Video Games in Educational Settings: Developing Skills for New Media Learning

This chapter presents some ideas which have arisen from work on the use of commercial video games in schools carried out by the research group Culture, Technology and New Literacies (GIPI) at the Universidad de Alcalá (Madrid, Spain). It is based on the data collected during a large research project, the aim of which is to explore how commercial video games provide innovative educational opportunities in the classroom that bring children and adults into the new digital scenario. The chapter examines relationships between real and virtual universes as situated cognition processes involving game situations based on different simulation video games, such as SimCity. In very general terms, ?>real?> and ?>virtual?> worlds refer to the physical environment of the game and to the gamers?> activities on the screen. Based on their research experience, the authors?> proposal is oriented at the flexibility and creativity of the teachers to develop pedagogical changes that will enable the use and the potential of video games in the classroom.