Profession: students as game creators

Profession : students as game creators

Please have a look at the following video (http://bcove.me/ntstvv14)

Or find it on the following website : http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/06/13/03games.h05.html

Globaloria Curriculum is an illustrative example of an innovative curricular activity which consist in introducing game-based courses in the classrooms. Concretely, the students work individually or in groups developping games aiming at teaching an educational concept of their choosing (eg. Maths).

In the video we see that this pilot project has been implemented in a school belonging to a socio-economical affected region of the US (West Virginia) where the railway and mining industries collapsed after World War II. This project brings a kind of professional opportunity for the most talented students as they could afterwards open their own business in the ICT sector or get a job in a technology based company.

In fact, Globaloria is a concept invented by the Workd Wide Workshop Foundation in 2006. This Foundation seeks to provide for technology based educational opportunities for students in developing nations and economically disadvantaged communities. It mainly develops 2.0 plattforms each of which has a specific network, themes and active communities (eg : MyHumanRightsLife, etc.). The example I am presenting uses the platform MyGLife which is an online platform alowing students to develop interactive webgames and simulations focusing on subject matters such as sciences, history and social issues.

For general info on Globaloria Curriculum please see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globaloria#Globaloria_Platforms

The benefits I see :

This type of activity is based on the project based learning approach where the student becomes the protagonist of his/her learning process. It develops creativity and curiosity, that are in my opinion, fundamental features for learning process. Critical thinking is also stimulated because they have to think about the purpose of their activity and the learning outcomes.

It develops technical skills, they learn by doing and they have to develop a high degree of determination in case of problems challenging the realisation of their project. Team spirit is also stimulated as the students need each others to make progress and reach their objectives. As stated earlier, this activity is highly rewarding and it can contribute in creating professional interests in the area of web technologies, communication, etc. Those are high-potential sectors that could be used for the economic recovery of the region. 

Some obstacles are linked to the fact that as it is far from the traditional way of teaching, some teachers may not be interested or may not see the added value of such learning activity based on gaming. Also because it is a reality, the majority of the teachers do not posses the adequate technical competences in ICT. They need specific training. So, they quit because of the difficulties they encounter on the field where sometimes the student surpasses the teacher. But here I see a good opprtunity for team working not only with the peers but also with the teacher himself . This contributes to a better communication in the classroom. And the teacher gets to know better his/her students and this has a positive impact on the quality of the assessment in the end.

In addition, such a programme requests budget. So the perennity of this approach might be entailed just because of the lack in financial resources from one year to another.

Layla Saji 

Sources:

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/06/13/03games.h05.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globaloria#Globaloria_Platforms