KEY
Bold:		Interviewer
Regular:		Respondent
[ ]:		Uncertain word(s)

Before we go on, I have to tell you, you know that we asked you for your consent to audio record the interview, I’m already recording, is that okay?
That’s fine.
So I’ll just get myself set back up here again so I’ve got everything running.  So it’s really nice to meet you finally and actually talk.  Thanks for your time.  Speaking of the time, how are you for time?  Because we’re finding to be honest that the interviews, we said about forty-five minute but they tend to be running to about an hour.  It’s now almost ten thirty, is that okay?
That’s okay.
Great, thanks very much.  Maybe before we actually start the interview I’ll just give you a little bit of background.  You’ve seen the project is interested in finding out the views and perspectives of different sorts of groups and stakeholders about games and gaming and gamification.  And in this particular round of interviews that we’re doing with these different groups we’re handling those with educators people that are particularly involved or professionally involved in games in education in some respect.
So we’re interested in trying to gain these perspectives on games in and with the educational context.  But also games and gaming and gamification more generally and also on a more general societal level if you like.  So we’ll be asking questions in both those senses in both those fronts.  The interview itself, first of all the important thing is that you feel comfortable doing the interview and answering the questions.  You remember that we don’t have to do – we’re not doing a televised or broadcast interview, so you can just take your time, as much as you like, if you want some time to think about how you’ll respond.  
We’re not pushed for time, we don’t have to respond straight immediately.  You can always stop me and ask me for clarification or any doubts that you have.  You can also feel free not to respond to something I say or a question, that’s fine, no problem.  Feel free, just relax and speak as you like, however you like.  And you can also change your mind and correct what you’ve said before if you so feel, that’s no problem.
How we’ll work it is this.  We’ve got about six or so general themes if you like that we’ve been looking at as part of the project.  I’m going to put these to you one after the other and ask you some things about each one.  I’ll show you a slide for each of these themes and then ask some questions about that theme.  When we’ve talked a bit about that I’m going to show you a second slide for each of these themes, the same slide with the theme, and you’ll see in this case  a few keywords appear.  
These are keywords that have come up in the activities of the project so far, so just to act as a stimulus or as something that you could look to see if you think you’ve already talked about that aspect or you can see if there are other aspects that you haven't mentioned if you’d like to say something about those as well.  I’ll present them to you, I’ll talk you through as I present them, there will be about six of these.
Then at the end there will be time for you to add anything you like, make any comments about what we’ve talked about or the interview itself, so you’ll have some time in that case to put any questions you want at the end as well.  As I said, you can always come in during the course of the interview and ask me anything you’d like.
Okay. That’s fine.
We can start the interview proper if you like.  I’ll just show you the screen, can you see that?
Yes.
Can you still see me?
I can see you as well.
Great.  I can see you too.  I’ll be perhaps looking down, taking a few notes every now and again, it’s not because I’m not listening, it’s because I’m taking a few notes.  Ann, perhaps we could start if you could just tell me about yourself, tell me who you are, what you do, where you work, your background and a little bit about your experience with digital games?
I’m a Danish teacher and I’ve been teaching in the same school for about eleven years.  I have mainly the older students from age thirteen to sixteen.  I’ve actually been teaching from kindergarten and up in Danish and English.  But my main focus is the older kids.  I have been a teacher for fifteen years, so I’m getting old (laughs).  
Not by Italian standards I can tell you.
I just went to Pisa actually and went to the CNR there on an exchange trip.  Back to the gaming part.  I’ve been interested in computers and programming and what we could do when teaching with computers for a very long time.  I’ve even taken some courses with [0:07:54] you might know?  The Danish professor?  He is a gaming expert.
Sure.
The last few years, five years or so, I’ve been interested in how to implement gaming in the teaching bit.  And I tried to do it with Minecraft the first time I tried it and we tried to build a school.  It should be said I’m not a maths teacher, I’m a Danish teacher so I have no idea of (laughs) maths, about how to build a school.  I’m a Danish and English teacher so that is where my focus is of course.
What was the second game that you mentioned after Minecraft?
Oh, it wasn’t a game, it was just a way to use Minecraft, to build a school.  We were supposed to build our own school.
Ah, got you.
