June 19, 2008: David Hutchison is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University and author of Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom. As the title says, he's found a way to teach students grades 4 to 12 using games. Recently, Electric Playground sat down to ask him a few questions about games and education. Such as "why didn't we have teachers like this when we were coming up?"
Electric Playground: Give us a quick rundown of Playing to Learn.
David Hutchison: The book comprises about 100 activity ideas - very practical, very hands-on - for teachers in the elementary and secondary grades. It really tries to address multiple subject areas so that teachers can build bridges between children's everyday lives and the subjects that they're teaching in school, using videogames as that bridge.
EP: In my day, teachers always warned us about what horrible, awful things videogames were. They were perceived as the very opposite of education. How are the teachers of today responding to your book?
DH: Teachers are always looking for hooks. Hooks that can connect with children's everyday lives and help them make the curriculum even more meaningful to children by connecting with what they enjoy doing out of school. Just on that level, the book is being very well received. Teachers are constantly saying, "I can use these ideas!"
On the other level - in terms of some of the criticisms of videogames - I try to address those in the book. I don't shy away from them; I don't suggest that teachers shy away from them either. I think they should be food for thought, subjects for study themselves.
Some people argue that videogames could be addictive. Well, let's talk about that in school. Define it, do some research about it and then take a look at whether videogames are or are not. What teachers might discover is that in the research area around addiction... videogames are not considered addictive except in very unusual circumstances.
EP: It sounds like you're saying what the ESA and IGDA have been saying for years. Have you been in touch with those organizations?
DH: I haven't been directly in touch with those organizations, but I was in touch with the Entertainment Software Ratings Board [ESRB] in the United States. Of course we subscribe to their ratings system here in Canada. They were kind enough to provide me with some charts, figures and numbers that I incorporated into the book. Also, there are activities that address the ESRB in the book, because in addition to educating teachers and parents, I think part of the mandate of school should be to educate children and students about the ESRB rating system, because it's very much in place for their benefit.
EP: Are you a gamer yourself?
DH: Very much so, yes. I've played games for many years.
EP: Is that one of the things that inspired you to write this book?
DH: I'm a teacher and I'm a gamer. In my teaching job, I go into schools and work with a lot of other teachers. Many of these are younger people, who are also gamers. They tell me that the students they teach are gamers at home, but they don't talk about videogames in the classroom, even though this is a shared passion for the teachers and the students. As I've been playing games as a gamer, as in other areas of my life, I look for the potential in those videogames, and I found that I could make connections with different subject areas.
EP: About those connections: do you feel it is important that teachers remain culturally literate? Not just games, but books, movies, TV shows...
DH: Teachers need to remain culturally literate, but so do students. If I had to summarize in two words what the book is about, I would say "media literacy." Many of the activities can be adapted to television, books, pop music... So you have that cultural media in a more general sense. What we wanted to do is help students become more consciously aware of the choices they're making when they play videogames, purchase music, see billboard advertisements... I think that's part of the role of school.
EP: Could you give us an example of the activities that are found in the book?
DH: Sure. Let's start with a math activity, for example. In Forza Motorsport 2, there are numerous numbers and statistics that are imbedded in a game like that. When the player finishes a race, they will see a results board. That will show them whether they came in first, second or third; the distance of the race, how many laps it was; perhaps their top speed, their best lap, those kinds of details. Teachers can ask students who play Forza Motorsport to transfer that data that on the screen to a chart. Then they can bring that information into a classroom. They can pull all that information from different students together, and then analyze it as a class. Do some multiplication, subtraction activities with it: try to calculate how far they have driven over several races. You can turn a math class into something that's very meaningful for the students, because they've actually generated the numbers that they're working with.
EP: Is there a limit on the age groups or kind of classes that can be taught using a videogame?
DH: Well, there's lots of work going on around videogames in elementary and high schools, but certainly universities as well. With this book, I chose to begin at grade 4 and up, because I do think it's really important that children have contact with the real world in the early years, and of course that's beyond grade 4 as well. I would say introducing computers and videogames into the classroom around the grade 4 is appropriate. Students are starting to be able to deal on an abstract level with videogames in that sense. Prior to that, you really want them to have a sandbox experience, to have that experience in an actual sandbox, not in a virtual experience. So I think it's important to be thinking about the age appropriateness of the games that are being played, but also the links teachers are making to videogames in the classroom.
EP: In another interview you mentioned an activity that has students going to sites like GameSpot and editing reader reviews. Are there are any other activities like that that go beyond the game, and into the community?
DH: Sure. First of all, writing videogame reviews. If there's a class of students who are gamers and they're playing games that they're enjoying, the teacher can assign them the task of actually writing a videogame review. Then the school can create a website to host those reviews. If the school is keen to do this ... it might be that the publisher of these games would be interested in linking to these reviews, because unlike most reviews, which are written by adults, videogames reviews that are written by children will be of interest to publishers, particularly if the games they are reviewing are targeted at that age group.
EP: Is there anything that game developers or publishers can do to make their games more education-friendly?
DH: Well, one of the activities in the book is called "Kid-Friendly Grand Theft Auto." [Click here for a sample page.] That is a grade 4 activity. Basically, it says that there is a lot of potential in the sandbox/open world game, a game that sets a person in a city-like environment and allows them to make choices about what they want to do, who they want to see, how they want to travel.
