Publication

GAMEPADDLE – Video Games. Education. Empowerment.

In the educational discourse video games are often regarded as a vital risk for young people. Especially excessive gaming of adolescents troubles teachers, educators and parents. The lack of knowledge about digital gaming worlds, as well as the lack of own gaming experience can lead to misjudgement and ignorance of resources acquired by young gamers. This is the starting point of the Gamepaddle project: identifying young people’s game-related resources and helping them to benefit from them in other primarily non-game-related contexts such as school, intergenerational dialogue, creative activity or civic commitment.

The project publication »GAMEPADDLE – Video Games. Empowerment. Education.« gives background information and detailed practical advice for educators who are working with adolescents. The four projects propose ideas and educational methods for helping young people develop media literacy, a comptent use of video games and civic awarenss. The publication is open for reproduction and distribution under the Creative Commons licence 3.0 BY – NC.

About the Project          

14 scholars, researchers, teachers, media educators and youth workers from Austria (wienXtra-medienzentrum, Vienna), Germany (JFF – Institute for media education and media research, Munich), Italy (MED – Associazione italiana per l’educazione ai media e alla comunicazione and Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano) and Sweden (Karlstads internationella TIME-utbildning, Karlstad) worked together and contributed to the Gamepaddleproject with their specific perspectives and knowledge. They developed concepts for using video games in educational settings to empower young people.

OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE

The publication is open for reproduction and distribution under the Creative Commons licence 3.0 BY – NC. Find different ways of downloading or acquiring the material:

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	Download the complete publication Download as .docx Download as .pdf Download single project descriptions with modules as .docx Cooperation in Minecraft (written by Tobias Härnvi) This procject proposes a way to use the game MINECRAFT to learn basic project management with a Scrum-like approach. Cooperation and project oriented work is constantly getting more common in schools, companies, organization and even in family life. The general objective was to become a better team player and organizer. Download as .docx SIMaging the City. The Educational Use of Video Games in a Youth Club (written by Massimiliano Andreoletti, Gianna Cappello, Annalisa Castronovo, Marcello Marinisi & Anna Ragosta) In this project, the videogame Simcity is used to initiate reflexion on the urban environment young people live in and raise civic awareness. Download as .docx empower*play – the Austrian module (written by Michaela Anderle) The Austrian project wants to encourage young people to advocate their interests and to demonstrate the importance of gaming as a modern cultural practice. Young people introduced digital gaming worlds to adults. The key to their successful guiding of adults is their gaming expertise Download as .docx CardGameDesign. Designing a Card Game about Video Games (written by Sebastian Ring) In this project the participants work together in small groups to create a card game about videogames. The outcome is a game about games that can be played by others and encourages them to discuss about the world of videogames. Download as .docx EXTRA: Evaluation Tool by Massimiliano Andreoletti [CC international license 4.0 BY – NC – SA] Download Evaluation Tools as .docx Download Evaluation Tools as .odt

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction	4
Chapter 1
Game and Video Game. Reflections between Education and Entertainment. Massimiliano Andreoletti	7
Video Games in Real Life Annalisa Castronovo & Marcello Marinisi	23
Social Media and Digital Gaming Worlds – far more than Playing GamesSebastian Ring	35
Potentials of Video GamesAnu Pöyskö	45
What Makes a Game Attractive?Anna Ragosta	59
Rating Video GamesAnna Ragosta	64
Media/Digital Competence. The European and Italian DefinitionGianna Cappello	66
Chapter 2
The Gamepaddle Project – Games. Education. Empowerment. Tobias Härnvi, Ida Pöttinger	76
Cooperation in Minecraft Tobias Härnvi	82
SIMaging the City. The Educational Use of Video Games in a Youth Club of Palermo Massimiliano Andreoletti, Gianna Cappello, Annalisa Castronovo, Marcello Marinisi & Anna Ragosta	92
EMPOWER*playMichaela Anderle	105
Card Game Design. Designing a Card Game about Video GamesSebastian Ring	117
Tools	124
Chapter 3
About the Authors	126