NC Teacher Using The Sims 3 for Language Arts

A middle-school teacher in North Carolina has embraced the technology of video games and is using them to help students with their language arts and writing skills.

Craig Lawson, a teacher at Cape Fear Middle School in Rocky Point, NC, is a professed "geek" that feels that merging technology and literature will help studentw become better writers, according to a story in the Star News Online. For a current project, Lawson had his students create characters in The Sims 3 on an iPod Touch that were different from themselves and then write create a fictional comic strip from start to climax. The idea was to give students the chance to write from a different perspective.

According to Lawson:

“A lot of times you see negative publicity for video games, that they promote violence and that kind of thing, but that misses their connection to literature. This is a way for students to gain insight into the experience of another person without having to live it themselves, just like we do when we read a book.”

The school picked up on the interactive nature of the games as a way to keep the attention of students, who said that they found the game a great way to learn responsibility and surviving on their own. The program has been so successful that the school is looking to expand the iPod Touch to other classes.

Lawson plans to use Civilization: Revolution in his social studies class next semester:

“My job is to teach literacy, and technical literacy is an important part of that today,” Lawson said. “It’s not just about reading and writing anymore.”

(Photo courtesy of the Star News Online)