Educational Games and Online Resources

The importance of games and simulations within education are increasing.


The Economy Game
This learning game is freely available from a website called "Young Facts" (Sw. Unga Fakta), where one section is labeled "Young Economy". In this section, the starting page tells the user that it is important to have some knowledge about one's own economy. The starting page of the game is shown in Fig. 13.1 and it reveals that there are three levels to the game. You are recommended to start at the first level, where you are supposed to pretend that you are going to live on your own for one year at upper secondary school.

General Structure and Setting
The structure of this game is fixed and the layout is relatively sparse. When starting the game you first have to go through a number of informative pages about how to play the game, for instance that you first of all need to make a budget. Here you also get an explanation of what a budget is.
A number of parameters of the game are fixed, for instance the fact that you need to make a budget, and that you have to deal with a number of economic events each month (invoices, neighbors who pay visits to borrow money, etc.). Depending on your choices, such as accepting a subscription offer from a magazine, or lending money to a friend, new things will occur the following month.
The game contains links, marked with an i, to various sorts of information, and the player is explicitly told to click on these links for information. By using a "noteboard" in the flat, the player can go back to the general information given before starting the game.
The player thus has to start up making a budget ( Fig. 13.2), where the steady sources of income are already there, while the player can choose how much to spend on consumable goods (Sw. förbrukningsvaror), such as food, clothes, and hygiene, and how much to save. On this page, an explanation of "surplus money" (Sw. överskott) is given if you click i. Apart from the fixed gaming parameters mentioned above, a number of economic parameters are also fixed in this game. Examples are the sources of monthly income, such as student grants and maintenance, which appear to be in line with the Swedish terms. The cost of rent is also fixed. Therefore, the player cannot choose a cheaper way of living, such as renting a room or sharing a flat with others.
Given the fact that this game is supposed to be used to learn about private economy, it is somewhat surprising that no information is given about reasonable costs for food, consumable goods, or the like. In a game like this, links to other websites with that kind of information could have been included. Also, one could argue that choices such as "no fast food or restaurants" or "no unnecessary costs for clothes this month" would be available (or the opposite, to see the consequences of excessive consumption). If students are using a game like this, it would be wise to supplement the game with classroom discussions and collaborative learning activities, for instance to search for useful web resources about private economy, or what standard of living is suggested as reasonable.
Also, it is astounding that this game gives you a warning if you have spent too little on clothes, and that you therefore are running a risk that people around you "might start complaining" (see Sect. 13.1.2). Furthermore, in the game you can only plan for such costs in the budget, while you cannot decide when to go out to buy your soap or your clothes, or what to buy. With regard to furniture, and technical products such as computers and television, you decide for yourself when to buy things, and  Figure 13.4 shows the flat the player lives in, and in the lower part of the screen a number of symbols for game episodes automatically generated by the game. The symbols are more or less conventionalized, combined with different coloring. A green dollar sign means incomes, a red one for invoices that need to be taken care of. The color coding is equivalent to that of calculation software, in which negative numbers are displayed in red. A letter symbol is used for episodes that you need to take care of at a more or less daily basis, like offers from magazines, or for phone subscriptions.

Interaction Between Text Resources
When clicking on triangles with exclamation marks, you can read that you have spent too little on food, clothes or hygiene (Fig. 13.5)-though as mentioned above, what is a reasonable budget for that is not indicated. Beside the dollar sign in the upper right corner, you can see how much money you have got. The dollar sign is thus used as a general symbol for economy, though you cannot choose currency in your budget (instead Swedish crowns, SEK, appear to be default).

Values
The values given through the game is only commented on briefly. An obvious one is of course the whole idea behind the game: that it is important to be able to make a budget, and to have your private economy under control.
However, there are other values in the game as well, some of which have been commented on above. One such example is that the game warns you when you have spent too little on, for instance, clothes. Another value given in the game is that you should help your friends. If you agree to lend some money to a friend (a boy) who is lagging behind with his rent, the next month you will get back the same amount of money plus an extra sum, as a thank you from your friend, who happens to have won some money on lottery, and wants to share it with you as thanks for the help.
Since a number of implicit values are built into this game, it can be fruitful to let the students reflect upon them and discuss them in class, not least since some of these values are more or less in conflict with the general discourse about spending today.

