Dominik Müllner

 

Dominik MüllnerDominik Müllner is a teacher for English and History. During his academic studies, Dominik Müllner specialised on the pedagogical use of digital games in history classes and was also working as an expert for the “Federal Office for the Positive Assessment of Digital Games”. Furthermore, he is also working as a freelance trainer for educational play.


Playing History – Practical Applications for Teachers and Youthworkers

Practional Presentation,  Saturday, 19th October, 17:30 – 17:45

While Videogames are on the technological step of augmented reality and virtual reality, the pedagogical merits of videogames are slowly being realized in a school setting and the field of youthwork. Even though educational videogames are already in use at some schools, as a means to aid learning processes, the full potential of digital games has yet to be realized. Games provide students with the opportunity to delve deeper into its core and analyse the medium from a critical point of view. Thus, adolescents are able to reflect their own self-reference and moral values onto the game and vice versa. Especially videogames with a historical context provide themselves to be delved into, further explored and let adolescents transfer their experiences, discoveries and insights into the real world.
In light of this, a project commissioned by the Federal Office for the Positive Assessment of Digital Games (BuPP.at) was focused on creating a pool of methods to be used to convey history and political education through the use of digital games, which includes the following:

  • Paperchase through ancient Egypt
  • Refugee and migration
  • Media competence: World War 1
  • Change in perspective/judgement on political topics
  • Learning by Doing – political education
  • Climate change – possible measures through digital games
  • History as a strategy guide

Those methods were already tested with adolescents and it has been demonstrated that these subjects were more open-minded to a deeper analysis of videogames with serious content and grew to be more critical towards the presented contents of the games with growing interest. Furthermore, the adolescents demonstrated transfer processes from the games’ contents to their everyday life, thus proving that this project was successful in creating a mixed reality construct between history-focused games and reality, allowing learning processes to flourish.

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