MOOC Learning Online - Week 4

Week 4 of my course Teaching Digital Literacy: Videogames in education was the last week of this course. I slightly fall out of my learning rhythm, because when I manage to set up some habits and schedule, the course expired days before I manage to finish it. Now I´m trying to find my pace and schedule again.

The last week of teh course Teaching Digital Literacy: Videogames in Education was focusing on the idea of videogames for everyone, careers in videogame industry and the issue of representation and inclusivity in videogames. At the end the course touches the future of videogames and technology like VR, AR, metaverses.

When we spoke about usage of videogames in terms of its meaning for real life, like gamification and gaining experience, it has a very wide range, thus we can think about videogames widely than like an entertainment just for children and teens. As I was listening to the variety of games and their function, I must add that I believe that educational potential do not lie only in the digital literacy, critical thinking, gaining life experiences or decision making, but also in gaining empathy and emotional maturity, through the storytelling layer of videogames.

The next part of this week course focus on the career part of videogame industry. I do not believe that skills like programming is the only skill you need for career in videogame industry. In case you want to work for a great studio producing AAA games, you practically became a specialist in one field or another, but if you would like to create your own indie games, your skillset must be much wider. I would say that creativity and learning skills are the most important for this kind of job.

I believe videogames are far ahead in the representation issue than other media. Not only its creators often belong to marginalised group, but our heroes also often belong to such a group. You can even find already mentioned indie game developers, who aims to show working class and real issues connected to social problems like poverty, racism or hatered. You can also find a hero or a rolemodel for yourself. Not only is this a medium to learn about diversity and social issues, videogames are also a medium to express some issue you face.

I belive that future of videogames is going to walk side-by-side with contemporary technology. People just like to play, relax and have some fun, so obviously we will find a creative way to use technology for those purposes.

I manage to finish my first course, which was kinda dissapointing to me. I hoped I can learn more about making games for educatinal puproses and what to emhasise during this process to make a valuable educatinal resource. I also hoped this course can promote some resources of such educational videogames for multiple purposes, and help you find the way to engage videogames into education, not only school education, but also education in libraries and online courses.

But this issues goes on me and my choice of attending this course. As I already mentioned, I am a huge fan of videogames and I know a lot and unfortunatelly, someone like me does not need this course, because we already understand that we can use this medium, we would rather know how to effectively do that.