Teacher/Gamer/Trailblazer

I got my new copy of THE Journal in my mailbox at school the other day and the cover story was about a group of educators that meet informally inside World of Warcraft (WOW) to network and learn together about everything from general teaching strategies ("Does anyone know a good lesson on reptiles?") to specific possibilities for using a game like WOW to engage and teach students.

The "Guild" is called Cognitive Dissonance. Here's an in-game shot of some of its members:

I have to admit, I love the idea. I played WOW once and quickly realized I'd better steer clear or risk getting sucked into playing it for hours every night. It sounds like the people in the article are still running that risk but nonetheless they are getting some interesting things done. It's a great opportunity for communicating with other professionals in a low-risk, informal setting (players range from teachers to principals and other administrators) and it also stimulates discourse on a topic that we've all become familiar with in the last semester: the need to incorporate technology and gaming into education.

Second Life has already been used in this way but bring it back to Pink and notice the key difference between Second Life and WOW. Play. There's just a lot more opportunity to have fun in a game than a non-game virtual world and that sense of play helps stimulate and relax members.

As a professional teacher I often notice possible lessons emerge when I play games. But since I'm always alone I tend to just forget about them. These people are all involved in a shared endeavor so when one of them thinks to themselves "Hey, there's a math lesson imbedded in the process of selecting weapons and armor for maximum effectiveness" they can talk about it right as they think it.

One member is the Instructional Technology Coordinator for a district in North Carolina and he's moving theory to practice by attempting to start an after-school program for at-risk students that uses WOW as a platform for teaching.

I know from experience that KISD's firewall is set up to block computers from accessing game servers so even if administrator will and funding were in place there are still a lot of barriers to such a program in my district. It inspires me to get closer to the decision-makers when it comes to technology in Killeen because there have been several instances in the last 2 years where our strict tech policies have stymied a good idea. There's that need for vertical/lateral networking.

Regardless, I'd join the WOW guild right now for the opportunity for discourse but I have neither the time nor the money to play it at this point. I'm hoping to get into Star Trek Online when it goes active in a year or so. Perhaps I will start my own educators' guild (they'll probably call them fleets) when I get going in that.