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Archive News

Page history last edited by Lucas Gillispie 13 years, 2 months ago

Archive News

 

Missing something that was once on the front page?  Find it here!


(9/27/2010) - Gillispie - Added an Implementation Page for Accounts with information and tips on how to manage multiple student accounts.

 

(9/16/2010) - Gillispie - WoWinSchool: A Hero's Journey is entering its fourth week at Cape Fear Middle School.  Already the students have begun reading their accompanying novel, The Hobbit and have set out on their own heroic journey as an avatar in World of Warcraft.  Housing all of the assignments in Moodle has been a huge plus as well and the students, for the most part, have adapted well to the online course model.  Suffern Middle School's program is underway as well.  If you're interested in seeing what a typical weekly module in Moodle looks like, take a look at this presentation:

 

 

(8/19/2010) - Gillispie - Great week at Games in Education Symposium in Albany, NY!  Below are the presentations that Peggy and I did related to the program.  Additional session resources can be found at http://www.edurealms.com.

 

 

 

(7/29/2010) - Gillispie - Join us for a discussion of World of Warcraft and Learning With Teens, as Peggy and I have a discussion with Steve Hargadon of Classroom 2.0.

(7/22/2010) - Gillispie - So, What's Next? - http://edurealms.com/?p=199

(6/24/2010) - Gillispie - It's incredible how fast the year came and went.  We learned so much from our students in this project we can't begin to share it all.  So now for the exciting news:  WoWinSchool will be offered as an elective, 7th grade language-arts course in the 2010-2011 school year!  The challenge ahead lies in creating the materials for the course.  Here's where we're headed:

 

  • The course will be built entirely in Moodle so that it's completely modular, portable, and digital (aka - Paperless!).
  • The elective course will be doubled up with a reading course so that our students are all reading the same novel together.  We are in the process of selecting our novel.
  • The course will focus on the "Hero's Journey" theme, drawing parallels from student experiences in World of Warcraft as well as characters in the chosen novel.
  • Once again, students from North Carolina and New York will work and play together, and we are looking for any other schools who might be interested in participating!
  • The course will use an XP and leveling system instead of grades.  (We may even do an achievement system.)
  • This course will be aligned to state and national standards.

There is a vast amount of work to do between now and the start of school and we'll be sharing everything here, so check back soon! 

 

(6/4/2010)  Sheehy - A MUST Read!   Work is not the opposite of play!  by Leighton Reid

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(5/17/2010) - Gillispie - Flash Mob Antics in World of Warcraft - http://edurealms.com/?p=192 - Find out how our students made a mundane day in Stormwind a bit more interesting for a few players.

 

(5/11/2010) - Gillispie/Sheehy - We were honored to present the project to a great group of educators for ARVEL Lisa Dawley added a write-up to her blog.  Check it out - http://lisadawley.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/arvel-sig-wow-in-schools/

 

(4/26/2010) -Sheehy- In game assignment seeks to boost game communication skills. Azeroth Academy - Suffern Middle School in WoW

  

(4/15/2010) - GIllispie - Our project is mentioned in the New Media Consortium's 2010 Horizon Report for K-12!  Game-Based Learning is coming!  I'm excited that our students are paving the way!

 

(4/08/2010) - Sheehy - Leadership!

 

 

 

(3/19/10) - Sheehy - Best Video Ever!  

(3/16/10) - Gillispie - Great Skype chat via Kevin Honeycutt with a task force from Minnesota exploring games in education.  Enjoy sharing our projects and more over our students' awesomeness!

 

(3/12/10) - Gillispie - Blogged "Pwnership" - observations of students before and during their virtual tour for the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference.

 

(3/5/10) - Gillispie - All of my presentation resources from the Learning With the Lich King Presentation (NCTIES 2010) are available at - http://edurealms.com/?page_id=154

 

(3/2/10) - Gillispie - Busy, busy!  Making preparations for conference presentations and such.  We'll be presenting the project at NCTIES and VWBPE in March, NCDLA in April, and at GLS in June!  Check our our first video, WoWinSchool:  Student Perspectives:

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(2/26/10) - Gillispie - Student Guild Page is live!  This website is student edited! Visit:  The Legacy Guild Wiki.

