This implementation study explores middle school, high school and community college student experiences in Globaloria, an educational pilot program of game design offered in schools within the U.S. state of West Virginia, supported by a non-profit organization based in New York City called the World Wide Workshop Foundation. This study reports on student engagement, meaning making and critique of the program, in their own words. The study's data source was a mid-program student feedback survey implemented in Pilot Year 2 (2008/2009) of the 5 year design-based research initiative, in which the researchers posed a set of open-ended questions in an online survey questionnaire answered by 199 students. Responses were analyzed using inductive textual analysis. While the initial purpose for data collection was to elicit actionable program improvements as part of a design-based research process, several themes emergent in the data tie into recent debates in the education literature around discovery-based learning. In this paper, we draw linkages from the categories of findings that emerged in student feedback to this literature, and identify new scholarly research questions that can be addressed in the ongoing pilot, the investigation of which might contribute new empirical insights related to recent critiques of discovery based learning, self-determination theory, and the productive failure phenomenon.

This paper discusses varied ideas on games, learning, and digital literacy for 21st-century education as theorized and practiced by the author and James Paul Gee, and their colleagues. With attention to games as means for learning, the author links Gee’s theories to the learning sciences tradition (particularly those of the MIT Constructionists) and extending game media literacy to encompass “writing” (producing) as well as “reading” (playing) games. If game-playing is like reading and game-making is like writing, then we must introduce learners to both from a young age. The imagining and writing of web-games fosters the development of many essential skill-sets needed for creativity and innovation, providing an appealing new way for a global computing education, STEM education, for closing achievement gaps. Gee and the author reveal a shared aim to encourage researchers and theorists, as well as policymakers, to investigate gaming with regard to epistemology and cognition.

Constructionist-learning researchers have long emphasized the epistemological value of programming games for learning and cognition. This study reports student experiences in a program of game design and Web 2.0 learning offered to disadvantaged West Virginia middle, high school and community college students. Specifically, the poster presents findings on the extent of student use of the Wiki for project management, teamwork and selfpresentation of game design attributes, comparing results across 13 school pilot locations. Also presented are students' selfreported recommendations for possible improvements to the wiki. Results indicate that some locations were more active in their wiki use; the poster addresses location-specific implementation context factors that may have played a role in the variant results.

This paper discusses varied ideas on games, learning, and digital literacy for 21st-century education as theorized and practiced by the author and James Paul Gee, and their colleagues. With attention to games as means for learning, the author links Gee’s theories to the learning sciences tradition (particularly those of the MIT Constructionists) and extending game media literacy to encompass “writing” (producing) as well as “reading” (playing) games. If game-playing is like reading and game-making is like writing, then we must introduce learners to both from a young age. The imagining and writing of web-games fosters the development of many essential skill-sets needed for creativity and innovation, providing an appealing new way for a global computing education, STEM education, for closing achievement gaps. Gee and the author reveal a shared aim to encourage researchers and theorists, as well as policymakers, to investigate gaming with regard to epistemology and cognition.