Unschooling and homeschooling using WoW to teach!

Here is yet another article referencing the educational benefits of WoW (as a game which is representative of MMORPG's). Click this link to read the article.

There is a lot of talk in this article about "unschooling"-- a school of thought that promotes a certain brand of homeschooling in which parents allow their children to pursue various (often recreational) interests, and the parents engage in these activities with them. For example, one child started playing WoW, and his mom got an account and started playing too. The parents say that they use the experiences in the game to explain real-life situations, or show how lessons learned in-game can be apply to other aspects of life as well.

Here is one example of such an interaction as described by the article,

She has watched Luke, 10, make his own learning connections between "WoW" and other areas in life.

One day he became interested in the mathematical concept of exponential increases after his "WoW" character encountered a disease cloud.

"Just in his ponderings, he asked 'Mom, what if someone got infected and he walks into a room with four people, and they leave and each walk into a room with four people?'" Parmer recalled.

She told him, yes, that could happen, and added another fact about not all people getting infected at the same rate in the real world.

What is interesting to note here is not necessarily that the child learned some new mathematical formula, but isntead that he was willingly thinking about it. Just by thinking about the information, people (in general) can learn effectively, especially when this thinking leads to curiosity which leads to some form of research. When you research a topic because you are dying to understand something, you are likely much more capable of efficient and effective learning than if a task to do the same research was thrust upon you. The child was curious about the possibility of spreading the disease and he wanted to understand it, and so he did research to find out if his suspicions were true. Granted his source for information was his mother, but nonetheless, he made an attempt to further his own knowledge.

Personally, when I read about this example, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to write an equation which would allow you to "predict" the number of individuals infected (y) during a certain 'certain' generation of the disease (x). What I came up with was that the number of newly infected (and thus contagious) individuals during a given generation of the disease would be equal to 4^(g), where 'g'= the generation of the disease. Thus in generation=0 (when only the original individual was infected), there were 4^0=1 newly infected people. After that person walked into the room of four people (the 1st generation), there were 4^1=4 newly infected people. When those 4 newly infected people walked into a new room, thus each infecting 4 new people, the number of newly infected was 4^2=16. In order to predict the TOTAL number of infected people during a given generation of the disease (not just the number newly infected/'contagious' individuals), you need to do a summation of the number of newly infected people from each of the previous generations, such that that the # of people infected in the 3rd generation of the disease = (4^0)+(4^1)+(4^2)+(4^3)= 85 total infected individuals in the 3rd generation (and 4^3=64 newly infected/contagious individuals). I didn't represent the formula as a summation here because I dont know how to get that symbol in this text (:p). Furthermore, I didn't bother to integrate the summation in order to simplify it (I think that's what you do next...) because I haven't looked at calculus in 4 years, and had already been told I was taking this math too far (go figure). Either way, you can see how this statement about a disease spreading in WoW triggered my interest enough to get me to spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to represent this occurence mathematically, thus causing me to use and re-learn (and a bit of new learning not mentioned here because this post is already too long ;) ) some math. Go WoW (and those who talk about it)!!!!

***TOO LONG DIDN'T READ VERSION (tldr)*** My curiosty caused me to do a bunch of work and learn some math. Why did I become this curious? Because of a question relating to WoW. This can happen to anyone, thus WoW can instigate learning for those who play the game.

WoW ==> No Social Life? Wrong.

I recently came across a blog post which mirrored views of WoW commonly found among both gamers and non. The post (read here) pretty much stated the usual, "WoW is addictive, if you start playing it you won't want to hang out with any of your friends and your social life will be in ruins..." Not a direct quote, but it goes something like that.

However, I notice a couple inconsistencies in the author's description of this process, as well as some flawed/incomplete logic. First, the author of that blog post mentions that one of the qualities that makes WoW so addicting is that you start playing it with other people (s/he actually uses the word 'friends'). Err, doesn't this make playing the game a social activity? I.e., in theory you could spend all your time in game, and still have a social life. Personally, I play WoW with several people who I know in real life, and with whom I engage in activities outside of WoW on a regular basis. Sure, there are people that I consider "friends" who I only know through WoW.... but I still consider these interactions as social.

Furthermore, I would caution this author against the use of words such as "always," "never," and "impossible." Such words almost never accurately describe reality (see the different the italicized qualifier makes in the accuracy of this sentence?). Looking beyond semantics, I would still argue that many of the descriptions the author makes are only true to the extent that any other generalization or stereotype may be true. Sure, some individuals fit this bill, but on the other hand, many don't. More importantly, there is no 'all or nothing' description of what happens to one's social life when they play this game. For example, one person might lose all their real life friends, another may lose none and even gain more real life friends, yet a third person might lose a couple real life friends (still retaining some), but make a couple in game friends. Anything can happen there-- you can't really say that WoW will make you lose your friends.

