{"id":457,"date":"2012-07-18T13:04:04","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T17:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geofboyle.wordpress.com\/?p=457"},"modified":"2012-10-01T01:43:37","modified_gmt":"2012-10-01T01:43:37","slug":"classrealm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/2012\/07\/18\/classrealm\/","title":{"rendered":"ClassRealm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Classrealm <\/a>is an idea for a\u00a0learning management system<\/a> (LMS) unlike any I have seen. It’s a struggling idea (failed its kickstart fundraiser), but worth thinking about. \u00a0The LMS itself will be nothing new. But layered over the LMS nuts and bolts will be a Tolkienesque fantasy world. Students have a hero persona that advances a la video game style as the student completes assignments. The fantasy\u00a0component\u00a0is meant to motivate students to learn the standard state\/local curriculum. Gamification, as Classrealm’s creator suggests, is a way to motivate students to complete otherwise unappealing tasks.<\/p>\n

My take is that Classrealm\u00a0is more of a different way of grading than a different way of learning. Instead of a grade point average, you have a hero persona with health a la a video game. Assignments are linked to quests and so on. My first impression is that Classrealm will only function as a crutch to help a curriculum that students do not find interesting. Nevertheless, it may very well find success in reaching students who would otherwise fall behind their classmates.<\/p>\n

I see great potential in using games for learning and development in every part of society, but they have to be designed from the ground up. I think that the real sea change in using games to teach will occur when professional game designers with a serious budget (think Sony or Nintendo) are presented with the task of creating games to teach the content.<\/p>\n

Sept 30 update: I started a Gamification<\/a> course created by Keven Werbach at UPenn delivered through Coursera. Apparently, the field is moving more quickly than I thought. I found two up and running gamification services:\u00a0Bunchball<\/a>\u00a0and Chore Wars<\/a>, but there are more out there.\u00a0Very similar to ClassRealm, both reward users for tasks completed outside the game. Chorewars is free\/cheap and aimed at home users or cubicle workers who are tired of cleaning up others’ break room messes while Bunchball looks like a more serious business venture for more serious subscription rates. Personally, I would like to see some webisodes of a show about heavy users of Chore Wars in the same vein of humor as The Guild<\/a>\u00a0or The Office.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Classrealm is an idea for a\u00a0learning management system (LMS) unlike any I have seen. It’s a struggling idea (failed its kickstart fundraiser), but worth thinking about. \u00a0The LMS itself will be nothing new. But layered over the LMS nuts and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,9,10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-technology","category-k12","category-serious-games","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2HDb2-7n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":569,"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geofboyle.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}