Digital literacies for the disengaged: creating after school contexts to support boys' game‐based literacy skills

Steinkuehler, Constance; King, Elizabeth M.

doi:10.1108/10748120910936144

Cited by 65 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Such stories are important, as they reveal players' lived experiences and how those experiences are interpreted through the lens of individual and group values. In the after school gaming group I run as part of my research (Steinkuehler, 2008;Steinkuehler & King, 2009), we have replicated these findings and now use similar activities as a regular part of our ongoing data collection.…”

Section: Rtr Project 2 Wow Inventory Research By Vance Martin Bill supporting

confidence: 72%

Real-Time Research: An Experiment in the Design of Scholarship

Zimmerman

Squire

Steinkuehler

et al. 2009

E-Learning and Digital Media

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This article reports on an unconventional collaborative event called Real-Time Research, a project that brought 25 participants together from radically divergent fields for a playful and somewhat improvisational investigation of what it means to do games and learning research. RealTime Research took the form of a two-part workshop session at the 'Games, Learning & Society' (GLS) conference during the summer of 2008, in which attendees collaboratively designed and then conducted five research experiments that took place over the course of the two-day conference. The article reports on the results of those studies and the processes that generated them.Few models exist for the successful collaboration among research academics, let alone among research academics and game designers and practicing teachers and students. Traditional conferences are often unable to provide much time and space for genuinely substantive conversation within disciplines, let alone across disciplines. There is the occasional follow-up conversation after a particularly good PowerPoint presentation with the obligatory exchange of business cards (that rarely survive the trip home), perfunctory post-session discussions, and the chance run-in at the hotel bar, but beyond these mostly accidental exchanges, we wanted to create a context designed explicitly for productive collaboration. The Games Learning and Society Conference (GLS), held annually in Madison, Wisconsin, was the perfect occasion for such an experiment. GLS already straddles several domains: academics, industry designers, policy makers, practicing teachers, and gamers themselves. At GLS, conference designers place a premium on creating opportunities for different constituencies to congregate and share concerns through a number of design elements. This mix of participants can lead to entertaining and informative sessions; in one example from the first GLS, a gaming consultant suggested that games could one day replace teachers, and a bevy of objections shot up: Designers said it was too difficult to replace teacher practices with artificial intelligence; educational theorists raised the historical failure of such efforts, and teachers laughed and said, 'good luck with that'.These discussions are a good start, but we often learn best when we are engaged in meaningful activity working side by side with others (Vygotsky, 1978;Lave, 1988;Lave & Wenger, 1991). We need opportunities not just for cross-disciplinary conversation but cross-disciplinary collaboration. This kind of collaborative activity enables us to see how others view problems, to test our understandings against others, and to talk through key issues in a context grounded in specifics (rather than mired in the general). If it is true that we get to know each other and our world-views by actually engaging in activities with each other (Steinkuehler, 2004), then why not create a context within a conference in which this can happen? We hoped that such exercises, no matter how small, might seed future work not just among those who...

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Section: Rtr Project 2 Wow Inventory Research By Vance Martin Bill supporting

confidence: 72%

Real-Time Research: An Experiment in the Design of Scholarship

Zimmerman

Squire

Steinkuehler

et al. 2009

E-Learning and Digital Media

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…As the boys in the group saw how productive the novel reading could be, they eagerly began reading to inform and improve their gaming. This was a dramatic change as all of the boys self reported being nonreaders at the onset of the program (Steinkuehler & King, 2009). This demonstrates one of the implications of game-based connected learning -the pursuit of knowledge is contagious and tied to social capital.…”

Section: Incorporating Affinity Groupsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Designing After-School Learning Using the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

King

2015

Theory Into Practice

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Digital games have become popular for engaging students in a range of learning goals, both in the classroom and after school space. In this article I discuss a specific genre of video game, the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMO), which has been identified as a dynamic environment for encountering 21 st Century workplace skills (King, 2012). Rather than advocating for bringing MMOs directly into the classroom to deliver content, I focus on designing after school programs. Starting with a description of the MMO, I define the game space as a digital platform where an array of interest-driven learning takes place. Then, based upon a 2-year, game-based after school program for teenage boys, the Casual Learning LabA c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t Downloaded by ["University at Buffalo Libraries"] at 20:07 05 February 2015 Designing After School Learning Using the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game 2 (Steinkuehler and King, 2009). Finally, I offer suggestions for program design highlighting the importance of involving teachers as co-learners, and structuring reflection activities to assist participants in connecting gaming activities to 21 st century skills. IntroductionThe past decade has seen an increase in the development of after school programs to strengthen students' academic skills. The popularity of programs using game-based learning to build academic skills has given rise to a variety of approaches for implementing game-infused programs. Often, this has involved the use of games to teach academics, either through gamebased content, or academic-looking activities connected to games. However, rather than focusing on bringing video games directly into the classroom to teach content, I describe how we might think about one specific kind of video game, the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMO), as a learning platform, rather than a game to deliver content. Considering the MMO, as a digital platform rather than just a game, has a central assumption -that play involves more than the designed software that is typically considered as the game.The MMO offers numerous types of play and interest-driven activities that a player may take up in association with the game. This means players have many ways of participating in gameplay and can incorporate individual and collaborative activities. Because of this, the MMO is often likened to a digital sandbox whereas players have a great deal of freedom to follow their unique interests. To support this, virtual communities have sprung up to encourage fan activities,

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“…Recent research has highlighted the role that new literacies play in adolescents’ lives in out‐of‐school settings, where practices such as social networking (Boyd, ), video gaming (Steinkuehler & King, ), and writing fan fiction (Black, ) are commonplace. Despite these findings, school‐based literacy practices continue to focus on the consumption and production of static print texts, rather than providing students access to the multimodal, nonlinear literacy practices available in digital environments (Rhodes & Robnolt, ).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

iPoetry: Creating Space for New Literacies in the English Curriculum

Curwood¹,

Cowell²

2011

J Adolescent & Adult Lit

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This article explores the use of digital poetry in a secondary English classroom and its implications for adolescents’ multimodal composition and identity development. The authors—an English teacher and a library media specialist—collaborated over the course of three years to design, implement, and reiterate a digital poetry curriculum. Through their work, they sought to infuse new vitality into literacy practices in order to enhance students’ engagement, increase their awareness of audience, and encourage their progressive use of media and technology. After students read, critiqued, and wrote poetry using traditional print text, they then employed digital tools to reinterpret those poems using multimodal elements. The authors argue that if teachers are to successfully implement new literacy practices in their classrooms, they must first establish a community of practice with other like‐minded educators in order to engage in ongoing, critical dialogue around issues of literacy, learning, and technology.

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Digital literacies for the disengaged: creating after school contexts to support boys' game‐based literacy skills

Cited by 65 publications

References 28 publications

Real-Time Research: An Experiment in the Design of Scholarship

Real-Time Research: An Experiment in the Design of Scholarship

Designing After-School Learning Using the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

iPoetry: Creating Space for New Literacies in the English Curriculum

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