Learning Like a Movie Star: Teacher’s Views on the Learning Potential of the Online Gaming and Social Community MovieStarPlanet

Abstract

How do teachers view the learning potential of MovieStarPlanet? This paper addresses the learning potential of online gaming and social communities. MovieStarPlanet is a popular online gaming and social community. In this paper we reflect upon the learning potentials and possibilities within MovieStarPlanet, with the aid of a group of teachers who signed into the world for a limited period of time and tried out the various gaming elements and opportunities. The teachers were, to varying degrees, skeptical towards several aspects of MovieStarPlanet, but also identified a range of knowledge and skills that they thought possible to acquire through the online community. Interestingly several of them suggested using the aspects of the game that they found distressing as starting points for raising awareness and teaching about safety.