Learn and Play with Electronic Arts

Intended to turn commercial video games into educational tools. It contains resources that will enable video games, as it once happened with books, films or television programs, to become a starting point from which to reflect and learn, both in the family and in the academic environment.  In it, you will find different articles with reflections or experiences that will help you understand why video games and consoles can also become learning tools. In addition, you may leave your comments on the weblog included under the section “Express yourself”.

Social Network “Learn and Play”

“Learn and play” is the name of the virtual community of the website.

Use this social network to immerse yourself in the fascinating world of video games, and to share your photographs, videos and experiences with your friends. You may enter the network, register and start participating in a community dedicated to video games.  We are interested in your discussions with teachers and students that participated in the workshops

Learn and play with EA in Primary Education

WE LEARN TO THINK, CREATE, IMAGINE! This is what we are told by the boys and girls at schools CEIP Henares and CEIP Ciudad de Jaén in Madrid when they play in the classroom with video games such as The Sims, Harry Potter and NBA Live. Video games may become a powerful educational tool in the school and an ally in the communication and conveyance of values at home, specially when we get to know them and stop being afraid of them.
There are many things we may learn through play:

• To work as a team with peers, teachers and parents.
• To better understand the language of sounds and images, so important in our daily lives.
• To distinguish between fiction and reality.

Multimedia Weblogs in Secondary Education

On this page you may access the three sections, all of them regarding multimedia issues, that the Group Imágenes Palabras e Ideas has worked on through their research with video games in the classroom: Problem solving, Simulated Reality  and The Media in the Classroom.

• http://archivo.uah-gipi.org/resolver-problemas/
  

Strategy video games present problem situations within a virtual world, requiring the implementation of complex thinking processes that engage the player until, in the end, he or she discovers the solution.

• http://archivo.uah-gipi.org/realidad-simulada/

Simulation video games introduce players into a virtual world allowing, in this way, the establishment of a relationship between the physical world and the world shown on the screen, as well as between themselves and the characters they are playing with.

• http://archivo.uah-gipi.org/medios-aula/

Introducing new media in the classroom may contribute to students using ways of expression within this environment that are present in their daily lives, combining them with traditional learning tools such as books.

The adventure video games genre is characterized by the task of research, exploration and solving puzzles or riddles. They focus primarily on the tale and the adventures of the character wich interacts.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

El video game Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, as part of the famous transmedia Harry Potter series, created a scenario in the secondary education classroom in which students embarked in the making of a newspaper that revolved around one of their favourite fiction characters. We started playing the game during several sessions; furthermore, both classes would jointly cooperate to advance more rapidly, and in this way, first the ones and then the others played with the same screens.  During the process of the game, students wrote down the tasks and missions they encountered.  Then, they recounted them in the shape of stories.

7th Science Fair

This weblog shows how it is possible to turn a commercial video game into a reflection tool. At the 7th Science Fair 2007, organized by the Community of Madrid, the Research Group GIPI approached a large audience, through the different workshops, to show how video games can be used when it comes to acquiring the necessary values and skills to live in the society of the 21st Century. Both, families and teachers, became participants in a space for reflecting, building and debating around the proposed experiences. Three specific weblogs were created with the video games as the main characters: Sims 2 Pets , Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire  and NBA Live 07.

• http://sims-feriagipi07.blogspot.com/
• http://www.harrypottercalizfuego.blogspot.com/
• http://nba-feriagipi07.blogspot.com/

Workshop Harry Potter and The Goblet of fire (Primary Education, 2007)

The aim of this weblog is to show the work conducted in a video game workshop carried out at CEIP Henares in Alcalá de Henares during 2007.  In this case, and taking off from the video game Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, students became video game critics and creators of stories that, subsequently, they shared through the net with family and friends. The children’s drawings intertwine with the written texts.  We are learning to use multiple means of expression in the classroom and, in addition, implying that the readers are not at the school.

Workshop The Sims 2 Pets (Primary Education, 2007)

The aim of this weblog, similarly to the one above, is to show the work conducted in a video game workshop carried out at CEIP Henares in Alcalá de Henares during 2007. The main characters, in this case, were students from a Year 2 class of Primary Education who played with the Sims 2 Pets on the Nintendo DS console. Virtual reality became the starting point to reflect upon real life.  In this case they used not just drawings and written texts, but ph

Worskshop NBA Live 07 (Primary Education, 2007)

This weblog, Real and Virtual Worlds, shows the experience carried out in a Year 5 Class of Primary Education at CEIP Ciudad de Jaén in Madrid during 2007.  The students involved played NBA Live 07, creating their own weblogs in which they shared what they were learning in the workshop with family and friends. Sports became a starting point to establish a relationship between real and virtual worlds.  Boys and girls compared their experiences by playing on the court and on the screen.

Workshop The Sims 2 Pets (Primary Education, 2007)

It shows the experience lived by the students and teacher of a Year 5 Class of Primary Education at the school Ciudad de Jaén in Madrid.  They played with the Sims 2 Pets to, subsequently, write in their own weblogs whatever they had learned and discovered through the video games. In this case, we intended for children to understand that Internet is a new channel of communication, through which the audience goes much further than the school walls.