Educational Games Research

World of Warcraft Goes to School

Lucas Gillespie, whose EduRealms site has long been on my blogroll, has started a wiki for teachers on using World of Warcraft in the classroom. In a recent entry, Gillespie notes that several educators use WoW, and the responses from those he’s shared the wiki with have been very positive.

Gillespie leads a guild with other teachers he works with along with several students, and he has long noted that enthusiasm for the game can be translated into increased educational moments of opportunity. Since MMORPGs are essentially dynamic databases of ever-changing statistics, math becomes a reasonable subject to explore in-game. Creative writing has long been a staple of gaming, and now machinima adds to that by introducing 21st Century skills to student assignments. Opportunities abound for critical thinking, too.

Read more on his article about using WoW in school here, and visit the wiki here.

Update: GameSetWatch has a better write-up here. Thanks, Eric!

Tags: EduRealms, Lucas Gillespie

Game Discussion, MMORPGs, Serious Games, World of Warcraft | John Rice | June 5, 2009 9:22 am

16 Comments

By Ben Bonilla, June 11, 2009 @ 10:53 pm

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Ben Bonilla
By world of warcraft gold , July 3, 2009 @ 11:16 am

World of Warcraft would be a bit challenging to incorporate into education because it’s very complex to learn, but I think it’s time for educators to update their set of tools to help student learn.
By Български Игри, August 11, 2009 @ 3:38 pm

WoW should be along maths and English!
By Tournament Games, August 31, 2009 @ 1:18 pm

Thanks for taking the time to share this post with us.

Regards
By Freddie, September 7, 2009 @ 7:55 am

Anything to captivate and get the kids involved is a step in the right direction!
By Martin Jepsen, September 28, 2009 @ 2:23 pm

Hey just found that you can hear the World of Warcraft History at MMOWorldz.com, you just lean back, and listen to the speaker
By WoW WotLK, September 30, 2009 @ 10:58 am

Great post… as usual. I’m glad some people still provide some great content! haha
By Wayne A, October 4, 2009 @ 3:45 pm

World of Warcraft is a wonderful opportunity to develop leadership skills through leading raids. It is also good for developing problem solving skills.
By Obie, November 16, 2009 @ 4:21 pm

The environment is rich with opportunity.

Economics
Psychology
Charity
Religion

just to name a few. The “World” part of World of Warcraft is more a true term than most games would realize.

——
http://gow-wow.blogspot.com http://www.twitter.com/gowblog
By Petrol, December 15, 2009 @ 8:32 am

It’s about time.