That was a way to get into using games.  I didn’t find it very interesting though.  And that was because I was not prepared enough.  It takes a great amount of time to get into the game and to know how to teach it.  And also the thing about the accounts, that was quite difficult as well, so it wasn’t a very good course.  But anyway, the kids they liked it a lot and that was why I thought, okay, we’ve got something here.  Perhaps I should try to develop this in some kind of direction.
So I was on the lookout for quite a long time for a nice looking game, an aesthetic game of some kind.  And I found Drawn The Painted Tower, it’s a very beautiful game about a girl who draws beautiful pictures and then they come to life.  And it’s a riddle game, you have to find – adventure riddle.  You have to find clues all around the place.  Also you can go into the pictures in the game.  And I wanted to use this to teach Danish you might say.  Because then they could make a story from the pictures, what’s in the picture, what does it mean that there’s a dark cloud coming and all that.  
And also we did a bit of course about the game mechanics and what does the avatar mean, what is the avatar and is it a first person or is it – where are you, what’s the perspective?  And also about what kind of game are we playing, an awareness about what games the kids play in their free time but also about this game in particular.  That was much more interesting.  So that was the course I had about game mechanics and all that but also I put some Danish stuff into it, like the more traditional teaching bit.
Now when the kids they’re older I’ve been using games like Life is Strange where it’s all about making choices and about ethics.  And we’ve been discussing about what’s right and what’s wrong and about having a digital identity.
That’s very interesting.  Because they’re both aspects we’ll come back to later on in the interview.  Just a couple of things.  You’ve spoken about your professional use of games in teaching, what about yourself as a game player?
I’ve been playing some World of Warcraft and Limbo and some shooting games as well (laughs).  And of course I’ve been playing Tetrus and Wordfeud, it’s not really a game though.  And Hay Day, I was hooked on Hay Day for about a month. (Laughs)  But mostly it’s the multi player games I’ve been playing.  And that’s of course about the social bit, I live in the countryside so many of my old friends still live in the city and then we play some computer games, are social that way instead of meeting up.
So you would describe yourself as a gamer then?
I have been more of a gamer than I am right now.  
So if we let’s say move on now to the keywords we found that were associated with games and you.  You’ve talked about the sort of experiences you’ve had with games personally and in your teaching, and the context.  What about the areas of impact that perhaps you were looking for, with different types of games, you’ve mentioned Minecraft and a couple of other games.  How did those games fit with the game types you can see there?
I’ve been playing some serious games.  I won't say that Minecraft is serious in itself, but it is a sandbox game, you can make whatever you want from it. It’s all about the content that I put into the course you might say.  So it could be a serious game as well as a very playful and fun game.  It’s definitely entertainment on a quite high level.  But again, it’s all about who’s playing the game.  It could be entertaining but also quite boring to move blocks around.  Especially for girls.  I think a game like Minecraft it’s very much for the boys, the girls really didn’t like it.
And of course as in this game prettier and you can decorate more and more then it’s more appealing to the girls.  But when I used it three, four years back it didn’t appeal to the girls at all.
Was that part of the decision you made to try the other game where you had a female character and a narrative based?
That was actually a deliberate choice to make it more for the girls you might say.  The boys already liked the game and have a lot of experience in gaming.  The girls they only play Sims once in a while and that was about it.  So I really wanted to introduce them to this world and also, I don't know, make them more aware of the role of games.  But still on their side of the road you might say, like the – it wasn’t a boy game, the boys would much rather play a shooting game or something.  I would like that as well but (laughs) this was to accommodate the girls really.
Let’s now move on to the next general theme, which is looking a little bit at more specifically games and learning.  There was that area with the impact.  What sort of impacts do you think you were looking for in introducing and using games in your teaching? 
I had some – when I use games I have some aims and goals like in every course I make.  In the first course I made, apart from the Minecraft bit, because that was a competition as well, we could win a competition in building our own school in Minecraft.  So I didn’t really have other goals for this than to introduce Minecraft to some of the girls and perhaps make them interested in this.  Also to make them more social with the boys.  This class was very divided into a girl group and a boy group and I wanted them to be more social perhaps in their leisure time as well.  I didn’t really succeed in that, not by using Minecraft anyway (laughs).
