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Free eBook - Beyond Fun: Serious Games and Media


Via: ETC-Press - BEYOND FUN: Serious Games and Media

Drew Davidson
ETC Press
Carnegie Mellon University
700 Technology Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Date of Original Version 
2008

BEYOND FUN: Serious Games and Media focuses on strategies for applying games, simulations and interactive experiences in learning contexts. The contributors orchestrated this collection together, reading and writing as a whole so that concepts resonate across articles. Throughout, the promises and problems of implementing games and media in learning experiences are explored. The articles have been authored by Clark Aldrich, Ian Bogost, Mia Consalvo, William Crosbie, Drew Davidson, Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Melinda Jackson, Donna Leishman, Michael Mateas, Marc Prensky, Scott Rettberg, Kurt Squire, David Thomas, Siobhan Thomas, Jill Walker Rettberg, and Jenny Weight.

This book is a combination of two Special Issues of On The Horizon that focused on strategies for applying games, simulations and interactive media experiences in learning contexts. The first special issue came out in early 2004, and the second in early 2005.

Since then we have seen an explosion of academic interest in a variety of new and different interactive media that could be used for education.

Have a taste of the content:

• Clark Aldrich outlines four stages of deploying simulations in his article that received the Highly Commended Award from the Emerald Literati Club.

• Mindy Jackson looks at how games are being used across disciplines.

• Drew Davidson gives an overview of the phenomenon of university programs and degrees in games, simulations, and interactive media.

• Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen defines some barriers to using educational games in a course.

• Kurt Squire delves into the kinds of learning that occur during gameplay.

• David Thomas discusses the issue of games teaching us violent or educational content, or both.

• Donna Leishman illustrates how interactive experiences can help slower learners.

• Mia Consalvo explores how cheating at games can be turned into learning opportunities.

• Michael Mateas delineates the importance of procedural literacy.

• Siobhan Thomas writes an in-depth review of Clark Aldrich’s book, Simulations and the Future of Learning.

• Scott Rettberg explains how interactive media can be used to study literature.

• Jill Walker illustrates how blogging can be used in teaching and learning.

• Jenny Weight explores the possibilities of incorporating computer-based media into courses.

• William Crosbie provides an in-depth review of Virtual Humans by Peter Plantec.

• Drew Davidson looks at the process of establishing an official university center that focuses on the study and creation of games and simulations.

• Marc Prensky sounds a call for open source development of learning software.

• Ian Bogost challenges us to become more actively involved in our educations and shows how games enable us to do so.

About ETC Press

ETC Press is a publishing imprint with a twist. They publish books, but they’re also interested in the participatory future of content creation across multiple media. They are an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com.

ETC Press has an affiliation with the Institute for the Future of the Book and MediaCommons, sharing in the exploration of the evolution of discourse. ETC Press also has an agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to place ETC Press publications in the ACM Digital Portal, and another with Feedbooks to place ETC Press texts in their e-reading platform.

ETC Press publications focus on issues revolving around entertainment technologies as they are applied across a variety of fields.