How kids play in virtual worlds, how it matters for their offline lives, and what this means for designing educational opportunities.
Millions of children visit virtual worlds every day. In such virtual play spaces as Habbo Hotel, Toontown, and Whyville, kids chat with friends from school, meet new people, construct avatars, and earn and spend virtual currency. In Connected Play, Yasmin Kafai and Deborah Fields investigate what happens when kids play in virtual worlds, how this matters for their offline lives, and what this means for the design of educational opportunities in digital worlds. 
Play is fundamentally important for kids' development, but, Kafai and Fields argue, to understand play in virtual worlds, we need to connect concerns of development and culture with those of digital media and learning. Kafai and Fields do this through a detailed study of kids' play in Whyville, a massive, informal virtual world with educational content for tween players. Combining ethnographic accounts with analysis of logfile data, they present rich portraits and overviews of how kids learn to play in a digital domain, developing certain technological competencies; how kids learn to play well―responsibly, respectfully, and safely; and how kids learn to play creatively, creating content that becomes a part of the virtual world itself.

Connected Play: Tweens in a Virtual World (The John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Computers & Technology

Kafai, Yasmin B.

Fields, Deborah A.

Games & Strategy Guides

Mit Pr

Why every child needs to learn to code: the shift from “computational thinking” to computational participation.
Coding, once considered an arcane craft practiced by solitary techies, is now recognized by educators and theorists as a crucial skill, even a new literacy, for all children. Programming is often promoted in K-12 schools as a way to encourage “computational thinking”―which has now become the umbrella term for understanding what computer science has to contribute to reasoning and communicating in an ever-increasingly digital world.
In Connected Code, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke argue that although computational thinking represents an excellent starting point, the broader conception of “computational participation” better captures the twenty-first-century reality. Computational participation moves beyond the individual to focus on wider social networks and a DIY culture of digital “making.”
Kafai and Burke describe contemporary examples of computational participation: students who code not for the sake of coding but to create games, stories, and animations to share; the emergence of youth programming communities; the practices and ethical challenges of remixing (rather than starting from scratch); and the move beyond stationary screens to programmable toys, tools, and textiles.

Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming (The John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Burke, Quinn

Computer Science

How making and sharing video games offer educational benefits for coding, collaboration, and creativity.
Over the last decade, video games designed to teach academic content have multiplied. Students can learn about Newtonian physics from a game or prep for entry into the army. An emphasis on the instructionist approach to gaming, however, has overshadowed the constructionist approach, in which students learn by designing their own games themselves. In this book, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke discuss the educational benefits of constructionist gaming―coding, collaboration, and creativity―and the move from “computational thinking” toward “computational participation.” 
Kafai and Burke point to recent developments that support a shift to game making from game playing, including the game industry's acceptance, and even promotion, of “modding” and the growth of a DIY culture. Kafai and Burke show that student-designed games teach not only such technical skills as programming but also academic subjects. Making games also teaches collaboration, as students frequently work in teams to produce content and then share their games with in class or with others online. Yet Kafai and Burke don't advocate abandoning instructionist for constructionist approaches. Rather, they argue for a more comprehensive, inclusive idea of connected gaming in which both making and gaming play a part.

Connected Gaming: What Making Video Games Can Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

The MIT Press

Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

MIT Press]

Minds in Play: Computer Game Design As A Context for Children's Learning

Video games more than any other media have brought technology into children's homes and hearts. Educators, psychologists, and parents are struck by the quality of engagement that stands in stark contrast to children's usual interest in school homework and other activities. Whereas most research efforts have concentrated on discussing the effects of game playing, this book takes a different stance. It takes a close look at games as a context for learning by placing children in the roles of producers rather than consumers of games.   Kafai presents a constructionist vision of computer-based learning activities in schools. She follows a class of sixteen fourth-grade students from an inner-city public elementary school as they were programming games in Logo to teach fractions to third graders. The children transformed their classroom into a game design studio for six months, learning programming, writing stories and dialogues, constructing representations of fractions, creating package designs and advertisements, considering interface design issues, and devising teaching strategies. In this context, programming became a medium for children's personal and creative expression; in the design of their games children engaged their fantasies and built relationships with other pockets of reality that went beyond traditional school approaches.   The ideas and discussions presented in this book address educators, researchers, and software and curriculum designers interested in children's learning and thinking with educational technologies.

