Preparing the Next Generation of City Planners and Tech-Savvy Teachers
Aria Razfar, Beverly Troiano · 2022
This chapter presents a combined seventh–eighth-grade class in which a language arts teacher created thematic units using video games and covered topics related to engineering design. Susan designed several activities in literacy, mathematics, and science for the purpose of learning about students’ science and mathematics funds of knowledge. Susan examined how students communicated in Spanish and English and the role of translanguaging in small-group interactions. Susan’s activity triangle illustrates her unit plan for socially organizing learning around the object of how video games can help the reader simulate real design problems. Using video games as part of the curriculum changed the way Susan saw her role. The COVID-19 global pandemic has fundamentally changed the role of digital literacies in classrooms, and design games like SimCity have an integral role in STEM education.