Games in the Classroom - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 17

My son Graham will tell you he learned some important history lessons from
that game, including that dictatorships are a great system of government. You
have nobody to answer to. You can do what you like. Until your people get so
unhappy they revolt. Game over. Sorry, Graham.

Graham also learned strategy, tactics, diplomacy, arbitration, and leadership by
running guilds in massively multiplayer games like Everquest , Dark Age of
Camelot, and World of Warcraft starting at about age 10. In one early game, he
told other players, many of whom were adults, that he was a cryogenics
engineer from Seattle. In Dark Age of Camelot, he would be called upon to
settle disputes between guilds run by people a lot older who prized his skills at
arbitration.

And this brief anecdotal family history is supported by research. Constance
Steinkuehler has done intriguing work on learning in massively multiplayer
online games. James Paul Gee is another researcher in learning through video
games. I commend the work of both and of their colleagues.

Quest to Learn
Quest to Learn is an innovative school, currently teaching sixth and seventh
graders but planning to eventually serve all middle and high school grades (see
Figure 2.5). The year I entered academia, 2006, the initial design and
development of Quest to Learn was being funded by a grant from the John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Collaborating with the Education
Department of New York City, Quest to Learn focuses on digital literacy. The
school first opened its doors in the fall of 2009, the same year I taught my first
classasagame.

As their website explains, the school immerses students in differentiated,

challenge-based contexts, the school acknowledges design, collaboration, and
systems thinking as key literacies of the 21st century.

“

The school stresses that its
approach is rigorous, not frivolous, and that students do not spend class time
hunkered down in front of computer screens. Instead, classes are built around
big ideas like

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Then students are empowered to role-
play within the class. For example, instead of teaching math, the school enables
students to take on the role of mathematicians.

“ The Way Things Work. �