Routledge

Video games more than any other media have brought technology into children's homes and hearts. Educators, psychologists, and parents are struck by the quality of engagement that stands in stark contrast to children's usual interest in school homework and other activities. Whereas most research efforts have concentrated on discussing the effects of game playing, this book takes a different stance. It takes a close look at games as a context for learning by placing children in the roles of producers rather than consumers of games. Kafai presents a constructionist vision of computer-based learning activities in schools. She follows a class of sixteen fourth-grade students from an inner-city public elementary school as they were programming games in Logo to teach fractions to third graders. The children transformed their classroom into a game design studio for six months, learning programming, writing stories and dialogues, constructing representations of fractions, creating package designs and advertisements, considering interface design issues, and devising teaching strategies. In this context, programming became a medium for children's personal and creative expression; in the design of their games children engaged their fantasies and built relationships with other pockets of reality that went beyond traditional school approaches. The ideas and discussions presented in this book address educators, researchers, and software and curriculum designers interested in children's learning and thinking with educational technologies.

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

The digital revolution necessitates, but also makes possible, radical changes in how and what we learn. This book describes a set of innovative educational research projects at the MIT Media Laboratory, illustrating how new computational technologies can transform our conceptions of learning, education, and knowledge. The book draws on real-world education experiments conducted in formal and informal contexts: from inner-city schools and university labs to neighborhoods and after-school clubhouses. The papers in this book are divided in four interrelated sections as follows: * Perspectives in Constructionism further develops the intellectual underpinnings of constructionist theory. This section looks closely at the role of perspective-taking in learning and discusses how both cognitive and affective processes play a central role in building connections between old and new knowledge. * Learning through Design analyzes the relationship between designing and learning, and discusses ways that design activities can provide personally meaningful contexts for learning. This section investigates how and why children can learn through the processes of constructing artifacts such as games, textile patterns, robots and interactive devices. * Learning in Communities focuses on the social aspects of constructionist learning, recognizing that how people learn is deeply influenced by the communities and cultures with which they interact. It examines the nature of learning in classroom, inner-city, and virtual communities. * Learning about Systems examines how students make sense of biological, technological, and mathematical systems. This section explores the conceptual and epistemological barriers to learning about feedback, self-organization, and probability, and it discusses new technological tools and activities that can help people develop new ways of thinking about these phenomena.

Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in A Digital World

Science & Math

Resnick, Mitchel

Behavioral Sciences

In Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat, the third edited volume in the series that includes From Barbie to Mortal Kombat and Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat, we expand the discussions on gender, race, and sexuality in gaming. We include intersectional perspectives on the experiences of diverse players, non-players and designers and promote inclusive designs for broadening access and participation in gaming, design and development. Contributors from media studies, gender studies, game studies, educational design, learning sciences, computer science, and game development examine  who plays, how they play, where and what they play, why they play (or choose not to play), and with whom they play. This volume further explores how we can diversify access, participation and design for more inclusive play and learning.

Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming

Richard, Gabriela T.

Tynes, Brendesha M.

lulu.com

In Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat, the third edited volume in the series that includes From Barbie to Mortal Kombat and Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat, we expand the discussions on gender, race, and sexuality in gaming. We include intersectional perspectives on the experiences of diverse players, non-players and designers and promote inclusive designs for broadening access and participation in gaming, design and development. Contributors from media studies, gender studies, game studies, educational design, learning sciences, computer science, and game development examine who plays, how they play, where and what they play, why they play (or choose not to play), and with whom they play. This volume further explores how we can diversify access, participation and design for more inclusive play and learning.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kafai, Yasmin B.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kafai, Yasmin B.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kafai, Yasmin B.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Connected Play: Tweens in a Virtual World (The John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming (The John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Connected Gaming: What Making Video Games Can Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Connected Gaming: What Making Video Games Can Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Minds in Play: Computer Game Design As A Context for Children's Learning

Minds in Play: Computer Game Design As A Context for Children's Learning

Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in A Digital World

Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming

Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming