Games as Learning

Games are push tech­nolo­gies. They push against the bound­aries of the tra­di­tional ways we play, inter­act and learn. James Paul Gee points out why this is so sig­nif­i­cant, and not just for those of us in the learn­ing pro­fes­sions, but for any­one inter­ested in change. In the intro­duc­tion to his col­lected essays, Good Video Games + Good Learn­ing he writes:

Good video games reverse a lot of our cher­ished beliefs. They show that plea­sure and emo­tional involve­ment are cen­tral to think­ing and learn­ing. They show that lan­guage has its true home in action, the world, and dia­logue, not in dic­tio­nar­ies and texts alone. They show that all types of young people…can mas­ter com­plex stuff at a very high level of skill. They show that col­lab­o­ra­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion with oth­ers is essen­tial to engaged think­ing and learning.…

This list is inspired from that quo­ta­tion, and empha­sizes push­ing at the boundaries.

Read­ing List

• To read
• Rec­om­mended

• Richard Bar­tle, Hearts, Clubs, Dia­monds, Spades: Play­ers Who Suit Muds. Jour­nal of MUD Research, 1996 [online]
• Gre­gory Bate­son. A The­ory of Play and Fan­tasy, org. 1955
• Jo Bryce and Jason Rut­ter. Under­stand­ing Dig­i­tal Games, 2006 [blurb]
• Edward Cas­tronova
  • Vir­tual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Mar­ket and Soci­ety on the Cyber­ian Fron­tier, 2001 [vir­tual economies, online]
  • Syn­thetic Worlds: The Busi­ness and Cul­ture of Online Games, 2005 [blurb]
• Hilde Cor­neliussen & Jill Walker Ret­tberr (Eds.). Dig­i­tal Cul­ture, Play, and Iden­tity: A World of War­craft Reader, 2008 [blurb]
• Julian Dibbell
  • A Rape in Cyber­space (Or TINYSOCIETY, and How to Make One). In My Tiny Life, 1998 [online]
  • The Life of the Chi­nese Gold Farmer. New York Times Magazine, 2007 [online]
• James Paul Gee
  • What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learn­ing and Lit­er­acy, 2003 [blurb]
  • Why Are Video Games Good For Learn­ing, Com­puter, 2005 [online]
  • Good Video Games and Good Learn­ing: Col­lected Essays on Video Games, Learn­ing and Lit­er­acy, 2007 [blurb]
• Henry Jenk­ins. Game Design as Nar­ra­tive Archi­tec­ture. In P. Har­ring­ton & N. Frup-Waldrop (Eds.) First Per­son, 2002. [online]
• Yas­min Kafai, Car­rie Heeter, Jill Den­ner & Jen­nifer Sun (Eds.). Beyond Bar­bie and Mor­tal Kom­bat: New Per­spec­tives on Gen­der and Gam­ing, 2008 [blurb]
• Amanda Lenhart. Teens, Video Games, and Civics, Pew Inter­net report, 2008 [report]
• Jane McGo­ni­gal. Why I Love Bees: A Case Study in Col­lec­tive Intel­li­gence Gam­ing, Ecolo­gies of Play, 2008 [online]
• Celia Pearce & Arteme­sia. Com­mu­ni­ties of Play: Emer­gent Cul­tures in Mul­ti­player Games and Vir­tual Worlds, 2009 [blurb, web­site]
• Marc Pren­sky. Dig­i­tal Game-Based Learn­ing, 2007 [blurb]
• Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
  • Rules of Play: Game Design Fun­da­men­tals, 2003 [blurb]
  • In The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthol­ogy, 2006 [online]
  • Ecol­ogy of Games, 2008 [blurb]
• David Williamson Shaffer
  • How Com­puter Games Help Chil­dren Learn, 2005 [epis­temic games, hat tip, web­site]
  • Video Games and the Future of Learn­ing, Phi Delta Kap­pan 2005 [online]
• Kurt Squire. From Con­tent to Con­text: Video Games as Designed Expe­ri­ences. Edu­ca­tional Researcher, 2006 [work­ing paper]
• Kurt Squire & Con­stance Steinkuehler. Gen­er­at­ing CyberCulture/s: The Case of Star Wars Galax­ies. In D. Gibbs & K. L. Krause (Eds.), Cyber­lines: Lan­guages and Cul­tures of the Inter­nets [online]
• Con­stance Steinkuehler. Mas­sively Mul­ti­player Online Video Gam­ing as Par­tic­i­pa­tion in A Dis­course, Mind, Cul­ture, and Activ­ity, 2006 [online]
• Penny Sweetser. Emer­gence in Games, 2008 [web­site]
• Dou­glas Thomas & John Seely Brown. Why Vir­tual Worlds Mat­ter, Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Media and Learn­ing, 2009 [online]
• Sherry Turkle
  • Life on the Screen: Iden­tity in the Age of the Inter­net, 1997
  • Who Am We, Wired, 1996 [online]