Session 8: 1st March Room 826
Game Literacy
Colin McCarty
Digital games—console games, computer games, mobile phone games, games on the in-flight entertainments programmes of international airlines—are increasingly prevalent within popular culture as pastimes and as more serious pursuits, sports, perhaps. Games in one form or another have hung around the edges of formal schooling for at least half a century, in the UK. With urgent and repeated government and commercial pushes to get more and more technology into schools, into homes, the educational game gets a new boost. So do these new popular cultural activities and educational initiatives demand new forms of literacy or might they facilitate in new ways the acquisition of existing forms?
Objectives
- Explore competences and performances associated with digital games as popular cultural forms.
- Explore competences and performances associated with digital games as educational environments.
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- Essential Preliminary Reading
- Essential Preliminary Reading
- Lotherington, H. (2004). 'Emergent Metaliteracies: What the Xbox has to Offer the EQAO'. Linguistics and Education. 14(3-4). pp. 305-319.
- Squire, K. (in press). 'Civilization III as World History Sandbox.' To appear in Civilization and Its Discontents: Virtual History, Real Fantasies. Milan: Ludilogica Press
- Willett, R. (2003) ‘New Models for New Media: Young people learning digital culture’ Medienpädagogik 4
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- Additional Reading
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- Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on ergodic literature. Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press.
- Beavis, C. (1998). Computer Games, Culture and Curriculum. Page to Screen: Taking literacy into the electronic era. I. Snyder. London, Routledge.
- Friedman, T. (1995). Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality. Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Society. S. Jones. London, Sage.
- Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, MacMillan.
- Johnson-Eilola, J. (1998). Living on the Surface: Learning in the age of global communication networks. Page to Screen: Taking literacy into the electronic era. I. Snyder. London, Routledge.
- Purushotma, R. (2005). 'Commentary: You're not studying, you're just ... ' Language Learning and Technology. 9(1). pp. 80-96.
- Smith, R. and P. Curtin (1998). Children, Computers and Life Online: Education in a cyber-world. Page to Screen: Taking literacy into the electronic era. I. Snyder. London, Routledge.
- Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on ergodic literature. Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press.
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- Coursework Title
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- (How) can the term 'literacy' be usefully deployed in relation to digital games in popular and/or educational contexts?