# Education LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- I had 26 AI papers I would, given a free rein, have liked to have discussed here. I have 37 such education papers. Yes, I have a background in teaching, too. Computer games and education have an uneasy relationship. Computer games are fun, education isn’t. Educationalists figure that by marrying the two, education can be made fun; unfortunately, all too often computer games are made unfun instead. It is this precedent that puts off many game-style virtual world designers from looking at educationalist virtual worlds. This is something of a shame, because there is a lot of very interesting work going on in the area. Books could be written about virtual worlds in education; indeed, books have been written about them [^350]. Virtual worlds offer educators the following features: - They are collaborative. - They are motivational. - They involve language use. - Children find it easier to express themselves in them. - They are a change from classroom learning. - They can be used remotely. - The interface is easy to learn. - Disruptive behavior is easier to deal with. Almost all educational virtual worlds are textual, using mainly TinyMUD-heritage codebases. MUSHes and MOOs are favored because of their flexibility; text is favored because it is inexpensive. That said, there may also be educational reasons for using text over graphics, the first 3D graphical educational worlds having performed less well pedagogically than hoped [^351]. The use of virtual worlds for educational purposes has a long history. The first such world, Stan Lim and Barry Kort’s MicroMUSE [^352], was founded in 1990; Julie Falsetti and Eric Schweitzer’s schMOOze University [^353] and Jeanne Butler McWhorter’s Diversity University [^354] have been running classes since 1994; Amy Bruckman’s MOOSE Crossing [^355] began in 1995. Educational virtual worlds are used primarily used to teach: - Second/foreign language use - Simple programming skills - Composition (that is, writing) - Team skills This is all very interesting, but as I’ve been at pains to point out throughout this book educational virtual worlds share many characteristics with social- and game-oriented ones. Why give their use by educationalists any kind of special mention? Well, it’s because all virtual world traditions have the same aim: learning. With social- and game-oriented worlds, players learn about themselves; with educational worlds, players learn whatever they’re taught but also about themselves. Educationalists know about teaching and learning; does it not make sense, therefore, to look at how they design virtual worlds and in-world courses for teaching purposes, to see if these ideas can be applied to what virtual worlds are, at heart, all about—the search for the self? Two papers, two perspectives, one aim: - Marina Bers, 2001 [^356]. The creation of a 3D virtual world with the specific intention that it be used for identity construction. - Dianne Butler, 1999 [^357]. What players of a regular adventure-style virtual world consider that they learn from it. [^350]: Try this one, a collection of papers edited by the founders of LinguaMOO. Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holmevik (editors), High Wired: On the Design, Use and Theory of Educational MOOs. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1998. [^351]: Jason Elliott, Lori Adams and Amy Bruckman, No Magic Bullet: 3D Video Games in Education. Seattle, Proceedings International Conference on the Learning Sciences, 2002. http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/aquamoose- icls02.pdf. [^352]: http://www.musenet.org/ [^353]: http://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu:8888/ [^354]: http://www.du.org/. You can tell something on the Net is old when it has a URL like that. [^355]: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/moose-crossing/ [^356]: Marina Umaschi Bers, Identity Construction Environments: Developing Personal and Moral Values through the Design of a Virtual City. Journal of the Learning Sciences Vol. 10 (4), 2001. http://www.tufts.edu/~mbers01/JLS- Bers.pdf. [^357]: Dianne P. Butler, MUDs as Social Learning Environments. 1999. http://www.medievia.com/mudslinger/solpaper.html.