Copyright: EA Games
My two boys are in early primary school, and the more they play and share with me what they have discovered and developed in the SPORE world the more and more I think this is the type of game that should be used in primary and elementary schools. The realization was cemented the other day when my boys called me in to look at the world they had created in SPORE Galactic Adventures.
They had called it “Land Land” and they took me through it stage by stage. They had adjusted the climate settings so they had “Winter Land” and “Desert Land.” They had designed “Jungle Land” and “Beach Land” alongside each other complete with appropriate trees and creatures to match each ecosystem. They had designed “Zoo Land” which was an enclosed facility with only a couple of each creature to “protect endangered species” my eldest noted. They had developed “Tribal Land” and “City Land” with buildings, cultures and effects. Each land had its own soundtrack when you entered it and they had begun to design specific adventures focused on each land.
The boys are 6 and 8 years old. The contribution this game is making in consolidating their learning at school and developing new skills and knowledge is significant. It sure beats the early pixelated versions of Civilization.
Here are the top five educational reasons SPORE should make its way into the classroom. IMHO.
1. World Building
Maybe it is because I am an old-school roleplayer, but the value of learning how to build worlds and foster your imagination through creating stories within those worlds is an important skill to develop if we are interested in developing children who can share ideas and knowledge through stories. Storytelling has been the primary method for sharing
2. Understanding Relationships
The process of moving through the stages from the evolutionary sludge up to venturing into space and beyond helps children develop an understanding about how decisions impact on relationships. The process is simplistic, yes, but very suitable for a child under 12s level of development. Aggressive actions in the creature stage lead to tribes and civilizations more likely to develop and evolve through war and conflict. Friendly, cooperative actions in the creature stage lead to more peaceful methods of development like economic. The graphs and details at the end of each stage are simple and effective in demonstrating this.
3. Media Literacy
I have been very interested in developing my boys knowledge of not just how computers work, but how media is made. I have used Pivot Stick Figure Animator to help them understand how cartoons are made by allowing them to make their own simple cartoons. We talk about advertising on television. And, with SPORE’s Galatic Adventures extension they can now develop a simple understanding of how computer games are made. When we play together I prompt them by saying: “See, everyone who makes computer games makes decisions about what creatures go where, how they move and whether they attack you or not.” This develops in them a greater capacity to understand the new media world they are growing up in.
4. Learning about Evolution
SPORE is all about the evolutionary process. Ok, not deeply scientifically rigorous, but for younger children it is a good way to introduce the basic concepts of evolution and how we developed to become the frontal lobe bearing species we are today. It sparks interesting discussions about what might be happening in other planets and how even if we discover life in space that it might not be as evolved as we are, or even more evolved.
5. Cultural Studies
As they build your own tribe in the original game, or build entire tribes and cities in the Galactic Adventures extension pack, children gain an understanding and learn about the differences between cultures. They know not to approach certain tribes because they are hostile. They recognize that some cultures live off fish, or others hunt for food. They see how this can develop into different religions and the differences in cultures becomes very obvious in the Space stage where the many different encounters are quite rich and nuanced in terms of how they talk, engage and what they believe in.
I’m not a teacher, but if I was I’d be incorporating the development of a world in SPORE into my classroom activities and engaging children in learning through computer games across the SPORE Galaxy.
