Playing To Learn  Video Games In the Classroom
A review by Frank Baker
(Submitted to Journal of Media Literacy- Summer 2007)

 

Quick: name five video games. Can you do it? I can’t. Video games are not part of my media environment. The few games I can recall are as a result of some recent news story about their violent or sexual content, or some state’s effort to restrict youth access. Are all games bad—of course not.  Why doesn’t the mainstream media report more on the potential uses of video gaming in instruction? ( Well, that’s an essay for another time.)

Can and should video games be considered as instructional tools, just as books, magazines, video and film are today?  Yes, says “Playing to Learn” author David Hutchison, Associate Education Professor at Brock University. In this new text, published by Teacher Ideas Press, he presents a number of concrete ideas for integrating video games into English, Social Studies, Math, Science, Health, PE and more.

Writing the forward to this text, James Paul Gee (author of “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”) acknowledges that video games won’t replace reading or writing. At the same time, he says, fans of video games are creating blogs about the topic and becoming active participants in fan based web sites.

Video games are a cultural phenomenon: one in which all educators should become more familiar. Reading “Playing To Learn” will certainly help all educators get up-to-speed in this exploding youth media culture.  Interspersed with activity suggestions and lesson plan ideas, Hutchison has wisely included several discussion articles.

(This is a trend that I am in favor of: giving young people some current event readings and resources around a topic. Unfortunately, many of today’s textbooks don’t provide current readings nor corresponding critical thinking questions.)

In a discussion of the video game “Bully,” several questions are posed for which the teacher might engage her students in a discussion.  Another article raises a series of questions regarding video game violence and its reported impact on player attitudes and behaviors.

Content related to media literacy

Classroom teachers will find a host of ideas and suggestions for how video games/media literacy might be integrated into instruction. Among them:

Body Image: students discuss the relationship between body image and the physiques of both male and female video game characters

Hype/Fact vs. Opinion:  students compare and contrast previews and reviews of a video game, looking for evidence of hype and fact vs. opinion

Foley Effects: students replace the sound effects in a game with those they have captured in and around school and home

Historical Place Analysis:  students compare and contrast historically accurate video game environments with photos and descriptions of the same real-world settings

Newscast Production:  after studying the structure of conventional newscasts,
students apply what they’ve learned to creating a live newscast of their own that reports on the video games news of the day

Race Relations: students examine how different cultural groups are represented (or misrepresented ) in video games

Video Game Review: students write a review of a game they are currently playing.


”Playing To Learn” is a wonderful new edition to the world of media literacy and youth media culture. Because it is aimed at the elementary-12^th grade audience, it would be a welcome addition to any school library media center collection. I wouldn’t be surprised to see both students AND teachers checking this one out.