Games in Schools Script

M2 Wall-E

Hello and welcome back to module 2 and this European Schoolnet Academy course on
computer games in the classroom. We are thinking about Using Games for Thematic
Learning during module 2. In the last unit, we talked a little bit about what we meant by
thematic games and project based learning and contextual hubs. And in this short unit, I am
going to take you through an example using the computer game Wall-E. The reason that I
am using this as an example is even though you might not have played the computer game,
you have probably certainly seen the film. So what I want to you do is to think a little bit
about the story behind the film, because any computer game which is based on a film will
have a similar story like, but obviously there is game play and interactivity that is involved.
On the face of it, if I ask you the question, how could Wall-E support the curriculum? You
might say to me: that has got nothing to do with what I have to teach the children in my
class. A creative teacher, and indeed many of you will be thinking actually Wall-E has
nothing to do with what I have to teach the children in my class, but maybe I can use this as
a context for learning to reinforce some other key curriculum ideas. For example, the film is
set in space on a planet, and that gives me a context for teaching about space and a solar
system, that some planets have got oxygen on them and gravity changes as you move from
planet to planet, all kinds of rich scientific activities in there. You might be thinking to
yourself Wall-E himself is a robot so that gives me a good opportunity to teach about
robotics and command and control. If you have seen the film, you will know that actually
the planet that Wall-E lives on is a big refuge tip, it goes around recycling goods, so maybe
that gives you a context for teaching about the environment, teaching about recycling. And
if you have really watched the film, you will understand that it is a robot living on a planet,
but actually it is really a film about friendship and relationships. And maybe you can use this
game to introduce some of those difficult concepts which sometimes children struggle with:
bullying, loneliness and empathy. Just like any good game combined with any good teacher,
you can actually use it to do whatever you want as long as you have a good sense of
imagination. Here is an example from a Primary School in Scotland. They played this video
game for 6 weeks for 5 or 10 minutes after their morning break time. Obviously they could
not all play at the same time, but they took in turns and developed a little rota to help them
play. As some of the children were playing with the game, other children wrote down the
data that they created, and that is one of the great things about games, it is they spit out
data, whether it is the amount of high score or the amount of gold coins that you collect,
they spit out lots of numbers. What they did after they collected these data is they gave
these data to their teacher and the teacher used that in order to start off a numeracy
lesson, a mathematical lesson that they always had after break time. And of course the
interesting thing about it was because the children collected the data themselves and they
could remember collecting the data, and they had seen each other collect the data, there
was something about that which made the information authentic, rather than just doing
simple mathematical exercises from a textbook. The children really bought into it because
they collected the data themselves. Again, a really interesting example of how a game can
be used in a different type of way. We did lots of other things as well. They worked


individually, for example on some project work around robots and they researched robots,
and they even designed their own robots. One the things that they did linked in the game is
one day they came in dressed up as robots, but they dressed up as robots using things that
they had recycled from home. Remember of course that the game is set on a planet, where
it is a tip and everything needs to be recycled and has got a strong environmental ethos
behind it. What we found with many of these games based learning projects that we have
done in schools is that children will write and write and write if they buy into the activity.
And again, because of the cultural relevance of games, and because it was a great classroom
teacher, there were lots of strong literacy and numeracy activities which accompanied this
project. They also did group work, it was not just about working independently. They did
group work and newspaper reports on the story of the game and on the story of the film,
again, using that game as the context for learning. I mentioned before, you could use robots
for command and control and that is what they did to help reinforce aspects of the early
stages computer curriculum and they even brought in an expert from Heriot-Watt
University of Edinburgh who was an artificial intelligence expert and the children got to ask
him questions. He still maintains that the questions coming from those 7-years old were of
some of the hardest ones he has got in all of his professional career. So as I said, it is a really
great context for learning. It is just all about our imagination. How do we take a context,
how do we take a theme, in this case of a video game, and link to other aspects of the
curriculum, in order to reinforce our learning. Go away and have a think about that. Can you
think of any games that potentially you might be able to use to reinforce your curriculum?