Eploring the World (of Warcraft)

First, apolologies for the South Park reference in the title.

Following the hyperlink I included will land you at a brief news story on the Chronicle of Higher Education website concerning a grant in the amount of $100,000 awarded to a prof. at the University of California at Irvine in order to study users of the online game World of Warcraft.

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3320&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

While this may or may not fascinate you, please read on to where us academics decide that we must comment on said article. Predictably, there are many people who are willing to view this as beneficial, and many who see this as a complete waste. I'll hold my own opinions in check for the moment, but if the comments begin here, I will most certainly weigh in with my own...

Though the grant is primarily written with ethnographic study and social interaction study in mind, in the context of Online Education, this also lands solidly in a discussion of virtual environments. And by the way, ethnographic and social interaction studies are important in education, too.

So I didn't do a great job of holding my opinions in check. Oops.