But I used Drawn because the girls were very good at the puzzle bit and they boys really hated that because it took a lot of patience to solve these puzzles.  Girls have this patience while the boys didn’t.  This was one of my goals of course but there were also some goals connected to the subject I was teaching.  And this was about the genre mainly, about the genre games.  And we had long like introduction to what is a game, what is a computer game and what kind of games are there when we play computer games.  What does it mean to be a first person shooter or whatever. And also what does the layout mean to you, what does the graphics mean to you.  And the boys had some excellent examples because many of them had been playing Fifa for a long time for example.  And they remembered the graphics when they started and until now.  The same with Minecraft actually.
In that sense games and gaming became a subject let’s say for say in discussion?
Yeah, it became a part of the Danish subject you might say.  I tried to look at this as part of my literacy teaching.  So it was like reading a book or reading a short story, you need to know what is the short story before you begin.  So before we began to play we needed to know what we were about to do.  So it was like teaching a genre in Danish actually.
Interesting.  And how would you see would you say the added value of the activity with the games was from an educational point of view?  And did you see any limitations?
No, I think that they – the kids were motivated from the beginning because it was a new kind of genre.  It was not just reading a short story or a fairy tale or whatever.  And it was one of their own genres you might say.  So they were very motivated from the beginning.  That’s always helpful, when you begin a course.  So I actually think that it helped a lot that this was one of the first times we tried this.  It was something new, they were very excited.  And also the boys they were very keen on helping the girls because this was actually something they knew something about.  Whereas the girls they usually pick up very quick when it’s about short stories or novels or whatever.  So this was in their territory and that was a very nice feature.
For again the socialisation between them if you like.
Definitely.  And also the peer to peer aspect, they help each other and they communicate in another level than they’re used to.  So most of the times I have to force them to work in groups boys and girls.  When it comes to gaming they’re much more open, because they know the boys have something to offer here that they don’t normally do.
So we’re now looking at some of the keywords that have come up with games and learning.  You’ve mentioned the motivation as a key area and in terms of the impact I think in the collaboration and perhaps the attitudes to each other and so forth.  You did mention competition earlier, about the Minecraft competition, how do you see the competition, collaboration side?
I think it’s very fun because I have actually a video example where two of my students they sit next to each other and I asked them, what do you think about the fact that she’s further ahead in the game than you?  He says, that’s just nasty, I hate it.  (Laughs)  So she’s been spending more time gaming and playing the game than him, but still he didn’t really like it, because the competition part means a lot to the boys and not that much to the girls.
I see.  And what would you say, looking down at the types, we mentioned serious games, entertainment games, what about gamification?
The gamification part comes in when I use the game to teach something.  Perhaps something from the subject, my own subject.  And more than when you talk about learning games or like when you raise a car and then get some kind of maths assignment, you know those games?
Sort of edutainment style game?
Yeah, definitely.  It was more like having the game as a kind of surplus to my teaching, as an inspiration perhaps to some of the teaching activities I had.  So for example, they had to continue the story about Drawn and the Painted Tower and they had to use the features from the game to do that.  And also they had to imagine who is the avatar, what is the part of the avatar, why is the avatar even in the tower, why is she or he trying to find this main character Drawn?  This was actually the game thing.  But I pulled out parts.  And it’s not – I don’t know if you can call it gamification really.
Good.  So in terms of – what about things like knowledge and skills in the impact, what have you noticed there?
It was very important that they knew something about the frame of the game you might say, about the mechanics of the game and how the different characters worked, and what perspective we were playing from.  That was quite important, so that was a skill.  And also they had to know how to navigate in the game.  That’s quite difficult for some of the kids.  It wasn’t as difficult as playing a first person shooter game but still this was a first person game, so it was quite difficult for them to navigate, and some of them even got seasick and dizzy.  Whereas the boys who were used to playing Call of Duty or whatever, they just played the game.
Good.  So I think we’ve covered this area very well.  Perhaps we could move on to the next general theme.  Which as you see is games and the individual.  So thinking in terms of how the individual experiences relate to game experiences.  
Yes.  And I’ve just used two games in an English course actually called digital identity.  And one of them was Life is Strange, which is about a girl who finds out that she can – what’s it called – making a trip sometime and – yeah.  And thereby changed her decisions on whatever happened.  The other was a little game or an app called Sara is Missing.  And both of those games, they’re about who are you in life and how does whatever you do in games or in real life affect you as a person.  This was actually very exciting because they had to relate to what they were doing, they were playing a computer game, at the same time they had to find out what kind of person they want to be.  
