Gaming the Past (Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History)

Gaming the Past is a complete handbook to help pre-service teachers, current teachers, and teacher educators use historical video games in their classes to develop critical thinking skills. It focuses on practical information and specific examples for integrating critical thinking activities and assessments using video games into classes. Chapters cover the core parts of planning, designing, and implementing lessons and units based on historical video games.

Topics include:

• Talking to administrators, parents, and students about the educational value of teaching with historical video games.
• Selecting games that are aligned to curricular goals by considering the genres of historical games.
• Planning and implementing game-based history lessons ranging from whole class exercises, to individual gameplay, to analysis in groups.
• Employing instructional strategies to help students learn to play and engage in higher level analysis
• Identifying and avoiding common pitfalls when incorporating games into the history class.
• Developing activities and assessments that facilitate interpreting and creating established and new media.

Gaming the Past also includes sample unit and lesson plans, worksheets and assessment questions, and a list of historical games currently available, both commercial and freely available Internet games.