RSJ News
Journalism + Games = Fun + Education
08-20-2009
Go to http://www.journalismgame.com/ to try some of these games yourself.
Is it possible to make a 'serious game' out of a news story?
Larry Dailey, professor and Reynolds Media Technology Chair, says yes. And he's out to prove it by challenging students to think about how to make news stories fun and productive learning experiences.
Dailey teaches a Game Design for Journalists course for undergraduate students at the Reynolds School and Exploratory Journalism for graduate students. This past semester 18 students, working in teams, designed and built simple games around the theme of the environment using Flash software.
Dailey likes to quote Mark Twain: “Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.” A lot of what we learn is through play, Dailey says, something that has been missing from a lot of traditional journalism.
His goal in his classes is to create an environment where students learn by doing – and what they do is to construct a news exercise where the audience for journalism can also learn by doing.
"This semester I challenged the students to come up with games that would educate users to learn about environmental issues," he said. "The idea is that playing a game is a way to engage users in journalism in ways they haven't encountered before. Games are a way to engage young people, for example, or people who speak languages other than English."
Usually about three-quarters of the way through the semester they '”really wish they would have dropped out,” Dailey says. “It hurts to learn something new. It hurts to learn how to do it. But by the end of the semester students usually say, ‘wow, why are you keeping this thing so secret? This was cool.’ "
Dailey has been advocating the use of games in journalism for several years. He recently attended the Games for Change conference in New York City and has addressed several national panels on ways to incorporate games in journalism.
His work this semester received support from the Nevada NASA Space Grant Consortium and the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.
Dailey is particularly proud of the games produced by this semester’s students.
“A lot of the serious games that I see is that are ones where the producers put a lot of work into the serious part,” Dailey said. “But this semester students made games that have a learning mission and that are fun to play.
“They’re really good.”
To play this semester’s games, go to: Journalism Games. The games require a high-speed Internet connection and Adobe's free Flash Player.