So this was about the individual of course and for some of the boys it was very strange because they have another identity when they play League of Legends or Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed.  And they didn’t really like it much because they had to be another myself than usual.  Whereas when they played Assassin’s Creed they are very hardcore and very nasty when they communicate at times.  Then they had to be like a bit more mushy (laughs) when they played this game.  This affected them as individuals and they kind of opened up to another kind of games, playing this.
Reflecting about their own identity.
Yeah, gaming identity as well.  Because we talked a lot about this, how does it affect people when you call them shithead or whatever when you play.  So yes.
I was wondering if you had also reactions, you may have heard there is sometimes some concerns expressed about how different people relate to games, react, how they use games, things like addiction and so forth are often mentioned.  Have you come across that?  Had to deal with that in any way?
All the kids at my school have computers or access to computers, even from kindergarten.  Of course we have some experience with gaming addiction.  As the kids grow older the problem gets bigger.  So of course I experience this.  There is someone knocking at my door, just one moment.
(Interruption)
We were talking about gaming addiction.  It is a problem because every time there’s a break at school the boys tend to play.  So of course we have some problems, or we have some talks about socialising and the right and the wrong way to socialise and such.  Is there even something you can call a right way to socialise?  But I think that right now we’ve reached a good level of gaming in school anyways.  But of course I have some, some of my boys they’re addicted definitely.  And they play up to twelve, eighteen hours during the weekends, that’s quite a lot.
There are often concerns expressed, I don’t know if you’ve heard reactions as well about this, about the sedentary, apart from the actual addiction, about the sedentary nature of perhaps the lack of movement, physical exercise in recreation, this is often a concern as well.
Yeah.  Well, we’ve been talking to some of the parents about that.  Luckily they’re very sensible, they are like, we force them to play football twice a week.  And also in Danish schools they have to move for forty-five minutes every day.  And that’s not their sports education, sports lessons aren’t included.  So during the daytime they have to be active and get a high pulse for about forty-five minutes.
And are games ever part of that physical activity?
Yeah, but not computer games.  We use route apps, and we’ve been using, what’s it called, DGO I think, it’s a GPS tracking system as well.  So it’s more like GPS games when we do that.  Or it could be [DEW-R coach 0:33:33] like a treasure hunt.  But not real games. 
Now let’s have a look at some of the keywords that have come up in this area.  You mentioned addiction and physical activity and their engagement which seems very strong, and immersion I guess for a lot of their gaming both in their education and outside their educational activities.  What about the cognitive abilities and perception, do you think – anything you’d like to add about those?
Well, that could be something about what stage in life you present the different games.  When are you ready and also about how is it, is it even safe to play a first person shooter game when we’re talking about third graders perhaps?  Is that okay?  But about the cognitive abilities, hmm, yeah.  I think it’s important as a teacher to think about when you make the course or create the course.  It’s important to think about where are their heads when they’re playing it.  Because it’s not just for the fun part, they have to have something to – they have to do it for a reason, it’s not just to play the game.
For example, if I presented a game like Life is Strange for my students when they were, I don't know, class five or something, whether they’d be able to understand the problems or the ethical issues of it.  So of course that’s important.  And also if you want to talk about running around shooting people and this game or a fictional scenery, they should have a certain age.  I would never present that for ten year olds.
That actually brings us very, very nicely, because you mentioned the ethical side of the question and games with ethical questions like Life is Strange and so forth.  What particular areas of ethics have you encountered or are you interested in?  You mentioned using games as a way of approaching let’s say the exploration of ethics for example, was one thing you mentioned.
Well, I think there are several issues about ethics.  And also a parental issue because you also have to ask the parents sometimes, is this okay with you, can we actually – would you allow us to play this in school?  Is this too much for your kid?  Some of the kids they’re rather sensitive, it could be too much for them to play the game like the one we were playing recently Sara is Missing, where the girl actually dies in the end.  And I think you have to think about that as a teacher.  And also perhaps discuss it before you even start the course.  Say, this is quite violent, you have to know that this is just a game, this is not real life.  Because it is very real life like, your cell phone transformed into another girl’s cell phone when you were playing the game.  
It was like you had another person’s cell phone in your hand.  It wasn’t real.  And some of the kids actually some of the boys, they got a bit scared.  You know, they’re in class seven now and fourteen years old.  But it was a [nasty 0:38:12] game.  We talk about it before we began to play it and I asked them, are you ready to do this, do you feel ready?  And we can stop at any time and all that.  But I think there are some secure games like Minecraft for example, I think that’s quite secure, it’s only the content that can be, I don't know, not so ethical, but that’s up to the teacher then.
Then when you have shooting games, or many of the multiplayer games like League of Legends or World of Warcraft, then you have to think about it, how do you act in a guild for example?  Who do you want to be?  Do you want to be the same person as you are in real life or do you want to take another personality on?  Like be an evil devil, or are you good, evil?  Talk about these, what does it mean?  So I think that’s some of the ethics but again I would never play either World of Warcraft or League of Legends with kids under the age of ten.
You mentioned violence there a couple of times, is that an issue you’ve had to deal with, violence and aggression and things?
Actually never.  The best gamers in my class they’re non violent, absolutely.  So I’ve never been presented with violent gamers.  I know some of the stories of course I’ve heard of them, but I don’t think it’s the video games or PC games or whatever, I think it’s something else.  I think it might be their environment or whatever. 
So let’s now move on and have a look at some of the keywords that came up around the theme of games and ethics.  You mentioned violence, aggressivity and things like that.  You mentioned before identity and that seemed to be an important priority for you in looking at exploring identity through games.  I suppose you’ve heard a number of issues have been raised often around the whole games panorama about things like gender and race and age and so forth, representation.
Yes.  And I think there is a problem about the game thing.  Because in Denmark anyway it’s still the boys who are gamers.  Also when you go to a game shop for example it’s only appealing to boys.  I don’t know if you can call it a problem, but it’s a problem when you teach it.  When you teach poetry the boys are not the least interested in poetry when I teach that but the girls like it.  I think we have to see it more like a challenge to find games for the interest of both genders instead of just leaving the game part out of teaching.  And that’s a bit of – you might say that’s the diversity bit as well.  You have to play different games to fit different kinds of people.  It’s not about race or gender or age.  It might be all of those.  
So in that sense the game sphere, if I’ve understood your intent correctly, could be a sort of middle ground gathering together a lot of different identities and experiences.
Yeah.  And also for themselves to explore their identities, what do they like?  It’s just like when some kids find out almost by accident that they love sci-if, they might find out that they love to play shooting games.  Some of the boys they’ve never played puzzle games before we played one in class and they actually liked it, and they couldn’t stop themselves.  They were only supposed to play to a certain level or whatever and then do a task in Danish, but they just couldn’t stop themselves.  They found out that they liked something that they didn’t think they’d like.
Very interesting.  What about that monetisation area, is that something that you’ve come across or considered?
Monetisation, is it—
In terms of the economic or the financial side of games.
Yeah.  Well, we also use Steam.  And sometimes we’re very lucky to find some free games.  Also you can play limited editions, we did that with Drawn to begin with and then we had a deal with Apple so that we could just buy like five games and then we got the last twenty for free.  We haven't got that one anymore (laughs).  I think it’s a problem because we haven't got the money to buy the big good games.  We have to use some of the old games and they have some of the same qualities but they haven't got of course the same graphics and it might bore the big gamers a bit to play those games because they’re used to better graphics and better game mechanics as well.
Good, okay.  Let’s move along a bit to the next theme, which is a bit more general.  Games and society.  Thinking about the sort of impact or influence, changes that you think in some ways may have come about or are related to games and gaming in society.
Yeah. (Laughs)  Well, I don’t know – I think that the kids I have in school right now, they experience that they have someone in the family, their father might play games, they definitely know grownups who play games as well.  It’s becoming more normal than it was when I was a teenager.  And it’s also becoming much more accepted in Denmark to be a gamer and to play.  It’s not like, oh my God you’re a nerd.  Because everyone seems to do it somehow.  Also if you could Wordfeud and Hay Day and all those apps as games as well, then you can say that – I don’t think there are any Danes who doesn’t play some game on their smart phone or whatever.  It’s becoming a big part of our lives and sometimes I think grownups can be even more addicted to the games than the kids.  The kids are used to the grownups saying, put it way, whereas the grownups just do it whenever they want to.  Do you want to know some specifics?
To get some more specific ideas or triggers, let’s say let’s have a look at some of the keywords that have come up related to games and society.
I think that game related innovation is interesting because then when we talk about programming as well, learning to programme to make games for example better, like an example could be Scratch Junior, where you learn to make your own minigame.  Like you remember Ping Pong?  They can do that quite easily in Scratch.  So that would be innovating somehow.  And also robotics could be – yeah.  And we actually make some games with – do you know Dash and Dot the robots? 
No.
This was of course just a racing game so it wasn’t really like a computer game.  But that was a way to mix games with robots.  Cultural change we’ve been talking a bit about that.  
Yes, I think you’ve mentioned about the way games have become pervasive in society and have changed the culture and the view of games and gaming quite a bit.
I don’t know, what do you mean about policy?  Do you mean what is our policy in the area as a school or as a society?
Whether you think there are any areas where perhaps policy should be introduced or clarified or developed about how games and gaming is becoming part of society.
Yeah.  Well, I think it’s unavoidable somehow.  Games are unavoidable and gaming is.  Perhaps we should not make a policy about it, more like a how to act when gaming thing.  Perhaps focus on being more polite when gaming, focus on being polite when you’re with other people and want to game and perhaps it isn't possible.  It’s kind of the addiction part as well, being able to put your addiction away when you are socialising for example.  It’s more about how we behave when gaming than about the games themselves.
Of course we have a problem in Denmark, I don’t know if you’ve go the same, but we have a problem with parents presenting their kids very violent games very early. They don’t want to say to their kids that they can't buy a certain game or whatever.  So we have a lot of young kids playing violent games.  I think the parents should consider that more than they do.
That’s interesting that you mention that, because moving on to the next theme is actually suggestions for different stakeholders, groups and so forth involved in gaming.  So that’s one of the first suggestions you would make is for the awareness then to somehow support greater awareness on the part of parents about the possible impact of games on the kids?
Yeah, that, but also to put gaming on the agenda in school as an overall theme.  We have something called digital safety, how to be safe on the internet and so on.  Perhaps we should have one how to be safe when gaming as well, and also how to behave when gaming.  Just like I’ve just been discussing with some of our kids from class four, how are you communicating with other people on YouTube for example, when you go to Facebook how do you want to be on Facebook.  I think that’s a big discussion to have about games as well, who do you want to be?  When people recognise your name in a certain game like League of Legends, do you want them to see you as a bad guy or a good guy or are you the one who lets new people into your guild or whatever.  So they have to be aware of who they want to be when they game, just like in all other sets of life.
That’s obviously an area that you would suggest developing with players, with students, with kids and so forth and with parents as well.  Do you think that could also apply to other groups, suggestions say towards policy makers, researchers, so forth, game developers?
Developers, yeah, definitely the game developers, they would play a big part in it.  And I think they’re getting better at modelling the different chatrooms and such.  And of course it would be nice to see if we are moving in the wrong direction or the right direction from a researcher’s point of view.  I think the kids, they’re sweeter now or nicer, kinder towards each other than earlier on.  Not the ones who play World of Warcraft, that’s some years ago, it was very – it was all language.  And that was grownups playing not the kids.  So I can imagine how responsible the kids (laughs).  But I don’t know if you can really do something about it from a – if you’re a politician, I don't know, perhaps you could make some suggestions, but it would be difficult to make laws about it.
Yes, I understand perfectly what you mean, it can be difficult to generalise about it and introduce specific policy measures about it.  I’ve just thrown up there the keywords with suggestions with the different stakeholder groups if you like.  There was one that you mentioned earlier that perhaps could be seen as a suggestion I suppose both for policy makers and educators, you mentioned about the difficulty of you having access to let’s say quite recent or high quality AAA games, of a certain quality, particularly in audio, graphics and so forth that kids have come to expect.  Is that the sort of recommendation that you would make a suggestion to?
It would be really nice, but we haven't even got money for books, ordinary school books.  So it’s a general problem in Denmark and perhaps especially where I work.  It would be nice if computer games were taken more seriously by the politicians as well.  And it would be – I think it would be a good thing to put it in a curriculum.  We haven't got a curriculum like most countries, we’re very free to put stuff into our curriculum in Denmark, but I think it would be nice if it was somehow put into an overall curriculum, as a modality and a part of the literacy.
