By: If you happen to be in Orlando next week at the Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC), then make sure you stop by for my presentation on “Role-playing in Virtual Worlds.” I’ll be discussing the many benefits of role-play to students in the classroom including building connections, practice retrieving information, decision making, critical thinking, and empathy. Here are a few examples from using the Odeum Platform, a Virtual World learning environment, that I’ll be discussing:
- Helping students understand the tension building to the Declaration of Independence by role-playing as a patriot spy.
- Giving students an engaging method of repeating sentence patterns when learning Spanish by having them practice navigating and buying items in a market.
- Assist students in identifying characters, character traits, and how specific scenes affect the play Macbeth
The Odeum Platform is a library of searchable role-playing personalized learning adventures that take place in 3D virtual worlds. Think World of Warcraft, but instead of fighting goblins in the Jade Forest, students are helping Paul Revere in historic Boston. Subjects where role-playing seems most effective are Social Studies, Language Learning, and Language Arts. The platform has a variety of benefits for teachers including:
- Single place to find simulated learning adventures.
- Powerful feedback on student progress and learning objective mastery
- Ability to customize any part of the experience from learning objectives to character dialogue.
- Create your own experience or have your students create to prove their mastery of a topic.
I’ll be exploring how the Odeum Platform uses AI and game mechanics to support the mechanics of scaffolding, giving students a personalized learning experience. Specifically, how role playing in an immersive environment allows students to progress from practice, learn from failing, and achieve learning objectives.
We are preparing for our Alpha and need Early Adopting teachers who are interested in using the latest technology in their classrooms. Please, come by my session and introduce yourself.
