part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 For a few years, I have been increasingly interested in how COTS (commercial, off the shelf games) can be successfully used in the education space. For a basic introduction to games and education please click here. This covers a teachers perspective of the games in education movement. As a long time fan of text-based games, bringing a MUSH into my classroom seems a logical and natural progression of my interest in games in education. This is an introduction to a multi-part series in which I hope to detail my successes and challenges using a Star Trek MUSH to help 8th graders (14 years old) understand XY and Z on a cartesian coordinate plane. Most of my entries here will be cross-posted from my blog, [url=http://www.mackenty.org]http://www.mackenty.org[/url]. However, I'm sure some mush-specific material will emerge as we explore this exciting new instructional strategy, which I will post here.