 

(1/27/10) - Gillispie - Meet "The Legacy"

 

(1/6/10) - Gillispie - Blogged - "Diving Into Deadmines.

 

(1/4/10) - Gillispie - We're back up and running following the Christmas break.  I'll be sharing what's going on soon! 

 

 

 

(12/15/09) - Gillispie - Blogged - "Reflections and Updates."

 

(12/11/09) - Gillispie - added a brief explanation of patching and game updates to Technical Issues.

 

(12/10/09) - Gillispie - The project forums are up.  I believe I've got the settings correct to allow the public to view them.  You can see them at:  http://www.edurealms.com/wowinschool .

 

(12/10/09) - Gillispie - Be sure to read Peggy's reflections on the Azeroth Academy - Suffern Middle School in WoW page. 

 

(12/9/09) - Gillispie - Patching 3.3!  Some of the changes should help the students speed through the early levels.  Deadmines, here we come!

 

(12/7/09) - Gillispie - Blogged "First Contact" - http://edurealms.com/?p=126  Discussing formation of a guild with Peggy's students today.  Got to get the kids to take even more ownership! 

 

(11/19/09) - Gillispie - Day 3 Reflections at:  http://edurealms.com/?p=101

 

(11/18/09) - Gillispie - Helga Brown has added another great lesson plan called Finding Mr T!  It encourages students to use communication skills to write detailed instructions on how to acquire Mohawk Grenades!!  Awesome!

 

(11/18/09) - Gillispie - Added some information regarding our experiences with issues surrounding networks, firewalls, ports, and such in the Technical Issues secion.

 

(11/17/09) - Gillispie - Day One Reflections at:  http://edurealms.com/

 

(11/16/09) - Gillispie - How do you get started with something like this?  What does the first day look like?  Here's our rough agenda:  http://docs.google.com/View?id=dr2v9jv_235szqnghr

 

 

(11/16/09) - Gillispie - Today marks the first day with students in the project at Cape Fear Middle School.  Today we'll focus on orienting the students to the project.  We'll spend some time discussing expectations and rules for participation.  Afterwards, we're going to discuss the concept of their role in the World of Warcraft, especially as it relates to character naming, race and class selection.  Craig and I have decided this portion of the day would best be done in a round-table format with some discussion of what a balanced group looks like (tank, healer, DPS), and encouraging students to take a team-oriented approach to character selection.  We'll also have the students create a character map that describes characteristics (or desired characteristics) of their avatar in WoW.  It will be interesting to see how that concept evolves as they progress through character development over the course of the project.  If you are interested in seeing our student expecations, you can view them at:  http://docs.google.com/View?id=dr2v9jv_234g8zr4wfn.

 

(11/12/09) - Sheehy: Still on hold waiting for Verizon to rewire outside line for Internetz...Frustrating for me - as well as for the students eagerly awaiting our start-up! 

 

(11/11/09) - (Gillispie) Spent a large amount of time setting up student accounts yesterday for the program.  This can be rather tedious.  Fortunately, I had help from Craig and Amy Lawson, teachers from our district who are both players and will be assisting with the project.  I highly recommend creating a spreadsheet to manage all of the data.  Should an account need accessing or be compromised, etc., you'll want to have this information available.  I've created a spreadsheet to do just that.  Here's a link to a template:  http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArBK9ina59d-dDM5ejJ4SjQwRTdvM0djc1J6VkJ6NVE&hl=en  .  To maximize on play time, we've used the Recruit-A-Friend option.  Each of the teachers involved in the program recruited five of the student accounts.  Once a sixty-day prepaid card is entered for those accounts, they will be rewarded with a free month of play (and a snazzy Zebra mount).  This will provide some incentive for their time investment in the project, plus grants each of the student accounts 10 days of trial time + 30 days of trial time (for activating WoW (original version of the game)).  Timing-wise, this should work out nicely as our accounts can then be frozen at Christmas Break and reactivated at the start of the Spring semester.

