The COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Israel are two separate and dissimilar events; nevertheless, they share some similar consequences in the field of education. Both events have driven the advancement of technologies in the field of education and have confronted teachers with the need to teach in new and distant contexts, on diverse and changing topics.

Due to the impact of these events, many teachers have begun to integrate new technologies in the classroom (whether virtual or physical) with the aim of developing digital experiences that allow greater interaction and easier access to texts and other educational resources. But there are digital applications that are not directly related to the field of formal teaching, and are available to anyone. Video games are an example.

Playing to lose
An interesting example of educational technological applications are the creations of Luc Bernard, the British-French video game designer who “built” a virtual Holocaust museum on the Fortnite platform. The virtual space, called Voices of the Forgotten, aims to educate about the Holocaust and Jewish history by taking advantage of the popularity of Fortnite amongst an audience that is not necessarily familiar with these topics.

In an interview with the New York Times Bernard explained that while many billions of dollars are invested in Holocaust museums, in the United States only 20% of the population has visited one. Therefore, his initiative seeks to reach a young audience in an innovative way: using the platform that he considers most successful to spread awareness and combat intolerance. “With the rise of Holocaust denial and other forms of antisemitism, it is important that new generations worldwide learn the truth of the Holocaust,” said in a statement Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum of the United States.

Luc Bernard is also the creator of A Light in the Darkness, a video game that tells the story of a family of working-class Polish Jews in France during the Holocaust. It was released in 2023, free for educational purposes. It is the first video game that accurately portrays the Holocaust and has one peculiarity: it is an impossible-to-win game. No matter what decisions the player makes, he will always be killed by the Nazis in the end. According to Bernard, this ending is essential for the game's message to be internalized. “I didn’t want to make it seem like people in the Holocaust had a choice,” he told the American website Forward.

The gamer potential
Anyone who has ever used Duolingo understands the learning potential that gaming platforms provide today. There are platforms that use games to teach mathematics (such as Manga High) or vocabulary (such as Wordle). Video games offer infinite possibilities in the field of teaching, especially since they are already embedded in the reality of our students’ lives, just like movies, music and books, and other cultural media. Furthermore, the potential of video games is linked to their ability to tell stories, or as we say today, storytelling (the way in which human beings start learning from an early age).

The gaming industry also grew steadily, especially after the pandemic, its revenue in 2022 doubling that of 2016 and generating greater profits than movies and sports combined. Today, it is estimated that gaming reaches some three billion people around the world. Fortnite alone draws seventy million players each month.

Beyond their massive presence and popularity, video games are also characterized by their ability to reach particular audiences – specifically, for the purposes of our discussion, the younger generation, which has shown itself to be fertile ground for the spread of anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that fights anti-Semitism and other forms of hate in the United States, revealed in 2021 that almost one in ten players between the ages of 13 and 17 had been exposed to messages of white supremacist ideology in online games and that three in five had experienced hate and harassment. Furthermore, the group that had experienced the most, among all players, had been the Jews.Learning to use technological tools to teach is a challenge for most teachers today, especially with the advancement of Artificial Intelligence technologies. To address this challenge, the Melton Center organized a practical workshop to learn how to use different virtual assistants in the creation of creative content with recreational materials and the use of the Internet. You can see the recording of it here.

Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/arts/design/fortnite-holocaust-museum...
https://forward.com/news/558082/a-holocaust-museum-is-launching-in-fortn...
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/gaming-pandemic-lockdowns-pwc-gro...
https://www.adl.org/resources/report/hate-no-game-hate-and-harassment-on...
https://blog.vicensvives.com/los-videojuegos-como-herramienta-educativa/