Abstract:

Considered by some authors a branch of serious games, games for change concerns the social aspects and the dynamics of social change made through games. The concept of serious games is changing: from serious games as a product to serious gaming as a process. Some researchers consider the game a barometer for civic learning in the real world. Therefore, we want to explore the idea of games that have an impact in different fields of the society, specially in citizenship education.

In this paper we intended to analyse the interlude between social change and the concept of social networking. The social networking concept is as old as mankind social interactions and normally occurs between individuals, groups and associations and they are essential to determine and characterize the experience of a given society. There are multiple sciences that study this perspective of social networks: anthropology, communication sciences, biology to economics to social psychology sociology and sociolinguistics, among others. The aim is to relate the social interaction and citizenship education, as this relation can have an important role in the design and development of the game.

This paper intends to explain the different strategies to develop and to design games for a citizenship and social education. One of the strategy is the implementation of badges to promote learning skills and engagement in citizenship education. The project aims to explain the history of the insurance worldwide: the importance of some events, like the Great Fire of London in 1666 or the Lisbon Earthquake in 1755. How they contributed to understand the needs of the population and how the insurances were thought to cover their needs. In this sense, this project aims to demonstrate that by learning what options and reactions were made by the population, the learner can see the contribution and importance of the history of insurance to our society.

Keywords:

Citizenship education, games for change, serious games, learning.