WoW Used For Learning

Sean VanGorder

I thought this was a pretty cool article. It's cool that you can use games that aren't labeled as "serious" or "educational" games as a medium to teach with.

http://edtechleadership.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/world-of-warcraft-invades-language-arts-class/

Pseudo

This is a great idea. When I was in high school I got into EverQuest and it really got me hooked on statistics when I saw how useful statistics are when playing games. Eventually I got into more complicated "theory-crafting" and dived headfirst into Trigonometry and ended up taking AP math classes all through high school, and it all started because I could take what i learned in class and go home and apply it to finding the optimum gear in EQ.

Leadership also makes sense with leading groups of players, and eventually running a successful guild teaches a lot of skills that are useful for managing people at work.

The same with reading - I always outpaced my classmates with my reading speed and comprehension because I spent my early years playing text based MUDs.

I just love this idea and I hope the teachers are taking it seriously because there is legitimate education in there.

Autocon

I know some school in Florida and i believe UCSD here in CA use StarCraft in some econ/statistics class. Pretty neat IMO

danshewan

I'm sure a few of us remember the corrupted blood pandemic, which led to a series of viability studies into how WoW could be used to study the real-life effects of disease propagation in the population.

Not sure if this ever got off the ground in a substantial way, or if they ended up using control groups on private servers, but it's an intriguing idea for academic research.