Hullo folks, Gord here with another IdeaWarz winner, one that’ll warm the heart of any Richard Garriott fan, or parent of an Evercrack junkie.

Congratulations to Game for the idea, Virtual Education Gaming Institute! (Yes, community members are already helping brainstorm up a new name.)

Game has already created an environmental board game called FoulplayTM, designed to augment science and social studies curriculums.

Game’s Virtual Education Gaming Institute, is for middle and senior high school students who would prefer to learn school curriculum through reality based strategy games in a virtual world. Students select from a number of virtual classroom game experiences designed to introduce science and social studies curriculum in a manner that is engaging, collaborative and challenging.

Combining addictive gaming and learning is the holy grail of education. Sure, you can take 50 kids, cram them in a room with books, and yell at them when ever they stop reading… it may be effective (depending on how loud you yell), but it doesn’t scale very (try cramming 100 more kids into the room).

But combining MMORPG and learning? If you can crack that nut, we could force all sorts of learning into those little punks. To effectively play online games, plenty of learning already occurs. Social norms in that environment, how to program keyboard macros, knowledge of the capabilities of each race of character, the effects of caffeine on a developing nervous system.

Yet so far, there are few examples combining multi-player online games with learning. There are interesting interactive exhibits in Second Life, but I’ve not seen any described as addictive… perhaps because it is not designed as a gaming environment and so the addictive aspects of gaming are difficult to leverage.

Back in grade 7 I was trying to convince my teachers the value of M.U.L.E. in teaching microeconomics. The school had a no-Atari-800 policy and I’m still bitter. I could have pwned the whole class! Here’s hoping Game will succeed in putting some addictiveness back in learning.

Some info concerning MMORPG style learning submitted by community members:

• Christine - The Kids are Alright - How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace, and Games that Make Leaders
• Saigon - Education in and for the Information Society, and Summit on Educational Games (findings report)
• GordonMcDowell (yes I’m community too) - Second Life Insider’s summary of Teaching Sites

Honorable Mentions:

• Best Painkiller: Hospital Connections by Gods_Light
• Best Viagra: My Pop-Up Video by thecougar
• Most Entertaining: Underwear Sound Blocker by Moogy
• Jasmine’s Pick: Music My Way by Laracee

The number of ideas submitted each week keeps going up… which may not be a good thing. Somewhere between 5 and 1005 is the optimal number of ideas our members can possibly review in a given week. Wonder what that number is? Should we constrain this? Or not worry that any given community member can’t review every idea, and a random sampling is enough?

We could limit the number of ideas submitted per member per week, but that harms members with come up with a constant stream of good ideas. How about limiting the how many ideas can be re-submitted in a week? Or forcing an idea to be revised before it can be resubmitted?

Would love to read your thoughts, let us know what you think. Be part of the wisdom of crowds by voting in next week’s round and…
May the best idea win!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 10:45 am and is filed under IdeaWarz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.