Monday, June 27, 2011
New book for our series: "The Work of Play" by Aaron Chia Yuan Hung
Congratulations to Aaron on the publication of his book, The Work of Play: Meaning Making in Videogames!
According to the back cover:
Some educational researchers claim 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. 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. This is a valuable book for researchers and for classroom use at the upper-division undergraduate and graduate levels.
Aaron has produced a very readable accounts of game players nd their meaning making, and their learning. This is most definitely a must-read book for anyone interested in new ltieracies of any kind.
