I love it when I can learn from my students, don’t you?  During my research, I used a wiki (wikipedia.org – which I will get to in my next blog) to research the difference between a MUD, MUSH and a MOO and was very interested in what I discovered.  That was, that my students knew much more about the difference between the three then I ever thought possible. I had heard of a MUD but never heard of a MUSH or a MOO but yet my students could update me on all three of them.

According to wikipedia a MUD is a Multi-User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension multi-play role-playing game.  Many of you may have heard of WOW (World of Warcraft) if you have middle and high school students; this is a prime example of a MUD.  With MUD’s, the themes are usually a fantasy world that has elves, goblins, dwarves, along with other mythical or fantasy-based races.  They allow many users to play the game and interact through social chat rooms.  MUD’s provide a 3-D visual environments for the user.

MUSH stands for Multi-User Shared (Hack, Habit, Holodeck, or Hallucination) which are basically text-based online social mediums which allows users to be connected at the same time.  There are many different varities with different features but they all are basically the same format.  MUSH also allows for a roleplay environment without visual images.

MOO’s are like a MUD but they are just text-based games requiring the user to use problem solving skills without the visual environment available in a MUD!

I know as a teacher, who needs my students to use the Internet, that I get very aggervated with them when they are on games instead of doing the work I assigned them to do; I must admit, that on many occassions, that the games they are playing are requiring them to utilize problem solving skills along with communciation skills through these on-line multi-user games but that doesn’t eliminate the problem that they are not problem-solving for me, as a teacher, they are problem solving for WOW (World of Warcraft).  As a teacher, should I take this personally or just be happy they are using their brains for something?