MindShift – Katrina Schwartz
The students in Scott Jackson’s eleventh grade American History class have almost no common knowledge about the country’s early beginnings and important moments. His students at Brooklyn International High School are recent immigrants to this country who are learning English and how to be American school students at the same time. Jackson uses the immersive role-playing game Mission US to give his students a common experience of what it would have been like to live during important historical moments. The game is designed to encourage students to empathize with the game’s characters, make connections to their own experiences and ultimately remember what happened in history.
“It levels the playing field,” Jackson said. “Everyone is able to see the history, jump into the history and describe what they’re seeing.” Even if one student can read and understand 95 percent of what’s happening in the game and another student only gets 15 percent because his language skills are less developed, they can each talk about what they saw in the game. The game becomes a shared experience to discuss the choices each made in the game and how those choices changed their experience of the historical moment.
Mission US currently has four missions based around different important points in history. Jackson has found the game to be such aneffective stand-in for a textbook that he structures several units around the game’s themes, using them as the basis of inquiry that branches far beyond the core narrative of the missions, and most importantly, giving his students lots of chances to use their language skills.
The first Mission called “For Crown or Colony?” is set in pre-Revolutionary War Boston and leads up to the Boston Massacre. Students take on the identity of Nat Wheeler, an apprentice in a printshop. As they play, students make choices in the game that build up a personality for their version of Nat Wheeler. Aside from the specific knowledge about the events of the Boston Massacre, the game asks students to consider how history changes when told from different perspectives.
“When students experience the Boston Massacre in the world of the game, students in the same classroom may have very different experiences of the same event,” said Chris Czajka, senior director of education at WNET on an edWeb webinar about games and learning. WNET, the public television station in New York City, produces Mission US in collaboration with video game designers at Electric Funstuff.
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by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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