Mini-review-The Dark Grimoir

Teacher training is very important in using sim games. Teachers not only need to be very fluent using/playing the game, but they also need to have a very thorough understand of the role the games fills in their curriculum. This will allow students a more complete learning experience and the teachers to be active facilitators in the learning process.

I do not feel there are a lot of training opportunities for teachers, either in implementing these types of activities into curriculum or in actually using the software. Currently, the best training opportunities are for teachers to actually play the games themselves. Most SIM/MMORPG applications have either an instruction manuel or an advanced training scenario implemented into the game. The Dark Grimoire has an excellent training/mentor application to lead you gradually into the game. The mentoring application is especially appealing, since peer tutoring is an oft used tool in larger classrooms.

I think that to implement The Dark Grimoire into a larger classroom you would need to divide the class into groups rather than play as individuals. Each group would have a goal to achieve, and a group decide on how to best do that. I do not think it would be feasible to use something of this nature with a large class on a regular basis unless you had a large lab available whenever you needed it.

I think The Dark Grimoire .can be used across a range of learning abilities. The most difficult part would be in using with students that have visual or reading disabilities. To use it in a setting such as this you would either need a text reader or a student buddy system to facilitate the students with a disability. I think the range of problem solving is limited most of the time, but as students get more involved, they will have more advanced learning opportunities. This is also dependent on how the game is incorporated into the curriculum by the teacher.

This game is very appealing to a variety of platforms since it is an Internet-based game. It allows students to communicate with others from across the country, even the world, and possibly work collaboratively on solving the games problems.