Mission to Learn

Since posting 26 Learning Games to Change the World I have continued to check out various games and delve much more deeply into how games can provide platforms for learning and social change. Fertile ground, to say the least.

One thing that has become clear along the way (if it wasn’t already) is that MMOGs - Massive Multi-player Online Games - are certainly making their mark. I’ll just submit one choice piece of evidence for the time being. Namely, a recent Harvard Business Review article that references the incredibly popular World of Warcraft (more than 10 million players and counting) in suggesting that:

The best sign that someone’s qualified to run an internet startup may not be an MBA degree, but level 70 guild leader status. [As quoted in a very good, highly-recommended article by Tom Chatfield in Prospect Magazine.]

Guilds are central to WOW, as are relationships in general. For one thing, you are unlikely to conduct a successful raid against an enemy without strong relationships.  And, of course, defeating the enemy is among the more obvious goals of the game.

What is the equivalent in the world of games for change (where you would certainly think relationships would play a big role)? As I poke around, I find plenty of experiential learning games that may be effective for teaching content and concepts to a single learner/player or a relatively small group. Nearly all of the 26 Games fall in this camp.

But where are the massive, multi-player games for change? Where is the highly social, situated learning? World Without Oil seems the closest, but it shut down in June 2007, after its 32-week cycle. Are there others? If you happen to have created a MMO game for change, participated in one, or simply know about some good ones out there, please comment and share a link and your experience with the other readers here at Mission to Learn.

Many thanks,

Jeff

Other demands have made it difficult for me to devote much time to Mission to Learn lately, but a recent article from The Chronicle of Education’s free edition – Gas Prices Drive Students to Online Courses  - inspired me to tap out a quick post.

Naturally, I am a big fan of online learning, and saving gas also ranks very high on my list. So, to help with your ongoing learning as well as your efforts to save the environment, here are a few of the resources I’ve logged here at Mission to Learn:

• More Than 100 Free Places to Learn Online - And Counting
• OER - Open Educational Resources
• More Than 50 Web Widgets for Your Learning Mix
• 26 Learning Games to Change the World
• For monthly free learning updates: Free Learning Monitor

And a few other resources to add to the mix:

• Michele Martin over at the Bamboo Project encourages readers to Try Out One of the “100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner” (“Try out” is the key – all these big lists are only as valuable as what you  actually do with them!)

• If you are looking for books or other texts for your summer reading list, Kelly Sonora from distance degrees.com has written in to point out 100+ Sources for Free-As-In-Beer Books & Texts Online   (If anyone happens across an actual source for free beer online, please let me know!)

• And if you are on the delivery rather than receiving end of learning (an increasingly blurry distinction), Fiona King at Teaching Tips.com has written in to suggest 100+ Resources for Teaching Without Textbooks .

• Finally, Cady Glaser has dropped an e-mail to Mission to Learn to announce a new round of funding and features for Graspr , an instructional video network. One of these days I am going to have to do a review of all of these instructional video networks that seem to have popped up over the past couple of years.

There you have it. Keep your car parked, park yourself at a computer, and start your learning engines.

JTC

On occasion I like to brag about the little town of Carrboro where I live. Residents fondly refer to it as the Paris of the Piedmont, and c’est vrai – it is a great little place to live. One amenity I particularly enjoy is being able to grab breakfast or lunch at Weaver Street Market and tap into the Town of Carrboro wireless network (tocwireless).

Well, it now looks like the folks over in the nearby town of Wilson have done us one better, and you have to wonder if their efforts are a harbinger of things to come: They’ve now got their own fiber-optic-based Internet, television and phone service called Greenlight. Basically, they are treating the Internet like an essential utility, and finding that local providers like Time Warner Cable and Embarq weren’t willing to meet their needs, they’ve taken things into their own hands.

I picked up this bit of information while engaging in another of my favorite activities over at Weaver Street – reading the Independent Weekly – and I must admit that the news of Wilson’s efforts brought me an almost irrational sense of pleasure. You see, I have suffered directly at the hands of Time Warner Cable’s unbelievably abysmal customer service, as I know others (including its own technicians) have suffered at the hands of Comcast, and I relish the thought of communities breaking the stranglehold companies like these have on broadband in the United States.

I don’t begrudge companies charging to provide Internet service – and Wilson does charge competitive rates for its Greenlight service – the problem is that most of them have done such a lousy job keeping up with customer needs and the general potential that high bandwidth offers. And very often they offer little or no service in rural areas. Wilson and a growing group of other communities – more than 60 across the country, according to a recent study – feel they can do better.

Slowly, people are coming to realize that this is a serious issue. As the Independent puts it,

The importance of highly efficient Internet service is more than a matter of better e-mail access or the ability to work from home. A lack of fast, widely available networks limits communities’ abilities to manage basic utilities like water and sewer service, to respond to emergencies, and to deliver medical care.

From the standpoint of Mission to Learn, I’ll point out that reliable, high speed access to the Internet is also increasingly important to education, both formal and informal.

So far, the horse-trading over who controls Internet access has tended to play out in the background and in back rooms – usually to the detriment of consumers. “Increasing deregulation of the telecommunications industry, the Independent suggests, “has helped prop up monopolies—without requiring the companies that deliver most of the nation’s Internet service to invest in the infrastructure that would allow broadband speed to increase, or costs to decrease.”

I am perhaps being a bit too optimistic too early, but I hope efforts like the one in the town of Wilson represent a move towards much higher visibility for the issue, and better solutions.

How is this issue playing out in your community? Please comment and share your story. And if you live outside the United States, it would be great to have your input. How is access to broadband shaping up in your country and community?

JTC

P.S. I highly recommend reading the entire Indy article and viewing the accompanying slide show. And if you would like a taste of the flavor of Carrboro, check out It’s Carrboro.