Collaboration Agreements
L'Alfàs opens a collaboration channel with the University of Valencia
The City Council of l'Alfàs has just closed a framework agreement with the University of Valencia, related to the appropriate use of technologies in the educational area, as explained by the mayor, Vicente Arques. An agreement signed, among other reasons, because the municipality belongs to the Network of Educating Cities, and is one of the twelve towns that make up the Xarxa Valenciana de Ciutats per la Innovació.
"An International Research Group born in l'Alfàs", highlights Arques, specifically in February 2012, at the First International Congress of Video Games and Education, where the most prominent professionals in the use of the "ludo" met in the municipality -educational ", offering the possibility of accessing different active learning methods, because they maintain can not continue to train future generations with the contents and methods of the past. Since then these professors, researchers from universities in various countries, have continued with their activity, aimed at disseminating the educational possibilities of the videogame, a cultural product that in no way is going to be the substitute of other more traditional supports, but that well used can serve to educate and promote health, in the same way that it can provoke violence and negative attitudes badly used. Hence the intention to encourage correct and responsible use, involving the teaching staff.
"Our students are now all native speakers of the digital language of computer games, video and the internet. They think and process information differently from their predecessors ", explains Francesc Josep Sánchez, full professor of Anthropology of Education, at the University of Valencia, at the head of the Department of Education Theory. "Therefore," continues his argument, "one of the problems we find ourselves with is that our professors speak about an outdated language of their pre-digital age to their students, and they are struggling to teach a population that speaks perfectly a new language. "
The University of Valencia has created a Research Center in Videogames and Education, and the intention is to initiate collaboration with l'Alfàs, launching actions aimed at developing the educational potential of videogames, in those areas in which they are implanted as a resource for the achievement of cultural objectives such as schools, and why not in other sectors of the population, such as the elderly. From this Center, several objectives are proposed and the intention is to share them: from research to training aimed at teachers, for the use of video games as a gamification methodology, which is nothing more than the learning technique that moves the mechanics of games to the educational-professional field.
In the meeting held with Professor Francesc Josep Sánchez, the mayor of l'Alfàs, Vicente Arques, was accompanied by the councilors of presidency and education, Rocío Guijarro and Isabel Muñoz.
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