Using Videogames As Educational Tools: Building Bridges Between Commercial And Serious Games

This paper describes how a social simulation videogame (The Sims 2 Pets) was introduced into the classroom as a educational tool, and discusses the activities and conversations of the children, teachers and researchers involved. This study adopts a qualitative analytical perspective based on narrative and ethnographic approaches and discourse analysis. Sixteen seven- to eight-year old children participated in the study. All the video recordings were segmented using Nudist 8.0 and Atlas.ti. The analysis allows us to delimit different phases according to the strategies that children and adults used to approach the game in the classroom context. Our results show the strategies used by the adult to guide the children through a deductive reasoning process.