Evans, M. & Barbour, M. K. (2007, October). "I need a green axe": Video games and your social studies classroom . Paper presentation at the annual World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education, Quebec City , QC . Today's students are natives of technology more than ever before. Along with being natives of the digital world, students are also avid video game players in a way that the previous generation was avid television viewers. There is a movement in some circles within the academy to explore how video games of how video games can be integrated into the schooling experience. This session explores this innovative, and controversial, teaching technique and strategy. By using the online video game Guild Wars® as an example, new pedagogies for reaching these students (and a myriad of social studies principles) will be explored.

1. "I Need a Green Axe":
Using Video Game Knowledge
in the Social Studies Classroom
Mark Austin Evans Michael K. Barbour
University of Georgia Wayne State University
maevans@uga.edu mkbarbour@gmail.com

2. Why?
• “This sort of feels like the hammer in search of a
nail phenomenon – here’s a cool game, let’s see if
we can fit it into the social studies.”
• “The main question I have with the proposal is the
lack of examples of ‘real’ social studies classroom
teachers using video games in their classrooms.”

3. Why?
• Gentile, Lynch, Linder and Walsh (2004)
found that 94% of the 600 grade eight and
nine students they surveyed from four mid-
Western high schools played video games
for an average of nine hours each week
• Prensky (2006) estimated that the average
student will have played more than 10,000
hours of video games by the time they
graduate from college

4. What Are They Playing?
• Madden NFL, Kingdom of Hearts, Super
Mario Bros., Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
and Grand Theft Auto (i.e., the top five
selling games of 2006 – see Kirdahy, 2006)
• Mario, Pokémon, Sim, Final Fantasy and
Madden NFL (i.e., the top selling console
game series of all time – see Wikipedia,
2007)

5. What Are We Going To Do
About It?

6. What Are We Going To Do
About It?