Article: https://www.societyforhistoryeducation.org/pdfs/M21_Spalding.pdf
“To convince students that history is not just the memorization of a static past, they do not just read (and write) about historical material in my classes. Instead, students actively apply that material in specific situational classroom contexts. I integrate gaming into the classroom to build the framework for considering course content.”
The author Sarah Spalding says this at the start of the article “Game of Thrones and Gaming the History Classroom” to show us how she teaches her history class is differently, and how games can help better engage students in learning. Using games to teach students is a fairly common practice in the teaching world, often time there will be little games for student students to play, particularly online in order to engage students so that they can learn the material better.
“As one of the stated goals of my class is to help students become historians, my students must move beyond memorizing a term to understanding its variable contexts and historical significances.”
Spalding notes earlier that the main goal of this game that she’s created is to turn students into Historians. They have students engage with each other and use problem-solving skills as well as learn to do “historical identification.”. Spalding argues that her game can help students with historical identification the most, by connecting different people, years, and countries together throughout the game.
“Definitions of student engagement are broad and can include items such as group collaboration, group testing, and concepts described as active learning.”
Spalding’s idea of using a game to teach students isn’t too unique, and I would say that her game might be too encompassing. Her game seems somewhat complicated and relies on every student being engaged in learning the history, as well as participating in the game. A student who doesn’t care for history, or just doesn’t try in school can easily learn nothing from this game, and hinder the progress of other students. Students can get lost in this game and could get left behind by the rest of the class if they don’t understand everything the first time. Overall, this game seems too complicated, and too time-consuming. Using games to engage students is still a very good learning method, I’m just not sure this game is one that would be helpful for all students to use.
