The evaluation of students and schools is predicated on individual achievement, typically measured by assessments of students‘ recall of facts and application of skills in isolation from other people, resources, or tools.

The public display of individual expertise is less important than contributing to the collective knowledge of the space.

students do not see and learn from prior student work, nor do they use that work as a starting point for their own innovations and achievement. They have no sense that their own work might be used and appreciated by others.

These latter variables are backgrounded,though they can be used (or not) strategically by individuals if and when they choose to use them for their own purposes

the FanLib controversy was an eye-opener for me and for many other fans I know. Although Web 2.0 companies are taking their models from participatory culture, they are also fully responsive to the demands of consumer capitalism

The digital divide has to do with access to technologies; the participation gap has to do with access to social skills and cultural competencies that emerge from participating in the online world. Although our culture is becoming more participatory, some people are being locked out of participation, a trend that can foster greater economic, civic, and cultural inequalities.

the rise of digital culture has demonstrated to a larger public that the kind of participatory culture that fandom embodies is not a fluke but may be a key influence on the future directions our culture is taking

changes that have made fans in particular and participatory culture in general absolutely central to the ways the industry thinks and operates

some 500 million people around the globe are employing a common platform or online service and a range of ‘skill sets’ to do something we can all recognize as patterned routines

Do you agree with the claims that ‘someone who “freezes” language as a digitally encoded passage of speech and uploads it to the internet as a podcast is engaging in literacy’ and so, equally, is ‘someone who photoshops an image – whether or not it includes a written text component’?

‘Discourse’ names the patterning of coordinations, their recognizability, as well as that of their elements.

Almost anything available online becomes a resource for diverse kinds of meaning-making.

The meaning to be ‘fi lled in’ might be much more relational than literal or, even, ‘linguistic’ or ‘semantic’ in a strict sense. It might be more about expressing solidarity or affi nity with particular people

One is articulation, which is performed in the production of ‘the outwardly made sign’ (e.g., writing). The other is interpretation, which involves producing ‘the inwardly made sign’ in reading (see also Gee 2004: Ch. 6).

practices that would be impossible, or impossibly cumbersome, without encoded thought and language

Perhaps what is most important about literacy as a social phenomenon is that it enables people to do what cannot be done by orality alone. Literacy enables human beings to communicate and share meanings in ways that go beyond the use of voice within face-to-face settings (which is orality).

What do you think Reckwitz (2002: 252) means when he says that the ‘mental patterns’ involved in practices are not the private ‘“possession” of an individual “deep inside”’ but, rather, are ‘part of the social practice’?

a symbol system and a technology for producing and disseminating it’

changes in ideas about how something might be done will generate new tasks that call for refi nements in knowledge (theory, concepts, etc.), skills and processes, and technologies.

A practice, then, consists of three components: technology, knowledge and skills’

practices are routines and, to that extent (relatively) stable and recognizable as particular ways of doing things, they are nonetheless dynamic, mutable, and not completely monolithic

these ‘mental patterns’ are not the private ‘“possession” of an individual “deep inside”’ but, rather, are ‘part of the social practice’ in the sense that Gee (1992) refers to in terms of ‘the social mind’

that ‘carry over’ from day to day such that on any Tuesday the world looks much the same as it did on Monday, and we know how to ‘go on’?

ways of being in the world

Barr (2007) for instance, used a collective case study approach(with five people, who each played the sameset of five games) to examine the relationship between the interface and the “values” expressedduring play. Values are defined as “a sustained belief that one mode of conduct is preferable toother potential modes of conduct” (p. 3).

replicate people’s enthusiasm for games within a formaleducational context, then there is a need tofirst understand how this enthusiasm occursin everyday gaming practices. This will notonly lead to a greater understanding of howto design more involving commercial games but will also have implications for the designof educational games.

