The design of several current educational environments increasingly reflects the constructivist pedagogy, by which learners actively construct and interrelate knowledge and ideas. The NICE project is an immersive participatory learning environment for young users; its underlying theoretical framework combines constructivist educational theory with ideas that emphasize the importance of collaborative learning and narrative development. As a joint project between the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and the Interactive Computing Environments Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, NICE is an effort to build Narrative-based, Immersive, Constructionist/Collaborative Environments which encourage exploration and experiential learning.