15 Minutes of Fame: Learn to game, to game to learn Part 2
by Lisa Poisso 
Jul 14th 2009 at 3:00PM
We've spoken with other groups of academics who band together in guilds, and they don't always progress very far or become truly embedded into WoW's player culture. Is Cog Diss actively raiding? Peggy: We're raiding now. We actually have an alliance with two other guilds so we can do 25-man content. We actually have about a dozen level 80s now and a lot of new people have entered.
I find it fascinating. I love it. It's fun. I love being challenged. I love laughing at myself when I do something really dumb, and my guild will laugh with me and not get really freaked out and stressed out (what I hear goes on in other guilds). I just find it fascinating that there are so many different experiences and so many levels to it. That's what I try to explain to people who have no idea.
What do your colleagues think about your gaming?
Peggy: I was just standing around the main office in my school one day, talking to my principal who's a great guy and we have a nice relationship. I turned to him and I said, "Hey, you're a gamer, aren't you, Brian?" And he just kinda looked at me and said "Yeahhh ... Why?" And I said, "I just leveled up! I just got to level 40 last night in World of Warcraft," and he just kind of smiled. And then every once in a while, I'd make these comments to him, until one day I said "Level 70," and he said, " ... you do know that I have like four level 80 'toons?"
Then I started hounding him to join the guild -- and he did. So now there's a whole new dynamic, because now when I go into a 10-man raid, the first thing I do is say, "Ok, I gotta make sure that my principal doesn't die." Now, when I talk to the kids at school, I'll have my iPhone out and have Chest open or something and be looking at my armor, and the kids'll say, "Let's see Mr. Fox's armor!" And then I get an e-mail from him saying, "I just had three kids come into the office and tell me I had to get more purples on my Hunter."
It's a wonderful climate that you can develop in your school, and it's a wonderful way to reach those kids who may be the social outcast or the struggling learner or the "I'm such a geek nobody hangs out with me" kid.
Peggy: I would say that this is the most remarkable experience of my life, for the reason that in most circles, I am the go-to person. I am the information person. I am the how-do-you-do-it person. In WoW, that role has been reversed, and I am the struggling learner. (A lot of it is due to time constraint. I don't have the time to go and research which add-on to use for my Holy Paladin heals and delve into the backstory as much as I'd like to.) It's a fabulous experience for me to see how the struggling child feels in the classroom, to see how you might be reluctant to raise your hand and ask a question because you feel "less than."
It's really reminded me that I have kids at all different readiness levels around me, and I have to make sure I'm not addressing just the top or the bottom or the middle. Things do have to be level. Language does have to be changed. It's a remarkable transference of understanding for me. I step out of the role of expert and become the role of learner. That's what we need our teachers to do.
Lucas: I can echo that from my own experience. As a WoW player, I'm not one to spend a great deal of time on sites like the Elitist Jerks site and sites like that doing the research – but my students are. A lot of times, I'll just stop and ask them ('cause I'm lazy – just like they are). I'll say, "Hey, what's the best gear? How should I spec?" I don't mind asking, and they don't mind telling.
Peggy: And that's such a wonderful, wonderful thing to happen in a classroom, when the teacher steps into the role of co-learner. In a given 45-minute period, the teacher might be the expert and then the student might be the expert. Half of your participation is mentorship and half of it is teaching, and the roles are reversed constantly, and it just forms a whole new human relationship with your students.
So how are you actually bringing WoW into the classroom?
Peggy: I am doing it in September as an after-school club. Right now, there is no formalized World of Warcraft learning in my school; it's the kids who play and me, talking. But because Lucas started this whole wonderful online project, and I jumped in on it, and the curriculum is being developed ... This is the gateway. You start it out as an after-school club, and then the next year you introduce it to a small cohort of teachers -- and then you get it pushed into the curriculum. We'll be in the school, in the library, but of course we know they'll be playing at home at night, too.
Lucas: We're looking at a slightly different implementation model. I want to see what happens when I take kids who have no exposure to this sort of environment. My intent is to work with one of the principals at one of the high schools in our district, looking at mostly underclassmen. My ideal world would be that they're all students who are at risk, students who need something to anchor them in the school -- and again, students who have no prior background, because very quickly I could foresee (no pun intended) a sort of class system developing between those who know and those who don't. I want everyone to start at level 1, literally and metaphorically, and just see what happens. It's like a big experiment for me, to see what happens when you take kids who don't have that exposure. Peggy: With the schools that choose to be involved, we'll start a guild on one server so that kids will be playing with kids from other schools, but it'll all be the same community.
We understand there's talk of implementing special groups or curricula for "at risk" and "gifted" students.
Peggy: When I talk to teachers about this – and these are teachers who have never gamed or seen WoW or anything – I try to give them some idea of the kind of thinking that goes on, the kind of problem solving, the depth of the narrative, these kind of things. One group will say to me, "Oh, that would get my at risk kids really engaged!" But then the other teachers will say, "Ah, this would be just the thing for my gifted kids who are so bored with the traditional schooling."
