Teaching Digital Literacy: Videogames in Education

Discover how children learn through playing and creating videogames

Learning to journey through digital stories by collaborating and communicating with others can teach children the literacy skills they need in the 21st century.

On this four-week course from the University of Sheffield, you’ll explore new ways to teach digital literacies with videogames, helping you to use videogames and game design as an educational tool.

Explore how to teach digital literacies through videogames

Through this dynamic course, you’ll discover the 5 Cs model of teaching digital literacy:

• collaboration,
• cultural access,
• creativity,
• criticality, and
• computational thinking.

Using these skills, you’ll be able to enhance your teaching and use videogames in your classroom to provide important new opportunities to children.

Uncover the creative power of videogames

From books and films to TV shows and, of course, videogames, children engage with narratives in all shapes, sizes, and frame rates.

You’ll look at how videogames enrich children’s experiences of narrative while also developing new approaches to literacy and learning.

Children can collaborate on quests with friends in RPGs, walk through the park catching Pokemon through AR, and design and build their own worlds in sandbox games, but teachers and educators have an important role to play in supporting children to engage critically and creatively with videogames.

Challenge the preconceptions of videogame playing in childhood

Despite being around for so long, videogames still hold a stigma, especially about their impact on children.

This course will guide you through this debate, sharing research, case studies, and developer interviews to help you challenge concerns and inform your decisions about using videogames in your context.

This course is designed for primary and secondary school teachers interested in using videogames to enhance their teaching.

It may also be useful for anyone working in the video games industry looking to create games for children, and for educators and practitioners in museums, galleries, and art organisations.

This course is designed for primary and secondary school teachers interested in using videogames to enhance their teaching.

It may also be useful for anyone working in the video games industry looking to create games for children, and for educators and practitioners in museums, galleries, and art organisations.

• Explore the role of videogames in childhood
• Critique negative preconceptions about game playing
• Create activities to support children's learning