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The Work of Play

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[Sample Chapter]

Certain educational researchers have claimed that videogames can energize learning in both traditional and non-traditional contexts, cultivate skills more useful to a changing economy, and present information in ways more appealing to students. The notion of “serious games” dates back as early as the 1950s, but so far has failed to make a significant lasting impact on what goes on in education. One component missing then—and is still scarce even now—is empirical evidence showing how videogames promote learning, and what hinders or enhances it.

The Work of Play is an attempt to describe such learning on the micro-level, capturing the moment-by-moment interactions between players and showing how meanings are shaped over time. It builds on anthropological methods, including ethnography and conversation analysis, to re-construct how situated learning occurs and how players’ perception of the game evolves as their experiences with the game change.

 

Entries in Kurt Squire (1)

Wednesday
May112011

A role for exogenous games?

Last year, I was offered to teach a class called on grammar and structural linguistics, which I accepted with some hesitance because I considered it a bit outside of my comfort zone. I've taught sociolinguistics and communications courses before, but this is hardcore linguistics, requiring knowledge not just of grammar but also of how to analyze the syntactic structure of sentences using grammar trees. What made it even more intimidating was that these were four hour courses, and I had to make it interesting to the students. Games, then.

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