Just because it is a game does not mean it cannot be leveraged for educational purposes. You would be surprised at how many different skills are involved in successfully playing a game such as this.

WoW is what you make of it. Yes, it can be the devils breeding ground if you treat it as warcrack, and it can in fact be a teaching tool.

Those who would write-off the benefits that would come from a program like this are the same people who refuse to believe that it does "take a village" to raise a child.

In a world where "no child left behind" was/is a horrible bipartisan failure because the government failed to recognize that leaving no child behind isn't done with standardized tests and textbooks. It's done by educators that use every possible resource to teach.

Instead of dismissing the program, appluad it and its developers for honing in on the lost boys of the American education system. Too many times we shove ritalin down the throats of our youth because teachers would rather drug them instead of recognizing that not all people learn in the traditional manner and then adjust their teaching accordingly.

Faerun hit it right in the head when he said, "I don't think they really mean that WoW will teach you a lot, but that preparing for raids and learning how to play your character well will make you want to learn things (theorycrafting - math, blogs - writing, guild web sites - computer science) that you wouldn't have bothered to learn otherwise."

Children are not stupid. They are incredibly good at absorbing information, in memorizing and in developing skills. They only use that ability, however, when they are interested and engaged.

If I were a teacher and had a classroom full of WoW addicts, you'd better believe I'd use examples from WoW to demonstrate purely academic concepts. If they were into pokemon, I'd use examples from Pokemon. If they were into cowboy princesses from Mars who get their magical powers from Starburst brand candies, I'd find a way to use that too.

Dry lectures don't work nearly as well as when children want to learn something.

This comment scares me.

Bah, that was supposed to be in reply to the first comment of the thread. I swear this blog's comment engine is seriously buggy.

Also, I'd delete it if I could. I misread the post I was replying to.

Isn't the cliche you are looking for "devil's playground"?

Almost no breeding of any sort goes on among wow players near as I can tell.

As a female gamer I do everything I can to keep it that way.