A recent story published in the Cap Times highlighted the latest educational video game released by UW–Madison’s Field Day Lab, a media literacy-focused game called Headlines and High Water.
As the article explains, the game allows students to step into the shoes of a young journalist, aiming to help middle school students build critical media literacy skills. The free, web-based game was released last month.
Sarah Gagnon, creative director at Field Day Lab, offered insight on the game’s creation in the story. She said she began thinking about Field Day attempting a journalism game in 2019, as she watched other game developers take on the idea of “fake news” and how to recognize it.
“I want kids to be able to think about how journalistic knowledge is created,” Gagnon said. “When they read the news, I want them to think about the importance of the news for the sake of democracy and for making decisions, and as they’re seeing news, that they want to be able to notice what good news sounds like.”
Sue Robinson, the Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism in the UW–Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, also brought her valuable expertise as a former journalist and current media researcher to the game design process. Robinson told the Cap Times that her new book, “How Journalists Engage: A Theory of Trust Building, Identities, and Care,” includes anecdotes about the game and its development.
“The game is so cool, really sophisticated and I think gets at all of these sorts of values of journalism that we’re trying to teach our students,” Robinson said.
Read the full Cap Times article here.