Hello everyone, my real name is Valerie Noll, but my main toon in World of Warcraft is Amberhawk, and I answer to the name Amber faster than I do my own these days! My favorite things are learning, sharing knowledge and playing, so even if I'm not an "educator" I hope that I can contribute to this MOOC. I'm an instructional designer working on a contract for the U.S. Air Force.
I've been playing games my whole life, from hi-ho cherry-o to "helping" my parents play scrabble, to sandbagging aces in pinochle at age 9 when my mom thought I was too sleepy to play. My mom and I would go to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle and play the text-based adventures they had on their computers there. Later, we had an Atari 800, and around then I also fell in love with Dungeons and Dragons. Currently, my husband plays Warhammer, and I play D&D (yes, you can still play games without a computer!) and we both play World of Warcraft. I'm also in Diablo III and just started minecraft.
I'm a CPLP - that is the American Society of Training and Development's (ASTD) certification in learning and performance. I'm very interested in the foundation professional skills I see developed in WoW, such as leadership, communication, task management and decision making. I find that I'm constantly learning about myself as I play, and growing professionally. Now if I could figure out how to write off the subscription as a professional expense. This is also my first MOOC, so I'm hoping that by participating in this course, ASTD will let me count credits toward my next recertification.
Games Based Learning MOOC