 

(11/9/09) - WoWinSchool and CogDis Guild in a feature THE Journal Article - http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/11/09/virtual-communities.aspx?sc_lang=en

 

(11/6/09) (Sheehy) Lucas- Be sure to use the 30 day free trial BEFORE activating the game-card.  (ugh-only did it once but still was a "duh" moment).  (Gillispie) - Thanks!  One of my former students and fellow guildmates actually mentioned that to me (of course it was a student!)

 

(11/5/09) (Gillispie) The remainder of my headsets and the pre-paid game cards arrived today.  Still no sign of the Battlechest. :(  The official launch date for the program at CFMS will be during the week of November 16th.  Also thinking through recommend a friend issues.

 

(11/05/09)  (Sheehy) spent 2 hours installing yesterday to find firewall and patches all need to be addressed.  Fabulous IT Team are taking care of that today  and we should be able to continue the install this afternoon.  Was fun to have my Mac IT guy create a Battlenet account!  Still figuring out how to take advantage of the "recommend a friend options" .  Also - I'm creating 12 gmail accounts to associate with the WoW accounts to keep things tidy.  Many questions remain-- will keep posting as they come up!

 

(11/5/09) (Malmstrom) Found this gem featuring "WoW in School" posted on "Second Classroom - Students using Virtual Worlds" Ning.  Enjoy!

NOTE: (Sheehy)  This was produced by our own KerryJ in Cognitive Dissonance!

 

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(11/3/09) (Sheehy) Suffern Middle School student's permission slips are rolling in!  Interesting that about 1/3 of the students we approached were totally disinterested in the prospect of joining an after school group for video games.  I'm expecting that once word gets out, there will be a much greater pool of interested students but we are firm on keeping the pilot group small: 12 students.  The criteria for selection was really based on the school professionals' instincts.  I am now exploring ways in which I can document their experiences while protecting their privacy.  In addition to game play, forum participation and reflection will be a fundamental participatory factor, and will include curricular connections driven by both teacher and student.  I'm looking into 2.0 apps that will facilitate this.  Suggestions?  Could be time for Google Pages. 

     Tomorrow the IT Staff will be meeting me at 2:30 EST to do the install.  Will post progress as it happens.  SO EXCITED!

 

 

(11/3/09) (Gillispie) Our order of headsets came were delivered today.  We purchased Plantronics Gamecom 367 headsets for the students.  They'll be usingVentrilo for VoIP communication.  They are extremely comfortable and seem somewhat durable.  We'll see how they hold up.  Otherwise, all 15 lab PC's have up to Burning Crusade installed and are now patched to 3.2.2a.  Installation was a long process.  Downloading the came client may have been more efficient.  All PC's also have Ventrilo installed as well.  Our WAN engineer was on site today, so we tested the impact of both the game and Ventrilo.  The game was using very low bandwidth, however, Ventrilo was capping out at around 80K for both in- and outbound voice communication.  I suspect that's where it caps whether 1 or 15 people are talking simultaneously.  Besides, you'll rarely have instances where more than one speaks at a time due to the fact that Ventrilo is full duplex and you'd be talking over each other.

 

 

(10/30/09) - (Gillispie) First machine is ready to go... 14 to go.  Getting 14-30 FPS and 84 latency.  At CFMS, the machines (PC's) we are using have the following specs:  Dell 360.  E2200 @ 2.2 Ghz.  2.19 Ghz.  3 GB Ram.  Intel G33/G31 Integrated Graphics. 

 

(10/19/09) - Added a link to Forums.  These are hosted by the RezEd.org community and will be a great place to discuss the project.

 

(9/24/09) - The WoWinSchool Project was featured in episode 40 of GlobalKids' Podcast!  Wiki contributors Helga Brown, Lucas Gillispie, and Craig Lawson, were interviewed about the potential of the game in the classroom and about what's going on with the WoWinSchool Wiki.  You can listen to it here:  http://www.rezed.org/page/rezed-podcast-40-discussions

 

(9/18/09) - A great video from Edutopia.org that mentions the educational value of games such as World of Warcraft.

Fliqz has shut down their service. To access this video, email support with this video id: dcbe0336bbee46e688e70d7fa277aaee

 

 

(8/31/09) - Marianne Malmstrom (a great resource for Machinima in Education!) has shared the video she created of our gnome run to Ironforge at GIES 09.  Visit her page to learn all about how she did it!

