World of Warcraft Raids the Classroom
Posted by Phil_Henken on Saturday, Jan 22, 2011
Massive multiplayer online games, like Blizzard’s juggernaut World of Warcraft, are known for sparking long Red Bull-fueled castle-raiding benders. Increasingly, they’re finding their way into the classroom too.
The field of educational gaming has grown steadily since the days of Oregon Trail or Wolf Quest, the 2007 game that was the first to be funded by the National Science Foundation. Educational researcher Constance Steinkuehler’s studies) or Jane McGonigal’s starry-eyed speech at TED last year about saving the world through games make for cool dinner table conversation. But there is at least one school-district based program that’s actually implementing World of Warcraft as a form of education.
“WoW in School” began as an after-school club between Cape Fear Middle School in Rocky Point, North Carolina and Suffern Middle School in New York. After students formed their own guild during the 2009-10 school year, the gaming club evolved into an elective language arts class with its own wiki.
Creator Lucas Gillespie, who was previously a biology teacher, says the program’s goals are to reach disaffected students. “[W]hen I was still in the classroom, I had students who could argue the finer points of wielding maces versus daggers quite eloquently, and I thought, ‘Where is this passion for the parts of the cell or for genetics?’”
Using WoW, Gillespie hopes to anchor students including those academically or behaviorally at risk, and “fringe” students who show low interest in their classes or school environment. “[When] you think about it, how does a 60 minute lecture compete with what they’re experiencing in their online games? In a place where they have purpose, the learning is relevant and contextual, and where they are leaders,” Gillespie says.
The practical educational aspects of WoW in School are essential writing and literacy: among other goals students write argumentative pieces, poetry, character Tweets, analyze the plots of quest chains, and read Tolkein’s The Hobbit to analyze Bilbo’s archetypical “hero’s quest” in relation to WoW level progression. (My interest was piqued by a rumor about a NYC-based program that was teaching middle school students fiscal responsibility through Warcraft, most likely based on David Friedman’s 2009 proposal to use the game as a tool for university economics classes.)
Also relevant are “unquantifiables,” says Gillespie. “They’re learning teamwork and leadership skills. They’re learning effective online communication. They’re learning about digital citizenship, their digital footprint, and that yes, these concepts even apply to the online gaming world. Those are things we say we want to teach in education, but that I feel we do a poor job of. Here, though, kids are learning it because they’re doing it in a meaningful context. Take XBox Live for example. Spend any time playing Call of Duty and you’ll quickly see a pressing need for us to address digital citizenship.”
Gillespie says the reception from teachers and parents so far has been “very positive.” “We’re definitely a fish bowl in the school. Teachers are always coming by to look in, to see what we’re up to.” With some recent interest from schools in Florida and Australia, he hopes the program will continue to grow.
Additionally, the wiki notes that the entire project, including “a fully-developed language arts course, aligned to middle grades standards” will be available freely under a Creative Commons license – which is, of course, a neat lesson about sharing.
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