World of Writecraft

1. World of Writecraft Yes, there is a thesis, but it will take awhile to get there. . .

2. The journey begins You: • You are a troll. • You have a double-edged axe. • You have a bag of gold. • Your strengths are forging and tracking. • You’ve been given a quest to kill the Winter Wolf. • He lives beyond the borders of Angelsea.

3. Your first challenge • As you leave the town of Appleberry, you come to a crossroads. There’s a sign with arrows pointing to the neighboring realms, but the sign has fallen into the ditch. One of the arrows points to Angelsea, but the broken sign is of no help. • What do you do? Write out your answer in one complete sentence.

5. Your second challenge • You meet a merchant who says he will give you a map to Angelseaif you can give him a glass of water which is exactly 4 cups. He hands you a 5 cup pitcher and a 3 cup pitcher. It must be exactly 4 cups. Or he will turn you into a spider. • Write out the 3 steps you need to take using complete sentences. Make sure you use transition words to explain the connections between the steps. For help with proofreading, turn to the Great Wikispell Book.

6. Your third challenge • You look at the map. Because you know of the warring factions between the towns, you must chart a route that takes you from one town to another, going through each town once, and never going back through that town. You also want to use only four straight lines since four is your mystical number. As you move from town to town, you find people to help you, and soon you’ve been through each of the towns using four straight lines.

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9. Your journal • Write a nine-sentence essay which explains each town you went through and a bit of what you found in each town. You might have to do some research to find out about each town. • Divide the essay into 2 paragraphs. • Why did you choose to divide it where you did? • P. S. We won’t actually do this!

10. Your final challenge • You and the people you’ve met decide to form a guild—the Wolf Wanderers. You come across a wizard who wants you to help him find all the magic words hidden in the scroll. You need to find 15 words of 3 or more letters. Write them around the scroll. • Once you’ve completed this challenge, the wizard will whisk you off to Angelsea.

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12. Congratulations! • You’re in Angelsea! You and your guild have just leveled up! • You can have one of the 3 rewards: • A bag of gold • A pet falcon • A magic emerald • Which do you choose and why?

13. Why did you do this? • Were you doing this for a grade? • I hope you were doing it to increase your skills so you could move further ahead in the game. • I hope you saw that working with your guild gave you added strength. • I think these principles should apply to classrooms.

14. Using a narrative • Students are more engaged when they are creating a narrative. • Notice how many skills are embedded into the narrative—paragraphing, description, proofreading, etc. • Seeing each challenge as part of a larger narrative will encourage students to progress through each challenge.

15. Using videogames • All of these puzzles are based on challenges in various video games. • We underestimate the level of critical thinking that goes into video games.

16. Everything Bad is Good for You • This presentation was inspired by Steven Johnson’s book of the above title. Let’s consider several quotes from the book: • By almost all the standards we use to measure reading’s cognitive benefits—attention, memory, following threads, and so on—the nonliterary popular culture has been steadily growing more challenging over the past thirty years.

17. Another quote • Increasingly, the nonliterary popular culture is honing different mental skills that are just as important as the ones exercised by reading books.

18. Yet another quote • My nephew would be asleep in five minutes if you popped him down in an urban studies classroom, but somehow an hour of playing SimCity taught him that high tax rates in industrial areas can stifle development. . . .Why does a seven-year-old soak up the intricacies of industrial economics in game form, when the same subject would send him screaming for the exits in a classroom?

19. OK, one more quote • The dirty little secret of gaming is how much time you spend not having fun. You may be frustrated; you may be confused or disoriented; you may be stuck. When you put the game down and move back to the real work, you may find yourself mentally working through the problem you’ve been wrestling with, as though you were worrying about a loose tooth.

20. What are MMORPGs? • A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a genre of computer role-playing (CRPGs) in which a large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world • This could be a definition of the new university as well.

21. Combining Second Life and WOW • Second Life shows us we have the technology to set up classrooms which can work like MMORPGS such as World of Warcraft. • We can have people from all over the world create characters and interact with each other. • We can create realms/classrooms where students work to increase their power and skills instead of working for grades.

22. Create your character • Create a character for you as an instructor. • What sort of creature are you? • What’s your costume? • What’s your weapon? • What’s your skill? • What’s your totem? • What else would you add?

23. Creating realms • On the next slide, draw an island. Give it a name. In teeny-tiny letters. • Then, in the chat area, discuss the following questions: • What sorts of challenges would students face in our realm? • What weapons and skills would they need? • How would they move to a different level?

25. A possible final project • Write the story of your journey through the realms. Make sure to describe everything you learned as an apprentice scholar. • Use the Great Wizard APA’s scroll format to include any sources you picked up along the way.

26. To sum up The online world gives us a great opportunity to look at how a classroom might be modeled on principles which students have already experienced and which already have them engaged. We don’t have to bring them into a foreign space like a classroom where they don’t know the rules and they don’t have any power. There’s no real reason to tear them away from their videogames—we can use this technology to create realms where students can practice writing and critical thinking and be as engaged in the process as they are with their Wiis.

27. And that’s it! Thanks for your time!