Children and Video GamesOral and Written Narratives

Resumen

This chapter traces the development of a multimedia workshop that took place at a Spanish public school and the work of twenty-one third-year girls and boys (aged 8–9) who wrote narratives based on their use of video games in the classroom. The analysis scrutinizes the role of video games as educational tools and examines how these, supported by classroom discussions, can contribute to the development of narrative thought as present in written compositions available in different contexts. The findings indicate that the children manage to write their own stories based on their interactions with the video games and that their reconstructions of computer games stories are dependent on specific contexts. Moreover, the video game plays an important role in the development of narrative thought because it serves as a vehicle of symbolic contents that enables the child to sequence and specify his or her own experience.