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!

Lucas Gillispie’s 10 Things Learned from Playing MMORPGs

Lucas Gillispie over at EduRealms (with whom I’ve recently traded blogroll links), posted Ten Educational Things I Learned from Playing MMORPGs. They are:

home networking; conflict resolution; project management; split second decision making/strategy; advanced web design; love of reading; computer troubleshooting; graphics editing; video editing/machinima; and instructional design.

Visit here to read the complete entry.