11am to 12:30pm – online event
How effective can games be as a tool to explore global justice issues with young people? How can Games Based Learning, and serious games be used in education? How can we design our own games to use with young people in informal spaces?
Trócaire has been working with games in Development Education for many years. Today, we will look at our experiences, and how games can be used as part of a process of learning, to challenge existing stereotypes, and engage with social issues. We will look at how games can be used to look at knowledge and understanding of global issues, skills development, exploration of values, and hopefully, taking meaningful action. We will look at games design, bearing in mind that we are not game designers ourselves, and this session is not about professional game development. Instead, we are going to create discussion around how we can design a game for Dev Ed and learning purposes. We have some tips, but you will discover that you also know more than you think!
Paul will present research he has been doing of the use of digital games in youth work and development education. Whether is Minecraft, Overwatch, FIFA or Virtual Reality, games and games based technology have become ubiquitous in contemporary culture and can be used to raise awareness, raise funds and raise people’s consciousness. Games have become a social space where relationships are forged, issues discussed and social movements consolidated.
The research worked with Development Educators and Games designers in order to better understand what it is about games in general and digital games in particular which can make them useful as a medium for social activism.
If you would like to try the online game that Stephen and Trócaire will be presenting you can find it and play it HERE.
