Developing Skills in Digital Contexts: Video games and Films as Learning Tools at Primary School

The use of commercial video games in combination with other media can provide opportunities to learn skills related to critical thinking, digital literacy, and media production. These media tools offer opportunities for users to participate in the new emerging forms of participatory culture. By means of an ethnographic study carried out in a Spanish primary school, this article presents an analysis of the skills that can be developed through the use of the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire video game and movie and how education professionals can use them at school in order to change the way students learn. The results show how students can develop their critical capacity by comparing these two media, and that this enables them to develop processes geared to digital literacy at the same as it helps them become producers through the creation and publication of blogs.