WoW – Dr. Ray Pastore's Instructional Technology Blog

How to implement World of Warcraft in Schools

admin — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:03:06 +0000

Here are some great resources for implement wow in schools. There is actually a full curriculum for students, with directions on where to begin, when wanting to implement something of this nature into your classroom. These were put together by a graduate of my Master’s program at UNCW and are very well done. If you or your school are interested in doing something like this yourself please contact me and I can help you and get you in touch with the developer of these materials:

Here is the guide to implementing wow

Here is a main site that contains tons of materials:

Setting up Accounts
Budget
Parental Involvement
Curriculum with lesson plans and standard information
Sample Student Projects
Assessment information

As you can see the site is very in-depth and contains all of the materials you need to get started.

World of Warcraft MoP Trailer

admin — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:23:28 +0000

This is the trailer for the new game being released this September:

Parents: What you need to know about video games in the classroom

admin — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 11:51:49 +0000

Here is a great link from Wow in school that highlights a bunch of good resources for parents who are concerned about a ‘video’ game being used in their childs classroom. Even my undergrads just think video games are ‘mindless’ entertainment until I show them how games can be used to promote all types of learning objectives while motivating the students. Anyway here is the link: http://wowinschool.pbworks.com/w/page/5268739/Parental%20Involvement

Here is some same sources from the site that I really liked:

Tips for Smart Video Gaming – by Connect Safely
http://www.connectsafely.org/Safety-Tips/smart-tips-for-videogaming.html

Guide to Parental Controls on the XBox 360
http://www.getgamesmart.com/tools/setcontrols/

Powerful Play: A Mom and Son in World of Warcraft
http://www.netfamilynews.org/?p=31128

Why Kids Love Video Games and What Parents Can Do About It
http://www.netfamilynews.org/?p=31146

The Serious Need for Play – Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-serious-need-for-play

The Video Game Revolution (PBS Series)
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/index.html

8 Myths About Video Games Debunked (by Henry Jenkins, MIT)
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

Gamers and dating? Thought this was hilarious

admin — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:27:00 +0000

This graphic is pretty funny, check it out:

Star wars vs World of Warcraft

admin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:59:55 +0000

With the upcoming release of Star Wars I thought this was pretty funny:

World of Warcraft in education: Interface

admin — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:01:21 +0000

Here is a video that briefly shows the World or Warcraft interface. This video is intended to be short and to quickly describe some of the things wow can do:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srxQmQEyH_w]

World of Warcraft expansion announced

admin — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:29:07 +0000

For those of you who play WOW, they have just announced a new expansion during the Blizzcon conference. Since we use WOW in my gaming class I thought it appropriate to post here. New expansion looks awesome, so very innovative ideas. I am most excited for the Panda Bear Race and Monk Class:)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/mists-of-pandaria/

World of Warcraft in Education

admin — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:39:46 +0000

This week I am going to be implementing World of Warcraft in my gaming and simulation class. We are going to be exploring the use of WoW as a learning tool. Specifically, I am going to be showing my students how WoW can be used for:

Teamwork
Math
Writing
Reading
Economics
and much more

For this lesson, I am having all students download and install the free version of WoW on their computers before class. I have divided the class up into teams and each group need to choose a Race in the game and then create a character based on that Race. When students arrive in class, we are going to have a brief discussion on MMORPGs and their use in education, we will let them know that even when they struggle they can find a solution, now they can Hire someone to do you online course. Then we are going to play WoW. My goal is to get each team to work together and level their new character a few levels together. In a similar lesson last year we played Diablo 3 and used this buy path of diablo items to get special perks. Game play will last around 1 hour. After, I will have the class watch my computer and I will show them many of the other things they can do in WoW as their new characters are really unable to do very much. This will be lead into an online discussion on WoW throughout the week and its use in education. Then next week, we are having a guest speaker who will speak on their use of WoW in K-12 Education.

This is a very exciting week. I will post how the activity goes. Here are some links on WoW in education:

Kids Perceptions

A Schools Wiki