A New Blog Location

Recent additions to the themes of this blog have been moved to a new WordPress site.  The new blog “Beyond the Crystal Ball” will focus on preparing teachers and  students for the 21st Century, so the focus has been expanded beyond the original topics covered on this site.  To visit the new blog click on [...]

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Virtual World Academic Resources

The following resources were collected in preparation for a meeting of members of the COPPER Carnegie leadership group (involving six colleges) that are a part of the Carnegie Academy’s CASTL initiative http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/general/index.asp?key=21 . Members will meet in a virtual world to explore the educational applications and potential of this technology. These resources may be of [...]

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Virtual World Cultures

While there are a number of specific attributes to consider when choosing a virtual world world for educational purposes, the culture of that world is of particular significance. The Internet still resembles the “Wild West” in some ways, and when venturing into cyberspace with your students you never know who or what you will encounter. [...]

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Worlds of Wordcraft

At Vanderbilt University a first-year writing course entitled “Worlds of Wordcraft: Narrative Forms in the Digital Classroom” makes use of a variety of media to engage students in the learning process while enhancing their writing skills. Games and virtual worlds that are used in this course include Lord of the Rings Online, Dark Age of [...]

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Jumping Into Virtual Worlds (A Guide)

If you’re fairly tech savvy or have spent some time in virtual worlds, this post may not be for you. If on the other hand, you have an interest in getting your feet wet in the virtual waters, but your current use of online technology is limited primarily to email and surfing the web, then [...]

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Academic Interest in Virtual Worlds and Games

There has been considerable interest in recent years in the study of virtual worlds and computer/video games. This interest can be broken down roughly into the following four areas: Pure research Knowledge and skills acquired while gaming Games as educational models Virtual Worlds and Games as teaching/learning tools In this post we’ll take a look [...]

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Which Virtual World to Choose?

If you’re If you’re interested in taking the leap and exploring a virtual world or two where do you start? Your first decision is to determine whether you want to visit one of the open-ended non-gaming virtual worlds or one of the theme based MMORPGs (massive multi-player online role playing games). Free-Form Worlds The first [...]

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Virtual Worlds 101 – Part 2

Types of Virtual Worlds There are a large number of virtual worlds in existence with memberships that vary from a few thousand to several million inhabitants. For the most part they can be seen as falling into one of two categories, the open-ended, non-structured (sandbox) virtual worlds, and the theme based, game-like Massive Multiplayer Online [...]

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Virtual Worlds 101 – Part 1

If you’re new to virtual worlds and are curious about this social phenomena and its educational potential, this post will attempt to introduce you to some basics to get you started. The concept of a virtual world is very difficult to explain in a meaningful way if you’ve not experienced one directly. Most adults over [...]

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Positive Side Effects

There were a couple of memories and observations that remain with me from the days of using the Zoombinis and the other thinking games mentioned in the previous post. Multiple Intelligences There were often a few students in the critical and creative thinking course that had difficulty with the intensive writing in the course. They [...]

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