Living in a digital world: literacy, learning, and video games

Dr. Beavis addresses the way in which video games have become a prominent feature of contemporary life, and for many young people they are an integral and important part of their everyday lives. Game play works across online and offline spaces and calls upon knowledge and resources of many kinds, and is often highly social, requiring players to work together or alone to solve problems, to work out strategies and develop skills in order to play. Players need to interpret and respond to information of many kinds, presented in many forms, often in highly sophisticated ways. To be successful, games depend on players wanting to play, knowing how to play, and experiencing both challenges and satisfaction. Games need to teach players what to do and how to play, with the qualities and structures of games and of digital technologies well suited to teach players about complex interactions and processes. Game playing also calls upon and teaches a wide range of literacies and literacy practices, both traditional and those that call upon multimodal elements such as images, movement, and sound. There is increasing interest in incorporating digital games of many kinds in schools, to teach twenty-first-century literacies, and to engage twenty-first-century learners. This talk outlines some of the issues and questions that arise in relation to video games, learning, and literacy, and describes some of the ways in which digital games are being integrated into teaching and learning in Australian schools.