Hosted by OSOS , contributed by Konstantinapriovolou on 12 July 2018
The general idea is to create an educational tool -more specifically a video game-, based on realistic scenarios, which will prevent students from bullying. Moreover, it will help them identify and prevent bullying manifestations and act more actively as observers of bullying phenomena, as well as develop empathy. The goal is to promote, within the classroom and within the local community the idea of accepting diversity, of implementing social inclusion techniques within the school framework and for the students to be more active, as observers and as victims.
Feel
Students will answer questionnaires and will be interviewed (in focus groups) by the teacher about issues concerning the following:
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Definition of bullying and expressions of it within the school and community environment
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Questions about their favourite video games, when they play it, in which electronic devices, how often
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Have you witnessed prejudice-based bullying incidents before?
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Questions about diversity ( race, colour, religion, external features, weight, height) and how they feel about it.
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Questions about the role of the observer (active, passive, neutral)
After analysing their answers through quantitative and qualitative techniques (spss template, content analysis) the results of the survey are going to help the teachers and the students to create realistic scenarios/scripts/characters/victim/bully/observer.adults, based on their experiences, in order to construct the video game.
Furthermore, the scenarios are going to be used by the IT teacher, in order to construct the technical part of the game. He/she is going to program it and embody all the characters in the game. The colours, the setting will have been decided by the answers to the questionnaires and the focus groups.
In conclusion, the created video game will be uploaded to an open school platform and will be implemented in the school community. But it will be open for public use, so as to incorporate the local or even national and international community in this project.
Imagine
Questions based on inquiry-based learning:
- The questions that we will answer in both the questionnaire and the interviews will raise the interest of the students to discuss the huge subject of bullying, which is something taking place almost every day. Through the stimulation and the use of inquiry-based learning, the students are going to ask themselves and their peers how they can identify bullying, they are going to engage in the roles (victim, bully, observer) and identify themselves in similar incidents and situations.
- The outcome of the fruitful conversations and interactions will be the creation of realistic scenarios for the game: Use of real incidents and realistic characters to create the scenarios of the game.
- Creation of the setting, with colours and characteristics chosen by the students.
- Structuring the body of the game, following particular guidelines (e.g. each game level should not exceed a time limit)
- Students will implement the video game that they have created (IBSE learning)
Create
The game that is going to be created will satisfy the needs of the RRI, meaning that it will satisfy:
Public engagement-Open access:
The video game that will be created by the students will be uploaded to an open-access platform, managed by the IT teacher of the school. So, every student of every school having the link for the game will be capable of entering the game platform, being informed about fundamental bullying theories applied in the scenarios and preventing himself/herself from bullying, through a fun way.
Gender:
Gender is an issue taken very much into account by sociology and psychology theories. For many years, and even nowadays, in several societies, women are regarded as inferior creatures and are deprived of fundamental rights. Through this game, the issue of gender equality will be taken into account very seriously, through the equal use of both boys and girls as heroes (bullies, victims, bystanders), regardless of their SES and regardless if they belong in majority or minority groups.
Ethics:
Ethics is also a major issue in this project. Throughout the implementation of the activities within the school environment and the dissemination of the project through the open-access platform, the conformity with the idea of equality, justice and creation of a game for educational purposes will be the basic axis of this project. The goal is to educate students and stakeholders to identify, prevent and eliminate bullying incidents.
We are also going to discuss and implement the issue of empathy, through the identification of the pupils with the roles of the video game,
Science Education:
Science Education is actively involved in the project, since the students are going to be engaged in a programming procedure, so as to create the digital environment for the video game. The cooperation with the IT teacher or even with programmers/designers/institutions of the local community, in order to enhance the gaming procedure, is of utmost importance. Through this procedure, the students will obtain programming and designing skills and will broaden their educational horizons.
The communication of their product is of great importance and it will be materialized through the use of an open-access platform and through the dissemination of the deliverable product into the local, national and intarnational community(cooperation with other institutions).