WHAT STORY? EXPLORING NARRATIVE THROUGH DIGITAL GAMES

This talk critically examines the idea that digital games are a means to reach out to the 21st century learners who now populate our classrooms. Reporting on a pilot and subsequent study that took place in the context of a Language Arts curriculum, this research tested claims that narrative intensive games better speak to the vocabulary, interests, and experiences of 21st century learners than language-based print books. Beginning with the claim that educators need only to “add videogames and stir” – that games are rich enough texts that students will be more engaged, more “on task”, and more compelled to undertake self-directed learning – researchers observed that verylittle learning actually took place. Indeed, students required extensive scaffolding and constant reminders to remain focused on the narrative, rather than being pulled into the ludic elements of these digital texts. In an effort to address this need for explicit scaffolding, the second part of this paper describes the building and implementation of a 2-week curriculum that used a digital game as a narrative text. Working in collaboration with a group of classroom and special education teachers, we co-wrote a 2-week curriculum to test the use of an iPad game (Lost Winds 2) as part of the Ontario Grade 6 Language Arts curriculum. Students were given a pre and post-test designed to evaluate their general understanding of narrative, and were also given a technology-use survey to gauge their familiarity with digital games. Preliminary analysis found that students generallyimproved their scores from pre-to post-having played the game and having had narrative constructs reinforced over the 2-week intervention. This study also confirmed that using digital games in the classroom intensifies, or in McLuhan’s terms “enhances”, gender-based differential access to educational opportunities: we found stereotypical gender differences in terms of access to and familiarity with games, with boys reporting having more access to games, playing more and generally being more enthusiastic about school curriculum that included a game component.