Besieged by Enemies: Video Games in Language and Social Sciences at Nordahl Grieg High School, 2015

The basis for the project is a unique focus on video games in education among several teachers at Nordahl Grieg high school, with support and encouragement from the school management. They have done relatively extensive trials including Civilization IV (Norwegian, English and social studies), The Last of Us (Norwegian) and The Walking Dead (religion, ethics and beliefs), and several similar programs are being planned. Many interesting initial experiences are documented through blogs and media reports. A dense and growing community supporting computer games in education provides a unique opportunity to invest in Nordahl Grieg as a pioneering school and resource center for the use of games in education, in collaboration with the University of Bergen and the game development environment in Bergen. It is important that the skills are about to be constructed, maintained and further developed. The initiative we are now seeing is also a unique opportunity to develop research-based expertise in the use of games in schools, through a long-term cooperation between the education sector and the University of Bergen. We want to focus primarily on the Bergen region and secondary schools in Hordaland county, in order to exploit a local and regional cluster effect and to put in place a permanent infrastructure based on activity and visions at Nordahl Grieg. Collaborators are Nordahl Grieg high school and Spillmakerlauget Vest (Game Maker Guild West). We will prioritize experiments with commercial computer games in language, cultural and social sciences. So far very little research on and systematic experience with this type of use of digital games in Norwegian classrooms has been done. The pilot study will document and make experiences available both from Nordahl Grieg and other secondary schools in Oslo. It will also do pilot studies in the classroom, arrange workshops between teachers and local game developers, and build networks locally, nationally and internationally prior to an application for innovation project funding in 2015.