So what are we really saying? We're really saying that engagement works for every learner. If you can charge up their engagement level, that's really what it's all about.
Read more about the WoW-specific curriculum under development at WoW in Schools.
"I never thought of playing WoW like that!" - neither did we, until we talked with these players. From an Oscar-winning 3-D effects director to a custom action figure artist and even a bunch of guys who get together for dinner and group raiding in person every week, catch it on 15 Minutes of Fame.Filed under: Virtual selves, Features, Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
impurezero Jul 14th 2009 3:15PM
Alright...I've got a stupid question. What's with the pink nametags in the screenshots? Does that indicate something that I've somehow never come across, or are their display's colors just set differently than mind?
micgillam Jul 14th 2009 4:22PM
Hmmm.. Likely could be an add-on. Maybe a class indicator or something along those lines?
Peggy Sheehy Jul 17th 2009 10:35AM
Spot on -it's a Healbot option :-)
Ety Jul 14th 2009 3:16PM
I enjoyed this as an introductory interview but would love to read more details on specific applications to other models of education. At which point do the students find themselves connecting educational experiences in WoW to more traditional academic practices? Do they receive materials at the start of the course to provide them with a platform for understanding WoW's modes of discourse as practice for other coursework? Or does the very nature of online gaming necessitate a more organic approach to learning development? How does funding for a program like this work, especially in consideration of those students who would benefit from this but lack the financial means to participate?
Linainverse Jul 14th 2009 4:16PM
I had some of the same questions. Along with ones about parental consent, and participation.
Lucas Gillispie Jul 14th 2009 11:01PM
@Ety - Great questions. The fundamental idea behind this project is to use the game as a vehicle for engaging students. Through that engagement, we can begin to focus on skills such as literacy, writing, mathematics, etc. Helga Brown, another educator involved in the project, has written several extensive lesson plans that are aligned to North Carolina's Standard Course of Study. These lessons could easily be aligned to other states' standards (and, of course, they can be downloaded and edited accordingly). For example, she recently created a lesson that has students comparing/contrasting Norse Mythology with the quest chains for Sons of Hodir reputation. As a follow-up, they write a script and use their avatars to re-create a scene from one of the stories and produce a video that would be uploaded to YouTube. Again, the game is merely a catalyst.
As for funding, I'll be funding my project through a federal grant program, but there is some discussion on the site about other ways to acquire funding for the project. My students will only be playing at school during the after-school session. Since there are likely to be inequalities in regards to access at home, this is the best option for my program. It will be highly supervised. In other words, we will be playing together.
Please take a moment to explore the project wiki at: http://wowinschool.pbworks.com. Many of these sorts of questions are addressed there. If not, feel free to initiate that discussion. That's the point. :)
-Lucas
Charlie Jul 14th 2009 3:22PM
Great article. One of my favorite '15 Minutes' ever.
However, I do have one question. It feels a bit dangerous for me. Not from a teacher/student perspective, but from a parent/supervisor being uphappy with that kind of relationship.
I know for a fact that teachers have been fired for being friends with students on facebook, etc. I understand that its a bit different, and it depends on the school district, but i'm still worried that the teachers who are involved can get suspended/fired because of this.
Are either of you worried about this kind of reaction when it comes to wow being used in the classroom?
Ametrine Jul 14th 2009 3:55PM
There's a HUGE difference between being friends and pursuing an intimate relatinship, like the facebook/myspace teachers were doing.
impurezero Jul 14th 2009 4:13PM
There's also a huge difference between a tiny flat keychain shaped like a gun and a real gun...but kids have been expelled for the former. I think it's a valid question. Our schools are full of zero-tolerance rules these days that avoid the "hassle" of looking at specific cases by punishing everyone "equally" no matter what the circumstances...
Lucas Gillispie Jul 14th 2009 11:25PM
@Charlie - One of the important values of the project is transparency. As I mentioned in the interview, this is somewhat of an experiment (not scientific, mind you). And, it's my intention to share what happens, what works, what doesn't, and student work ad nauseum.
The way that I'll be implementing will be in such a way that we only play together in school. Students will be supervised at all times and there will be rules of conduct in place regarding behavior (we are trying to teach digital citizenship, after all). :)
As for the value of it to parents/admins... Well, look at what we're doing on the Wiki. (And in the future, look at what the kids are doing, producing, learning, saying...)
-Lucas
t0xic Jul 14th 2009 3:34PM
Down vote me if you like, but I think this belongs on "Penn and Teller: Bullshit!"
It's a game, people.
Vyktorea Jul 14th 2009 3:50PM
Congrats Lucas and Peggy on a wonderful interview!