Yeah, interesting.  So let’s imagine for a second that you did have that channel open and that you were to put your input into that process of making that somehow part of a curriculum suggestion or recommendation.  What sort of things would you try to emphasise in that if you had that input?
I think I would try to make it like a progression, where you take the very innocent games when the kids are very young.  You could play gender games like Go Supermodel, and also some of the boy games with – I can't remember some of the names.  Some of the games where you actually have to pay for things when you get into the game and talk about that when they’re very young.  You get a game for free and then you have to pay for a new skin for a knife or something.  You could do that and then Minecraft.  And then more serious games and talk about different things.  You can talk about politics and stuff when you’re playing some of the shooting games for example.  So it would be nice to have a natural progression.  I wouldn’t like to make it myself, I think that would be dangerous, perhaps for my school but not all over.  I think that until let’s say it should be neutral games, very not dangerous games.  Probably get on the same side of the parents and the politicians, yeah.
It’s interesting you mentioned there about exploring the question of in game purchases and so forth as being a sensitive area that would be worth examining, exploring.  If you were to make some suggestions to say game developers, game producers, on that aspect, would you make any suggestions to them about that?
I think I would suggest – they wouldn’t do it because it would cost them a whole bunch of money, but I think I would suggest that they make it very obvious for the kids that they have to buy when they get into the app.  Because right now it says, buy in app, yes, it says so, but if you’re a kid and it looks very exciting and you’re all like, oh, I want to play with this princess or whatever.  Then it’s difficult to say no to an app that’s free.  So either they should make it – you should pay it from the beginning, pay a small amount from the beginning or they emphasise inside the app that you have to pay.  
Great.  So at this point we can just about wrap up, that’s fantastic.  As I mentioned at the beginning, I wanted to leave you some space if there’s anything else that you’d like to mention, talk about, or any questions that you’ve got about what we’ve talked about or the interview itself?
I think that we have a problem because computer gaming is looked upon like people really frown when you say that you teach computer games and they think, oh yeah, it’s just right now it’s quite interesting and you just want to be the popular teacher.  And that’s just not true, because there’s so much in the computer games and in using computer games while teaching.  So I would very much like it to be more acknowledged you might say.  And I would like more teachers to try to make courses where they blend their normal teaching with computer games.  Instead what they do is to use these game based – not game based actually, but these prefactured games for training some disciplines.  And that’s just stupid and the students don’t like it.  They like to get the stars and all but very soon they find out what to do in the specific game and then they just go for the stars instead of learning anything at all.  I would like them to play proper computer games and discuss the games and also improve the topics in the course.
So it sounds to me, the impression I get is perhaps you see some of those very limited game mechanics that are often used in gamification, like points and badges and rewards, you see that can be a limited approach it seems?
I think so.  We have games or gamification games, whatever, like do you know Mathematics?  We have some training games and I think it’s taking the seriousness about the subject away from the subject.  And it’s kind of lying to the children, it’s like, okay, now you’re playing a game but when they realise that they are not playing a game they are making the same exercises again and again and again, then they get disappointed.  Then they just don’t want to do it anymore and find some system to cheat the game.  That’s the experience.
Great, thanks. That’s been really wonderful, it’s been a really interesting discussion, we’ve covered a lot of territory.  I think we can conclude now.  Have you got any further questions about anything?
No.
That’s great.  We will of course be in contact as I mentioned so I’ll send you an acknowledgement, a certificate of participation in the project activities.  We will be in touch with the outcomes as well from these rounds of interviews.  I explained they’re all obviously anonymous but the input that we gather and collect from the interviews will be transcribed and analysed and these will be reported in a project deliverable, a project publication that will come out this summer.  We’ll let you know when that happens and I’ll send you some links as well so if you’re interested you can follow the progress of how your input in some way has helped to shape the outputs from the project.
Yeah, okay.
I may also be in touch, I don’t know if you’re interested perhaps in other project activities further along, I’ll be in touch about those with you as well.
You’re very welcome to contact me.
Thanks very much again for your help.  Good luck with your very, very interesting work.
Thank you so much, you too.