MinecraftEdu
Minecraft was originally launched in 2011. This game seems to be very engaging, and it gives the player an opportunity to build things by using different kinds of (virtual) blocks. It supports creativity as well as the testing of different solutions, and it gives a feeling of mastery through immediate and relevant feedback. The learning process can be both individual and collaborative. The game appears in different "modes": in the "survival mode" or "hardcore mode" of the game, you can build tools to kill animals or monsters, but in the "creative mode", you can concentrate on building things-such as a piano or parts of the body, or houses and communities. This mode is the one that is mostly used in school contexts.
MinecraftEdu (also called "vanilla" Minecraft) is an adapted version of Minecraft for educational use. However, in both versions you can set up a "joint world" (using the local area network-LAN) for teachers and students. In fact, many teachers seem to still use the Minecraft version and not MinecraftEdu. You can play Minecraft and MinecraftEdu as a single player, but it also supports collaborative learning and communication, for example in a class.
MinecraftEdu can be used in different school subjects, for example to explore content and locations in history lessons or to construct maps to navigate in a (virtual) environment. In addition, you can explore biological mechanisms or train mathematical skills, etc. It is also possible to support transdisciplinary learning, which is enhanced under the label of "21st Century Skills" (or "Competences"), as well as to support pupils with special educational needs.
In such games, the students have to gather information or build something up. As a teacher, you can also add tasks, example the possibility for the students to write, so that the students can practice writing along with their gaming, and thereby benefit from the joint engagement in the classroom. However, it is important to make the learning goals and objects of learning explicit to the students.
Minecraft is but one example of on-line resources that could be used in education. The reason for mentioning it here is that it is an example of a game that includes the possibility to add chats and other sites for communication and reflection.

Using the Model for On-Line Gaming
As is evident from our analyses of digital websites and educational games, our model for working with multimodal texts can be utilized for various online resources as well. However, since not all digitized material is produced for educational purposes, the use of such material primarily require answers to the question of educational relevance. Also, such use requires a reorientation of traditions and routines in educational planning, as well as in existing cultures of recognition and testing practices (Kress and Selander 2012;Selander 2008Selander , 2015. In gaming, the player will show his or her understanding through acting within the frames of the game or simulation. Therefore, there is a need for new ways of tracking discussions between students, as well as decisions made in the game over time. To conclude, by using digitized tools and environments, the range of ways to show learning and knowledge ('signs of learning') changes. In the case of collaborative problem solving, our model could help both to guide the construction of the "testing" situations, and the interpretation of the results. With this said, with minor adjustments our model for working with multimodal texts can be a useful tool for teachers who want to use online resources in education in meaningful ways.
A starting point for working with the model is to analyze the general structure of the text, including such aspects as thematic orientation and sequencing, followed by the interaction between textual parts. However, when using gaming and other online resources in education, it seems relevant to also look at the student's interaction with different parts of the text (e.g. the game), both in terms of what possibilities there are in the game and in terms of choices made by the student.
As regards figurative language, the games can be scrutinized for example by looking at what domains the game or simulation uses for the exercises in mathematical, historical or other subject domains. Here it is relevant to discuss with the students for instance to what extent the game builds on analogies between the real world and the imaginative world of the game, and to discuss possible limits with the choices made by the constructors of the game.
Concerning explicit and implicit values, it is important to look into what kind of actions that are requested or possible in the game, and to discuss these in relation to values with the students. Another aspect of value in relation to gaming-in fact in relation to any learning activity-concerns what kind of learning the game, or activity, contributes with. Even though the use of games in education can be engaging for students, that is not an end in itself. Instead, all learning resources must be used for a specific purpose within the frames of the educational setting.
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