Willoway CyberSchool

Project Coordinator
Janet B. Hale
willoway@concentric.net

World Name: Wilotown
 

Project Description

Wilotown is the new and ever-evolving version of Willowtropolis, the current 3D learning community of the Willoway CyberSchool, and accredited 7-12 Internet School. Distance Education leaders since 1995, Willoway is a full-time private school that focuses on teaching emerging Internet technologies and promotes interactive virtual classes at a distance. Willoway's learning methodology is based on the theory of Constructivist Learning. Constructivist Learning encourages and accepts student autonomy and initiative. Wiloway students create 3D virtual worlds where they show what they have learned in unique ways inside Willoway's 3D learning worlds. Willoway students don't just get their assignments online: they create projects, individually an in teams, that are posted on Willoway's web site as well as build up the virtual 3D world. Students construct meaning by doing under this theory. They role-play historical characters and put on plays for other Willoway students, created interactive games…. All at a distance. This creative approach to learning prompts students' pursuit connections among ideas and concepts. Students who frame questions and issues and then go about answering and analyzing them take responsibility for their own learning and become problem solvers, and, perhaps more important, problem finders. The students - in pursuit of new understandings- are led by their own ideas and informed by the ideas of others. This is the basis for the Willoway Method. Willoway students touch on several areas of interactive design by working in groups to build the ever-evolving 3D world. This 3D world is wildly popular with our students as it allows creativity like no other means we have seen at a distance. Students can participate in simulations, create and act out plays, create intricate mazes for other students to travel through and role-play historical characters. The 3D world is only as limited as students imaginations themselves. These students ask for, if not demand the freedom to play with ideas, explore issues, and encounter new information. It's for this reason that we have now outgrown our Palace 3D world called Willowtropolis. Students are in need of a more expressive learning environment and are driving us forward.