Portal de Murcia
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Entering the office of Jiménez Alcázar is a real crusade.
Not only do you immerse yourself in the Middle Ages, when you are specialized, but in a fusion of different centuries and history.
Four walls that agglutinate from the Middle Ages to the Second World War.
Miniature soldiers guarding his most precious documents, hundreds of books, recreations of war ships stranded between notes, a helmet with a paper and computer complex are the summary of decades devoted to his passion: University and teaching.
Lorquino by birth contributed his bit to restore the Fortress of the Sun. Still pained by the tragedy that ravaged his city in 2011, in which as a historian, lived how Lorca fell under his feet, and his home was scarcely a Healthy wall.
But Jiménez Alcázar, professor of Medieval History, considers each event an experience and does not waste it.
He participates in everything that falls into his hands: not only the past of the castle of Lorca or the research magazine Medievalism, belonging to the Spanish Society of Medieval Studies.
Also the future of thousands of students for his coordinating work of History of Spain in the EBAU, old PAU, passes before him.
Teaching in the degree of Spanish Language and Literature completes its day.
Its most relevant project merges two concepts in principle incompatible: history and video games.
Pioneer in Spain, together with his research group, demonstrates how important this element of leisure is to correctly understand the previous centuries in a world where vocations are created by playing.
When did you start your passion for video games?
I was interested in them when the digital issues began in the 1980s, and my first scholarship I invested in a computer: they were very expensive.
The video game has always gone hand in hand with computers.
They continued to evolve until the arrival of the video game at the end of the XX.
They began to leave complex strategy games and, in addition, very sold.
With state-of-the-art consoles such as Play Station 3, the Assassin`s Creed comes out and suddenly millions are sold: and people want to play the Third Crusade, in Jerusalem in 1191!
When I pass this is when I think I had to analyze it.
What is the purpose of this innovative project in the field of the humanities?
The objective is to respond to the reality of what is happening, how the video game affects the more or less correct knowledge of the medieval past, now focused with the renovation of the project, to all historical periods, from the prehistoric to the war of Afghanistan.
In addition, we analyze the evolution in the market and the increase of the volumes of business.
Before you came and bought it in a store;
Now you just have to download it.
The society continues to think they are for kids, but it is surprising when you say that the age group that plays the most is women in the 35 to 50 years, because it does not mean sitting in front of the computer: now you carry it on your mobile.
Yes, that is also a video game.
We also analyze the phenomenon from the perspective of the Language and Communication, to know, for example, how it is spoken in video games and series to appear old, or what are the communicative strategies that are generated in different titles.
Technologies are imposed as the star king of society, are they also changing the way students learn about history?
Sure, especially the younger generations.
When I started to analyze it, I did an experiment in class.
Ten years ago, I took my son, then 8 years old, to the Medieval Societies class, in the Bachelor of History.
He had seen me playing videogames with a historical and, in particular, medieval themes.
I took one at random (Age of Empires II).
In this one appeared, for example, the unit of the catafracta, knights armored of the Late Roman and Byzantium antiquity, that ended up being the germ of the 'future' medieval knights.
When I set the game for my students, none of them knew it was a cataphracter.
Except my son.
With this I let them know what was going to happen.
Now most kids come for the first time to history not in school or in an institute, but with a video game.
This generation is amused with games where much historical information comes out, and in the future it will have more previous knowledge of this subject when studying it, than those that we appear that first time through a book or a film.
It is the so-called teacher gap.
What does it consist of?
In that now a student asks you doubts about curiosities that arise while you play.
If the teacher does not know how to respond to such a specific topic, he may look like he does not know.
With this gap, the role of the professor with his book, own of the Industrial Revolution, is dead.
Today, a student gets into Wikipedia and already knows, for example, who is Felipe II.
Now the professor must contribute what is not on the Internet or in books, why is important Felipe II in history.
Or the Catholic Kings ... The teacher will stop being so.
It should become a guide, a teacher, where the values ​​and the way of reflection prevail over the simple transmission of knowledge.
But, on many occasions it is noticed that these video games are a danger for the lads.
The video game itself does not encourage violence.
It prompts responses like that of some parents fighting like mad at a football game of their kids.
The video game, like the cinema or the novel, is a channel of communication and a form of cultural expression already accepted.
The problem is when a generation does not understand the phenomenon and it marks it as a danger by ignorance, or when it is abused of its use.
To my students I tell them that in the university they come to study, to relate, to grow as a person, to see cinema ... there is time for everything: it is the way to form as an individual.
With the excess you can pass like Alonso Quijano, that of so much to read novels of cavalry went crazy.
It is true that psychologists have recently considered what problems can be caused by virtual reality games.
A four year old boy who uses these video games, is seen among dinosaurs and will believe that it is real, because he does not have a sufficiently developed brain.
They are experiences that you either have clear that everything is virtual, or the eye deceives you.
But it is a totally new game experience and teaching level is going to be a revolution.
Do you think the time will come when you can teach in class with video games?
Yes, the time will come when it will be done.
The problem is that the teacher understands this and that there is a possibility that everyone has access to the same device.
If the digital and economic gap that exists, disappears so that you do not have access to the information according to your availability.
Thank God it's been cheap and the majority of kids have a brutal content entry.
More information means more freedom of thought.
Your other passion, the Middle Ages, is presented in textbooks as a black age, of austerity and regression but, what is the best that has brought us?
Well, I'm "weird" not because I like video games, but because I'm passionate about reading documents from dead people more than 500 years ago.
Regarding what you ask me, the medieval has been related to the bad by the Renaissance, until the nineteenth century, when the romantic movement indicates that our origin begins in this period.
It is when the territories we know today are born in Europe, and the cities lived stages of origin and splendor.
Murcia 'was born' in the 9th century, without going any further.
Now we have the double perspective of the medieval, the best and the worst, as when it says: "My father has a medieval mentality", we consider that it is bad, obsolete ... but in the Middle Ages the woman had more freedom than in the Nineteenth century, eye.
It is true that it has a dark perspective, but it attracts a lot.
It has all the ingredients: passion, irrationality, that human point itself, the individual as a person untied or contained and, in addition, is a great unknown.
It shows the success of medieval markets, novels set in the Middle Ages, video games ...
One of the great inventions of humanity, the University, is of this time.
Since it was invented in the thirteenth century there has been no retreat in knowledge.
The Greeks knew that the Earth was round and was lost because there was no transmission of knowledge.
If I had to live in another time, what would it be?
Only in the now.
Many people ask me if I would not live in the Middle Ages.
Never.
Right now my tooth hurts and I take a Nolotil, not to speak of more particular and serious affections.
In addition, we live in the less violent period of history;
Let us not forget, even if it seems otherwise.
Source: Universidad de Murcia
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