MOOSE Goes to School: A Comparison of Three Classrooms Using a CSCL Environment

MOOSE Crossing is a text-based virtual reality environment (or "MUD") designed to give children eight to thirteen years old a meaningful context for learning reading, writing, and computer programming. It is used from home, in after-school programs, and increasingly as an in-school activity. To date, it has been used in five classrooms. This paper compares its use in three of those classrooms, and analyzes factors that made use of MOOSE Crossing more and less successful in each of these contexts. Issues highlighted include access to computers, existence of peer experts, free-form versus structured activity, and school atmosphere.

Authors

Amy Bruckman

Citation

Bruckman, Amy and Austina DeBonte (1997). "MOOSE Goes to School: A Comparison of Three Classrooms Using a CSCL Environment." CSCL 97, Toronto, Canada, December 11th, 1997.

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