Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software (The John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learn)

How the influential industry that produced such popular games as Oregon Trail and KidPix emerged from experimental efforts to use computers as tools in child-centered learning.
Today, computers are part of kids' everyday lives, used both for play and for learning. We envy children's natural affinity for computers, the ease with which they click in and out of digital worlds. Thirty years ago, however, the computer belonged almost exclusively to business, the military, and academia. In Engineering Play, Mizuko Ito describes the transformation of the computer from a tool associated with adults and work to one linked to children, learning, and play. Ito gives an account of a pivotal period in the 1980s and 1990s, which saw the rise of a new category of consumer software designed specifically for elementary school-aged children. “Edutainment” software sought to blend various educational philosophies with interactive gaming and entertainment, and included such titles as Number Munchers, Oregon Trail, KidPix, and Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?.
The children's software boom (and the bust that followed), says Ito, can be seen as a microcosm of the negotiations surrounding new technology, children, and education. The story she tells is both a testimonial to the transformative power of innovation and a cautionary tale about its limitations.

Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software (John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Computers & Technology

Ito, Mizuko

Games & Strategy Guides

Mit Pr

Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networking sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youths' social and recreational use of digital media. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings -- at home, in after-school programs, and in online spaces. Integrating twenty-three case studies -- which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music sharing, and online romantic breakups -- in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning With New Media (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Politics & Social Sciences

Boyd, Danah

Baumer, Sonja

Bittanti, Matteo

Cody, Rachel

Social Sciences

This report summarizes the results of an ambitious three-year ethnographic study, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings―at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. It offers a condensed version of a longer treatment provided in the book Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (MIT Press, 2009). The authors present empirical data on new media in the lives of American youth in order to reflect upon the relationship between new media and learning. In one of the largest qualitative and ethnographic studies of American youth culture, the authors view the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States.
The book that this report summarizes was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Reports on Digital Media and Learning

Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning)

Lange, Patricia G.

Robinson, Laura

Pascoe, C.J.

Stephenson, Becky Herr

Horst, Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow Heather A

MIT Press]

Sports & Outdoors

An examination of young people's everyday new media practices―including video-game playing, text-messaging, digital media production, and social media use.
Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networking sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youths' social and recreational use of digital media. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings―at home, in after-school programs, and in online spaces.
Integrating twenty-three case studies―which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music sharing, and online romantic breakups―in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

The tenth-anniversary edition of a foundational text in digital media and learning, examining new media practices that range from podcasting to online romantic breakups.
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out, first published in 2009, has become a foundational text in the field of digital media and learning. Reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people live and learn with new media in varied settings―at home, in after-school programs, and in online spaces―it presents a flexible and useful framework for understanding the ways that young people engage with and through online platforms: hanging out, messing around, and geeking out, otherwise known as HOMAGO. 
Integrating twenty-three case studies―which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music sharing, and online romantic breakups―in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out combines in-depth descriptions of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis. Since its original publication, digital learning labs in libraries and museums around the country have been designed around the HOMAGO mode and educators have created HOMAGO guidebooks and toolkits. This tenth-anniversary edition features a new introduction by Mizuko Ito and Heather Horst that discusses how digital youth culture evolved in the intervening decade, and looks at how HOMAGO has been put into practice.
This book was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out, Tenth Anniversary Edition: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (The John D. and Catherine T. ... Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics

In the last two decades, both the conception and the practice of participatory culture have been transformed by the new affordances enabled by digital, networked, and mobile technologies. This exciting new book explores that transformation by bringing together three leading figures in conversation. Jenkins, Ito and boyd examine the ways in which our personal and professional lives are shaped by experiences interacting with and around emerging media. Stressing the social and cultural contexts of participation, the authors describe the process of diversification and mainstreaming that has transformed participatory culture. They advocate a move beyond individualized personal expression and argue for an ethos of “doing it together” in addition to “doing it yourself.” Participatory Culture in a Networked Era will interest students and scholars of digital media and their impact on society and will engage readers in a broader dialogue and conversation about their own participatory practices in this digital age.

Jenkins, Henry

Networking & Cloud Computing

Polity

Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning (Connected Youth and Digital Futures, 2)

Rafalow, Matthew H.

Martin, Crystle

Pfister, Rachel Cody

Salen, Katie

Wortman, Amanda

NYU Press

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Books by Ito, Mizuko