The technologies underlying virtual environments like videogames and the methodologies of the learning sciences create an important intersection for work in educational technology. Coupling these fields enables us to consider participatory learning in terms of the ways that "context" shapes a process of making meaning. In this article, the author reports on efforts that aim to leverage an increasingly global academic play space called Quest Atlantis (Barab et al., 2007) in order to understand and adapt the soft and hard technologies of schooling for the goals and value systems prioritized locally, in this case, in Singapore. In particular, the author details a school-based partnership to co-develop a Singapore curriculum through a distributed collaboration organized around the Quest Atlantis learning framework.