And for those of you who are interested:
Cognitive Dissonance (Sisters of Elune, Alliance) was chartered in December 2007 as a group of educators exploring MMORPGs and their relationship to education. It has grown to a guild of colleagues and friends exploring the platform and experiencing the implications and applications to teaching and learning while having fun! Cognitive Dissonance is also an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. It became our name in honor of the conflict in thought between traditional learning structures and the ubiquitous use of technology in education. General themes of collective learning within the guild have emerged over time. Learning to game together, learning about gaming together, and in general learning from one another constitute the general domains of scholarship investigated by the group. We work to introduce new members to the game through meetings, resources, and events, and support one another from n00b to raiding at 80 through our guild structure and server-based guild alliances. Remembering the concept of "play" being an integral part of learning, we have established an arena to recall it for ourselves and include it within our teaching. A MMORPG guild has become for us an extension of our personal learning networks. We are educators... who play.
Interested in exploring? Information on how to join us can be found at http://cognitivedissonance.guildportal.com. Bring your creativity, your curiosity, your collaboration, and your courage!
Vyktorea: Guild Master
Syzyrgy: Grand Council
Linainverse Jul 14th 2009 4:12PM
I loved this 15 Minutes.
I wish programs like this would have been available earlier, in more schools. I really think some of the people I know who dropped out of school (be it because they had trouble connecting what they were learning with how it could help them in RL, or because they really didn't fit in with the rest of the school/class), would have been less likely to drop out if there were programs like this that interact and teach in a different way. There are so few non-traditional learning schools and methods available if you're out of a major city.
Terrant Jul 14th 2009 4:34PM
"My kids, who are 13 years old, are reading on a sixth-grade or a fourth-grade level in school when tested, but ... if you test them with the same methodology that you would test reading a John Steinbeck novel in school ... on World of Warcraft content, all of a sudden their scores are higher."
This is something I find really cool. Sure, WoW literacy is never going to be an essential life skill, but the promise of getting kids reading/thinking who don't respond to the mainstream curriculum is really exciting. Add to the fact that so many classics were for low/middle-brow audiences in their day, and even experts in literature can detest some of the cornerstones of their disciplines (I've met many English grad students who loathe Middlemarch, for example) - the strategy is probably less radical than it seems, but it's just it's rare to see that step being made these days. The complexity of a bureaucratic schooling system just doesn't lend itself to educators starting these type of programs.
Sorcefire Jul 14th 2009 5:17PM
Great article and another example of gaming being used as a means to teach. One question I'd really like answered is how something like this plays out in a more urban inner-city school system?
Overcrowded classrooms, lower mean income, more cultural distractions away from schooling, family, etc. are the bane and result of public education in dense urban areas, but I'm curious if something like WoW would help change that in any meaningful way.
Does the borderline gangbanger really have a hope of staying school and seeking a higher education if something like WoW is available as a different framework for education? Or is this something that only works in safer, more suburban school districts?
Either way this is definitely a good trend, but just curious whether it will ever pierce the thick and ugly skin of urban city public schooling.
Lucas Gillispie Jul 14th 2009 11:34PM
@Sorcefire - Those are the sorts of things that I want to know as well... Now, I'm not working in an inner-city district, in fact, this will take place in a very rural district, but some of the same issues are here too...
I think that for some kids, it's about having an anchor... something that makes you want to "come back to school" the next day. Will this be that anchor for every kid? No. I don't think so. However, what if it keeps one kid in school? What if the projects we do give one kid enough self-confidence that they decide that, "Maybe I can pass 9th-Grade English." What if that kid, who would've slipped through the cracks, doesn't? If so, then I think it will be worthwhile.
-Lucas
Kelz Jul 15th 2009 2:39AM
I go to a pretty different type of school.
In the year I first started, my first year of high school, 4 years ago now (oshi-), one of our teachers held an interesting english class as part of the research for his masters degree. It was on games in education. We had 3 classes a week, 1 hour each, which we would spend playing one of three free MMOs. Since we were at a mac based school, they had to be mac compatable. The three choices were Oberin, PlaneShift, or RuneScape. At the time I was a little 13year old girl who played runescape, so my choice was obvious. I quit not long after though. ;)
We did various activities on the games outside of class, and one lesson we even spent being not allowed to talk outside of the game.
Despite being at a level aimed at year 9-10s (first two years of high school), because of the way the school works, we had people from all 5 year levels signed up. It was the biggest class that term. We had to get another internet connection in because the games were blocked normally, and we didn't have enough ethernet ports for everyone with a couple of large hubs! There's still a picture of the class on one of the advertising things in a window, you can see my beanie clad head. :3
http://www.unlimited.school.nz for the curious.
Kelz Jul 15th 2009 2:47AM
3 and 1/2 years ago. Shhh. I'm on holiday, I don't need to think.
(I know, what am I doing on holiday reading WoW blogs? ;-;)