At the first keynote of Toronto's Future Play 2007 conference for game educators and developers, Dr. Constance Steinkuehler, assistant professor in the Educational Communication & Technology program for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argued that MMOs and online worlds are good "push technologies" for education, rather than threats to it.
Her presentation was titled "Massively Multiplayer Online Games as an Educational Ethnology: An Outline for Research," a deceptively straightforward talk about Steinkuehler's research findings on what constitutes gameplay in MMOs and virtual worlds, and how that research might be applied to education programs.
Why did Steinkuehler write a dissertation that was a two-year ethnography on virtual worlds? "I needed to find out what in the world would be productive from playing these games," she explained, describing how she played Lineage, Lineage II and World of Warcraft for research.
"I was a siege princess leading a huge guild through massive battles, I learned more about military tactics in those two years than I ever wanted to," she recalled.
Blizzard Entertainment has announced the opening of beta registrations for “World of Warcraft: The War Within,” inviting players to explore new subterranean worlds beneath Azeroth.
Danish from eXputer: "Despite Blizzard's attempt to give a fresh new spin to World of Warcraft, some fans still seem to be stuck in the past."
HG writes: "Blizzard is usually pretty bad at keeping secrets, but the company somehow managed to keep this one under wraps until now. Plunderstorm is a special limited-time event that’s basically World of Warcraft’s take on the Battle Royale genre."
Where were these articles when my wife was telling me I spend too much time on FFXI?