The very first version of Chrome Warrior was used to support the Palm Springs Unified school district's initiative to provide each student with a computer. A major challenge with a school district launching a "1:1" initiative is that teachers also need to be trained. In a large district like Palm Springs Unified, this involves training over 1100 teachers in a very short period of time. Traditional instructor led, classroom based training becomes a real logistical challenge with such large numbers and compressed timelines. To support traditional training, the district used Chrome Warrior to provide teachers with another path to learning how to use the computers that would soon be in the hands of students. The use of Chrome Warrior not only helped the district with its successful rollout of computers to students, but it also won a Models of Academic Excellence and Innovation award from the Riverside County Office of Education.
Soon Chrome Warrior started being used in other districts as it solved four problems generally associated with traditional "sit-n-git" training:
- It allows organizations to train lots of people quickly by removing the need for arranging classroom time and people's schedules
- It allows people to spend more time focused on high value activities such as teaching and less time "training" by allowing people to easily fit training to their schedules rather than fitting their schedules to training
- It allows people to learn what is most valuable to them while ensuring that the broader strategic training goals of the organization are met through use of Chrome Warrior's innovative gaming engine
- It demonstrates that people have acquired skills by requiring them to provide evidence of completion
With its start in K12 school districts, Chrome Warrior benefited from exposure to professional educators, many of whom have provided invaluable feedback to help make improvements delivering successful training and pedagogical design. Some of these enhancements include:
- Distributed pedagogical design to encourage subject matter experts to provide specialized training
- Distributed peer review to enable greater scalability and to foster personal learning networks
- Conversation based learning to encourage experienced learners to support new learners
- Social network sharing to provide positive reinforcement and encouragement of learning
Overall, the fundamental driving principle behind Chrome Warrior is to provide fun training that can be directly applied in the classroom and the field. By following this philosophy, Chrome Warrior is gaining widespread adoption by people and organizations eager for pragmatic learning.
