PatSine

Here's a great new class from Florida Virtual School as chronicled in eSchoolNews.

Florida Virtual School (FLVS) is set to pilot what it describes as the first complete online game-based course for high school students. School officials and the game's creators hope the course will help engage students who struggle in traditional classroom settings.

The game is called Conspiracy Code, and it's the first in a series of online game-based courses created by 360Ed Inc., an educational game development company. The first Conspiracy Code course fulfills a full credit of history and is aligned with state and national standards.

This work took 18 months to develop and test.  In the 80's we were never able to get enough scale to pay for this kind of development.  It will be interesting to see if virtual schools can make this viable.  What new economic models in school and teacher rules will make subscribing to a game a way to engage students with these richer enviroments?