Online Gaming Goes to College

In a current project with high school teachers in Nebraska I’ve set up a series of online learning experiences to give them a sense of what the technologies are that current students might be experiencing.

I’ve asked them to experience Social Networking and explore sites like Blogger, Flickr, MySpace and sites like classmates.com. I’ve asked them to become familiar with podcasts, YouTube, and experience Wikipedia.

Finally, I’ve asked them to become familiar with massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG).

In reading an innovation blog called Sharkride I just learned about an online game being used for an entire course for credit at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Their Econ 201 course is a microeconomics course which will be taught via an online video game! The principles of microeconomics are taught by “following an alien species that must learn how to survive after crash-landing on a futuristic, post-apocalyptic earth.”

This is an perfect example of what is coming and a small glimpse into the future of interactive learning.

Making Learning Relevant