Experiência Ficcional Virtual: uma manha para jogar e ensinar História

Abstract

This research was carried out from 2008 to 2010, in the master s degree course in Education of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas. The aim of this paper is to study the actions of a History teacher while experiencing with his students as a proposal for teaching History the Virtual/Fiction Experience (EFV) through the game Age of Empires II. It is tried to make evident how this teacher subject of this research plans, develops, and reflects about the practice of teaching Medieval History through the game mentioned. It is considered that there is, in electronic games (as in the game mentioned), the evidence of the possibility of performance in a historical time and space simulated through informatics which is called here as Virtual/Fiction Experience. The concepts in which this study is based are the following: Dispositive (Agambem, 2009); Game (Huizinga, 2000 and Caillois, 1990); Experience (Larrosa, 2002); Fiction (Flusser, 2007) and Virtual (Deleuze, 1988 and Lévy, 2007). The research is also based on the following writings: Alves (2005), which focus on the importance of electronic games in education; Libâneo (1999) and Demo (2004), whose writings are about the relevance of teacher s role in a world bombed by information, among others. Lüdke and André (1986) guided the choice of a qualitative methodological approach. During this phase of the investigation, it was proposed to the subject of this research the realization of planning and developing stages of History classes through the use of the game Age of Empires II and, subsequently, a reflection about this experience. The activities were planned through the game, nevertheless, before the students having contact with it, the teacher developed a class where it was privileged, theoretically, the subject to be taught in following classes. It has been collected the data through meetings, semi-structured interviews and observations of the classes. The results found have shown that the interviewee enjoyed the activity and gave his best to put into practice his planning, demonstrating that EFV works as a proposal of History teaching. The interviewee also noticed a change in the student s behavior when facing his approach and states that this motivates him to continue using the EFV in his practices. It has been observed that, by adopting the EFV, the teacher includes the students as actors in the historical time that the game portraits, making possible for them to face another way of relation with History.