Now, Grand Theft Auto is totally inappropriate for children to play, but the concept of an open world/sandbox game is appropriate for children. So in this activity, children are challenged to create their own kid-friendly version of an open world game. Don't actually mention Grand Theft Auto to the children, but they're actually challenged to make their own open-world game. That might involve activities like collecting ingredients to make a cake back at home. Returning a library book to the library in record time. Making change at the corner store as they buy some candy for themselves. Playing a pick-up game of basketball. Going to a skateboarding park. Biking from Point A to Point B, then noting the streets that they've crossed, for example. So there can be different types of open world/sandbox experiences that children would enjoy, that parents would love to see their children playing in, which are sort of based on more adult-type games, but have different content.
EP: Though they're not supposed to play it, students have probably heard of Grand Theft Auto and might want to play it. If they were presented with the game you described, that might recognize that it's like Grand Theft Auto, but with the carjackings stripped out. And they might resent it for that reason. Do you think you have to sacrifice entertainment for education, or can they be worked out?
DH: I think they can be worked out. I think that at the end of the day, there's a decision we need to be making: we can ignore games like Grand Theft Auto and not reference them at all in our classrooms because they're not age appropriate for children. Or as you're saying, we can acknowledge that even though children are not -- or should not -- be playing them, they're still aware of them, because they live in a culture in which they have access to websites, newspapers, television [and] what the media is writing about these games. They're very familiar with them. So I think teachers need to make a choice - and this would also go for parents -- in terms of how they engage their children or students in conversation about the games they see, the games they hear about on the radio, and have discussions with them about why or why not parents and teachers are allowing them or not allowing them to play those games.
I think that's when you can have a really heart-to-heart discussion about the role of the ESRB as a ratings board that really tries to rate games as being age-appropriate, or not age-appropriate for children. It's not just parents who should learn about that, but also children should understand that. Then have a discussion!
I talk about this in the book: about the whole notion that certain games should not be permitted. Children should not be permitted to play certain games, or whether that's a form of censorship that's unfair to them. That's a discussion children should be able to have! They're going to make decision as adults around social policy, why not start to have debates around those ideas early on?
EP: When you have children yourself, is the intention to try a few of these exercises with them?
DH: Absolutely! But I wouldn't want to wait until that time. In August I'm going to be working with the summer camp that's based out of Brock University - Youth University. They're starting a new videogame camp. So I'll be working with some children, and they're actually going to be designing videogames. In the afterword of the book I talk about videogame design, so prior to me having my own children, hopefully I'm going to have an opportunity to field test these activities myself.
Even apart from that, I've worked with teachers who have done so themselves and reported back on the successes and the enthusiasm they're hearing from their students.
EP: Do you think the quality of the game matters when it comes to teaching kids about games? Are good games better to educate with, or do bad games have their uses as well?
DH: I think the question you're asking is an important question to ask students, if I can reframe it slightly in that way. Just as an example, I have an activity in the book called "Don't Believe the Hype," in which students are asked to compare preview articles for a videogame with the actual review articles after the game is released. It's possible in some cases that the preview articles are really glowing in terms of what to expect, but the reviews are not very good once they're finally released. Or vice versa. I think it's interesting from a media literacy perspective to have students actually compare articles.
This is a form of language arts instruction. Students are comparing to texts, basically, from an educational perspective. But also it works from a media literacy perspective. The students are [considering] "What happened in between those two articles? Why did the preview writer write these certain things, and why did this review writer [not] find that those were the same strengths? Are features missing?" Those kinds of notions.
Having that kind of discussion around how games are positioned prior to release and how they're reviewed after they're finish - I'm not sure if that answers your question -- is one way to turn that question right over to students and have them deal it.
EP: It not only answers my question, it kinda shames me because I think that a lot of game journalists are not thinking as critically as your students are. Do you think people working in the game industry can learn a lot from your work?
DH: Let's put it this way: there's going to be many students out there who perhaps are aspiring to be videogame designers, but there's also going to be someone who's going to be aspiring to be a videogames journalist in some ways. Gamers today - young people and older - are participating in the journalistic enterprise because of websites such as Xbox.ca and GameSpot. They're able to contribute user reviews and participate in forums. In fact, it's a very complex editorial process in websites that are dedicated to videogaming, because there's this interchange between professional journalists and gamers who are contributing content as well. I simply want to provide opportunities through this book for the gamers to start to think consciously about that relationship that they have with that website.
I do have a number of discussion articles that are contributed by journalists, academics and bloggers in the book, and one of the discussion articles looks at the whole role of journalism in the videogame industry and asks the question "Are some gaming journalists too close to the industry that they cover?" It's an open question. That for me is something interesting that should be talked about in the classroom with students.
EP: Even if the students never play another game again, do you think these lessons would be helpful with other forms of literacy? For example, maybe when they're older, they read an article about a politician?
DH: Absolutely. In fact, I think that the book is only valuable in terms of how the activities can be generalized to other contexts other than videogames. One of the activities in the book is a photo analysis activity, in which the teacher provides students with two screenshots from the same videogame, taken maybe a few frames or a few seconds apart. The students are asked to do a comparative analysis. Maybe a character's in one that's not in the other screenshot, or maybe there's a change in the environment in some way.
What the students are actually doing is a document analysis. This is a skill they're going to need to use if they choose history -- if this is an area they're going to go in -- and other areas as well. Visual Arts, for example. Graphic Design, Photography. You need to be acutely aware of what's in pictures. You don't even need to capture them from videogames; you can just go to a videogame website and download those screenshots. Have students work with them, learn photo analysis skills, and then they've got a skill that can be generalized to other contexts.
More information on Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom can be found at Playingtolearn.org.
-Interview by Jason MacIsaac
Jason MacIsaac is the Executive Editor of Elecplay.com. He also teaches videogame history, and changed the topic as soon as the "Are some gaming journalists too close to the industry that they cover?" question came up.