a collaborative data game that asks them to analyze songs, identify patterns, create visualizations, and make evidence-based decisions. As they collect resources and unlock festival materials, they use data to solve problems and design a festival experience of their own.
Festival Maker blends data science, mathematics, storytelling, art, and engineering. Over five lessons, students work with bivariate, numerical, and categorical data, build playlists, construct festival models, and present the story of their festival through art, graphs, and playlists. Along the way they see how data can support creativity, planning, and community-building.
The Festival Maker app
The Festival Maker interactive app is live at dataadventures.org/festival/app for student exploration.
Lost a playlist? Students save playlists under a name they choose — that name is the “code” they type to load it again. If a student forgets theirs, go to dataadventures.org/teachers/playlists to search every saved playlist by name and download it.