Designing a family with 'The Sims 2 Pets'

Summary

Playing with “The Sims 2 Pets”, children from Year 5 of Primary Education became the creators of a virtual reality where they conferred shape to their families and pets. Based on these tasks, they had to take different decisions and learn to think together. The kids wrote the most relevant ideas down on the blogs.

Objectives

To analyze the video games as tools to connect the real and virtual worlds.
To explore new ways of multi-modal communication through the use of blogs.
To explore the development of spaces for collective dialogue that encourage the expression of critical thoughts.

Project Development

The data for this project was collected in a Year 5 class of Primary Education throughout twelve sessions (CEIP Ciudad de Jaén in Madrid; 2006/2007 school year).

The children that took part loved the idea of having a pet. In the workshop implemented they cared for them, trained them and fed them by playing with a video game. With The Sims 2 Pets, children and adults became creators of a virtual reality that resembled our everyday life in several ways, and in which the most fun and enjoyable activities were the ones performed between all of us: together we learned to play and think together about what we were going to do. Children created their own family, they built their house depending on the number of family members, they held several jobs, went to buy several things, took care of their pets, etc. The told us about all their experiences in the different blogs created by groups to convey to other children how they were getting along on the workshops and what they were learning while playing with the video game in class.

Results

Learning to create collectively

A workshop with a simulation video game such as The Sims 2 Pets becomes a collective creation experience. To build it, we have to use multiple media and tools for children to invent, dialogue, discuss and compare reality with fiction. In addition, we have to provide them with tools to share this experience with other people. Building a blog, as a way of keeping a digital class diary, boys and girls learned to organize and select the information they wanted to convey.

Building a critical conscience

Writing their own experience in blogs to tell other people what they did forced children to think and talk before writing, to reach a consensus and to be reflective and critical. Adults were very helpful in the fulfilment of this task. Recounting to others what we do take us to explore the possibilities available to choose the best option; it makes us more critical and helps us to think more deeply and better.

Financing

Research project “Commercial video games as educational tools” included within an agreement signed with Electronic Arts.

Participating with us

Electronic Arts
CEIP Ciudad de Jaén in Madrid.

More information

Publishing of a web page dedicated to the entire project.
Publishing of a guide related to the use of video games which was sent, free of charge, to all the schools in the community of Madrid and which can be found on the webpage from Electronic Arts España.
A complete project report can also be found on Electronic Arts´s webpage.