Meet the Fortnite streamer using battle royales to teach fifth grade
In the world of battle royale games, where killstreaks, competition, and fighting over XP are the central mechanical drives, it’s difficult to imagine a group of patient fifth-grade children, diligently learning about manners and fair play. Colourful and friendly-looking, Fortnite at its core is still about slaughtering all your rivals and grabbing what you can for yourself. They play it by the millions, but if you want to teach kids how to be a good sport, Epic’s shooter might not be the best classroom. Enter Lori Weber, perhaps better known as Fortnite streamer ‘Slytrue48.’
A fifth-grade teacher from Indiana, she’s using custom matches in the multiplayer battler to set an example. Swearing is banned. Cooperation is a must. If you get too competitive, she’ll offer a kindly word and maybe a rendition of ‘Get Griddy.’ It all started with the kids.
“I started teaching fifth grade five years ago, and all they talked about was Fortnite,” Weber – or rather, Ms. Weber – explains. “Fortnite was relatively new at that point. Since I already played WoW and Assassin’s Creed, I said I would give it a try, so I started watching Ninja. My son is the one who bought me my first game system I could play Fortnite on. This way, I had things to talk to my students about.”
It took a couple of seasons – Weber says that when she first started playing Fortnite she was “dreadful” – but what began as a simple way to connect with her pupils suddenly started to grow. She set up a Twitch stream. The students came to watch. Pretty soon, Fortnite had become a useful tool in Weber’s teaching arsenal.
“The students think it’s cool,” she explains. “They ask me to do the dances and things like that. “Even my principal, when new kids start at the school
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