Itis clear that the links between these conceptsare not well understood and there is a need for further empirical studies to assess how theyrelate to each other. There is also a need for studies that do not look at people playing gamesin isolation but as part of a larger socio-culturalactivity (de Castell & Jenson, 2003; Squire,2005; Pelletier & Oliver, 2006) to fully under-stand how players participate within affinitygroups and semiotic domains. Further, methodsand frameworks need to be developed to aidresearchers in exploring these issues.

whether she would benefit from gamesto the same extent

Now it’s justan activity she shares occasionally with her friends

His main reasonsfor playing are “general escapism, sometimes just to relax and de-stress after a hard day.” He plays different games for different reasons, for instance he enjoys the stories in role-playinggames (RPGs), and the release of frustrationhe experiences when playing action titles.

she does not think she has personallylearnt much from playing them, apart from perhaps “learning to progress.”

here are differentmotivations behind various forms of game play,and that engagement can be affected by factorssuch as the player, the game itself, how the player interacts with the game and the contextin which the game is played; all of which willalso affect the process of informal learningoccurring within and around periods of game- play.

Though Barr (2007) was not interested in explicitly identi-fying learning, it would be interesting to seewhether similar techniques could be used toestablish what and how people learn from gamesand whether this has any relationship to their experiences of motivation and engagement.

Pelletier and Oliver (2006)focus on the learning process that occurs duringgame play itself and without looking for specificlearning outcomes.

An example from a gamingcontext would be making the same mistakemore than once due to misunderstanding howan object within the game works.

they attempted to come up with a set of rules based on these proposed explanations of player  behaviour that can be viewed as a set of strate-gies the player turns to when learning a newgame e.g., “spot unusual objects and click onthem” (p. 335).

it could be argued that by not takingthe player’s perspective into account, it is notclear how far the inferences made actuallygovern player behaviour.

argues for an empirical examination of the context andsocio-cultural factors around every-day game- playing, in order to provide greater insight intothe effectiveness of learning through games.

Consideration is also given to the suggestionof Boyle and Connolly (2008) that reversaltheory can be helpful in understanding certainemotional flips that people can experiencewhilst playing games.

learners do not all agreethat they find games intrinsically motivatingwithin an educational context (Whitton, 2007)and it has also been found that when com-mercial games are used to support learning ineducational environments, the games used donot always appeal to all students (Squire, 2005).

it is also possible the lack of empirical support in the area “may indicate thatlearning through immersive worlds involves amore complex understanding of learning, onethat is not so easy to tie to specified learning out-comes”

wecan identify how successful commercial gamessupport learning within and around game-playand start to think more about how to supportlearning in more formal contexts.

Consalvo (2007) developedthis concept from Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of “cultural capital” in order to: capture how be-ing a member of game culture is about morethan playing games or even playing them well.It’s being knowledgeable about game releasesand secrets, and passing that information onto others. It’s having opinions about whichgame magazines are better and the best sitesfor walkthroughs on the Internet.

interpersonal motivators; recognition, competi-tion and cooperation (Malone & Lepper, 1987).

Digital Game Experience Model (DGEM).

Research in the area of games and learningoften reveals a potential tension between beingmotivated to play a game and being motivatedto learn

Calleja (2007a) argu-ing that “pinning motivation for game-playingon the notion of fun risks missing importantdimensions of the game experience” (p. 136). AsYee (2006) points out, players often engage inactivities that feel a lot like work because of thetime and energy they have invested in them, as part of their routine game-playing experiences.It seems that the relationship between work and play is more complex than is often assumed.

Within the domain of rules, theconformist and negativistic states relate to our desire to conform or rebel.

In telic mode,the player is serious and forward looking, witha focus on achieving goals. Paratelic mode isthe playful mode where the focus in on theactivity itself. Excitement is supposed to occur in the telic state, whilst relaxation occurs in the paratelic.

This switching between states may helpexplain why different parts of the game-playexperience can be considered as either work or play

analysis of paratexts (Consalvo, 2007)offers the potential to identify the developmentof gaming capital and community values, andthus gain insight into why certain games arechosen, why hardcore gamers might play themdifferently to casual games, and into the informallearning processes that occur both inside andoutside of game-play.

An example from a gamingcontext would be making the same mistakemore than once due to misunderstanding howan object within the game works.

I hypothesize that our kids have not taken up MMOGsbecause they are not surrounded by peers or mentors who play MMOGs and can support them in theirplay.

to allow players to identify powerfully with the virtual character or characters they are playing in a game and to become strongly motivated to commit themselves to the virtual world the game is creating with their help.

there is no “remedial” in this learning world. You begin where you begin and move to advanced when you move there. None of this is timed. There are no invidious judgments based on one’s previous “failures.”

The only way to learn is to see some instances and live with them concretely.