Lastly, I would just like to comment on the statement, "The only way to avoid the negative effects of this video game is to never start playing." So not true. I have played this game off and on for about 3.5 years now. Sometimes I played wayyy too much and it negatively affected my social life. Other times I was able to manage this recreational activity, and find a healthy balance between the gaming and having a 'real-life' social life. There are even times when I stop playing WoW for weeks at a time because of school, or just because I want to take a break. You CAN play this game and still avoid its 'negative' effects. It's called self-control and discipline.

But i g2g now b/c i need 2 farm gold before the dual spec comes out (patch tuesday?!)... cya! ---- jk ;)

Obvious? Maybe. Aware? Less likely.

So like most WoW players, I do report feelings of "addiction" to the game-- even when I have other things I know I should be doing, for some reason I just want to go play WoW instead. Some people have this problem with Facebook, online shopping, talking on the phone, or watching TV-- this isn't unique to WoW.

Whenever I try to resist this temptation to play WoW, I have often thought of trying to perceive the task which I "need" to complete as being fun or really interesting. I have learned in my undergraduate career that I often do much better at any type of task if I can convice myself to take a genuine interest in it, and try to enjoy it (with coursework, this often turns into a super nerdy type of fun :D ). So just now I was like, "Hey self, you know catching up in your blogging is probably more fun than playing WoW, right?!" And therein lies the "obvious" appeal of WoW as a tool for learning: it has a competitive advantage over other strategies for learning because it is inately perceived as being enjoyable, and typically requires little convincing for the gamer to accept this.

While it may be obvious that we are more likely to partake in enjoyable activities over unpleasant ones, how often do we realize that our frame of mind can control that which we find pleasant? Next time you have an assignment or task you want to do well, but is challenging and you find yourself procrastinating on, try spending a couples minutes convicning yourself that you don't simply want to complete the task. Instead, view it not as a task, but as an activity which can be enjoyed just like any other leisure activity, and which you can "take your time" doing-- try to view work as something enjoyable. Being aware of your frame of mind with regards to tasks your are trying to complete may allow you to be a happier and more productive person. That is the power of making the process or learning a new skill or concept enjoyable.

Reply to k's Comment

While games may lead to enhancement of intellectual capabilities, I am skeptical of developing them to be used as a method for teaching a concept. The first thing this article mentions about the alterations of the games isn't to make them for mentally engaging or challenging, but to make them less violent. Not that violence is necessary for fun to occur, but the game is already going to be shifted into something that is less "fun" and more "academic," thus reducing its ability to be separated from other forms of instruction. I am sure some games would lend themselves well to non-violent forms of instruction, but tell me, how can a game with the name "war" in it not be violent? All of a sudden, what was once a game just becomes a silly scheme by educators.

Not that the article necessarily suggested this, but it should be noted that using games to instruct should not replace traditional instruction, but should instead seek to subsidize it. Someone who commented on this article criticized the use of games to teach by saying, "I am pretty sure you can learn more in one week of a statistics or science class, then you ever will playing WOW. You cut out so much of your daily activities playing the game, that any benefit it has is countered by what you could have been doing." See comment on my first post. Just because WoW may not be seen as the "most" effecient use of one's time doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Sure, I could take a stats class and learn more math than I would playing WoW. But am I going to come home from class after having spent my entire day on campus working and studying, then decide that I want to go take a course and stats in the evening in order to rest? I think not. But guess what. I would play WoW. It is key to realize that even though learning through WoW might be relatively small, it is learning that is a gain over any number of mindless activities. Education through games shouldn't be competing with taking classes, it should be competing with things such as spending hours on end watching television or 'facebooking' (just my opinion). You have to consider the learning from the game as being somehtng which would otherwise be impossible, not something which should replace that which is already done. If 6 hours playing WoW is worth 30 minutes of Stats class, but if I spend 18 hours a week playing WoW (which has 'stats value') instead of doing some mindless activity, then that is 90 minutes a week of 'stats' that I didn't have before. I hope I have made this point clear, if I haven't please let me know ;)

I would also just like to note that there are some really nice comments to this article that reach beyond the intellectual relevance of WoW and mmorpgs. Expect to see some of these ideas addressed in this blog in the near future.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14356