Copenhagen (DK), February 2007 - (by Tonny Hansen) The trade cog is leaving Lübeck, loaded with Flemish linen and barrels of tar bound for Bergen, where a cargo of iron ore is waiting for a vessel to bring it on to Stralsund. The 6th graders in the Höjby school in Odense, Denmark are having great fun during their history lessons. Teacher and school librarian Ella Myhring has introduced them to both facts about the medieval Hansa League and to the computer game Patricia III. Those seem to be a good combination, for although the activities of the class seem to involve a lot of playing, they bring the pupils up to curriculum standards.
Teaching the subject through a computer game was an experiment, but a successful one, and more is to come. "Generally all games have a potential", says Ella Myhring, stressing, however, that those in use should be tested and designated suitable for children by the Danish Media Association.
"The point is to find the learning potential of the games the pupils play at home. Sims II and Age of Empire are useful, but also freeware games like Power Babe and Adventure Quest have been used."
In a modern school, you must skip traditional thinking about how to organise teaching. The teacher has to leave some responsibility for the successful project to the pupils. Studies show that attainment increases where the children feel that they have influence on the learning process.
"This means the teacher must relinquish her monopoly on being the only one who knows what is good for the pupils and how a sequence of teaching will develop. The reason is, ... you cannot know a computer game to its end the same as you can know a written text", comments Ella Myhring, and she points out that adults tend to prefer linear thinking, a method that provides maximum security for the teacher, but which is not proper for working with modern ICT. A game of strategy, in fact, often proves difficult for the teacher because she is trained in reading the solution in a manual.
An example of one of the tasks given to the children of the Höjby school has been to write a description of a part of their favourite game with such precision that their parents actually are able to play their way through it. This is a rather motivating twist of a traditional exercise for a Danish lesson.
"You never know exactly where interactive methods and material will bring you, but of course you must make the target for your teaching clear for yourself, your pupils, and to some extent for some sceptical parents", Ella Myhring emphasizes. And the game goes on. Trade flourishes, and the pupils prosper with the Hansa merchants.