 

Gnome Run - Teachers Experience World of Warcraft at GIE09(8/6/09) - The WoWinSchool Project was presented on August 4th and 5th at the 3rd Annual Games in Education Symposium in Troy, NY.  Lucas Gillispie presented "Learning with the Lich King" on Wednesday and on Thursday, he, Peggy Sheehy, and Marianne Malmstrom did a three hour, hands-on workshop on Second Life, Jing for screencapture (and Machinima), and World of Warcraft.

 

(7/14/09) - The project was just featured in WoW.com's 15 Minutes of Fame.  Peggy and I were interviewed by Lisa Poisso about the potential of WoW for learning.  Read more at:  http://www.wow.com/2009/07/14/15-minutes-of-fame-learn-to-game-to-game-to-learn/.

 

(7/14/09) - Helga Brown has been adding some fantastic lessons to the site, aligned to North Carolina's Standard Course of Study.  If you haven't seen them yet, check out Nordic Mythology.doc, Netiquette.doc, Beowulf.doc, and WoW E-conomics.doc.  Helga, you ROCK!

 

(6/24/09) - A number of blogs and news sites have picked up this project and on some, meaningful discussion is developing.  A section called, "In The News, Blogs, and More," has been added to collect these.  More stories are in the works.  Also, a Facebook Fan Page has been created to add another layer of networking.  Just search for WoWinSchool.

 

(6/4/09) - The interest in this project is growing daily and I'm happy to welcome several new folks to the Wiki!  I'm very excited to have been asked to present what we're doing with this project at the Games in Education Symposium 2009 in August.  I'm looking forward to meeting up with my guildmates from Cogntive Dissonance while there.  As far as my own implementation, I've drafted the funding proposal but am currently waiting on NC's Department of Public Instruction to release EETT allotments to the state's districts.  I'm currently in communication with stakeholders at the school-level regarding logistics and student selection for the program.  Very exciting! - Lucas 

 

(5/12/09) - Helga Brown, an educator in North Carolina, has contributed the first full-fledged lesson plan, Design A Quest Chain (.doc), aligned to North Carolina's English II standards.  It's amazing.

 

Added a Glossary.  As I read through the lesson ideas we've been developing, I realized that as gamers (and educators) we have LOL (lots of lingo!).  Take time to add to our growing list of World of Warcraft and online gaming terms.

 

(5/5/09) - Welcome RezEd community!  There's much work to be done, so feel free to jump in!  If you are looking for ways to contribute, browse some of the materials I've already added here or visit the "To Do" seciton.  If you know others who could make contributions, please have them apply for access and give a bit of identifying information when doing so, and I'll approve it as soon as possible.

 

(5/5/09) - I've adapted a lesson plan template to serve as a guideline for lesson development.  This is a suggested format as some lessons may not fit this outline.  For lessons that I develop, I will attempt to follow this template's format simply as a way of standardizing lessons.  To see the template, visit the Curriculum Overview page.

 

(4/3/09) - Initial tests on a Dell 330 went extremely well.  Despite the fact the system has an integrated Intel graphics processor, the game ran smoothly.  One of our district technicians and I tested the impact on the network and bandwidth.  The game has surprisingly little impact.  Below is a chart:

 

WoW Network Bandwidth Test

 

To test the traffic caused by the program, I closed down all other network using applications (IM, etc.).  I created a new character on a high population server (a dwarf), and ran him from the starting area to Ironforge (the dwarven capitol city).  The part of the chart indicated by 1 represents login and character creation.  The area denoted by the 2 is the initial upswing in data as I entered the capitol city.  The area indicated by the 3 is log out.  In other words, this chart shows only network usage by the workstation I used to test.  I presume that the spike when entering the capitol city was due to the crowd of other players there (the system has to download data about what armor they're wearing, character models, etc.).  After that initial load, it's primarily handling new folks who enter the city and chat.  For comparative purposes, opening GMail and sending a short message spiked at 45 k, well above the maximum experienced here.  Thus, even with a classroom with 15-17 players logged in at once, the impact on bandwidth would be minimal.

 

-Lucas

 

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