Literacy in the digital age: Learning from computer games

Beavis, Catherine; Apperley, Thomas; Bradford, Clare; O’Mara, Joanne; Walsh, Christopher S.

doi:10.1111/j.1754-8845.2009.01035.x

Cited by 33 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…I describe my own developing interest in video games as popular culture, their role in students' lives, and continuities between popular culture and more traditional literature as part of the spectrum of texts for study in the English classroom. In the second half of the commentary I present the model, developed by Tom Apperley and myself in conjunction with Clare Bradford, Joanne O'Mara, Christopher Walsh, and Amanda Gutierrez, working with high school teachers and students researching literacy in the digital age (Beavis, Apperley, Bradford, O'Mara, & Walsh, ). I return to the observations made by David and his mates, and Brian's unit of work, to illustrate the workings of the model and how it might be applied.…”

Section: What's Happening?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Games as Text, Games as Action

Beavis¹

2014

J Adolesc Adult Liter

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Contemporary views of literacy, and of English and Language Arts curriculum recognise the importance of digital culture and communication forms in many young people's lives and the multiple forms of literacy students engage with as they work, interact and play. Amongst these, videogames, whether played on PCs, laptops, wiis, or on mobile devices of various kinds stand out as highly popular, engaging and sophisticated emergent cultural forms. Drawing on research in Australian secondary schools over a number of years, this paper describes approaches to working with games in the English classroom, and presents a model for critical games literacy which entails thinking of games as both text and action. It describes the ways in which the model might be used for planning and teaching with and about games, stressing the active nature of games and play, and calling on understandings of literacy as design.

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Section: What's Happening?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Games as Text, Games as Action

Beavis¹

2014

J Adolesc Adult Liter

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“…Where a player starts and where a player ends up can be quite different, and this open-ended quality of apps aligns with authentic and idiosyncratic experiences of play. Beavis (2013) called attention to a relationship among the dimensions of design and the dimensions of play, alluding to this open-ended quality of games that "do not fit readily either into available definitions of literacy or into subject-specific parameters within school" (p. 72). Flewitt, Messer, and Kucirkova (2015) described a study that they conducted in early years settings where children played an app called Our Story.…”

Section: Open-endedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Play or Tight Spaces? Mapping Participatory Literacies in Apps

Rowsell¹,

Wohlwend²

2016

Read Teach

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Building on existing research applying app maps (Israelson, ), the authors take an ideological orientation to broaden app evaluations and consider participatory literacies, social and communicational practices relevant to children's everyday digitally mediated lives. Drawing from their North American elementary classroom studies on children's technology play with iPads, the authors compare four typical literacy practices with apps: practicing a skill, reading an e‐book, animating a film, and designing an interactive world. A rubric and radar charts are introduced to help teachers assess and visualize educational apps’ potential to develop six dimensions of participatory literacies: multiplayer, productive, multimodal, multilinear, pleasurable, and connected. The authors conclude with a push for broadened definitions and looser frameworks.

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“…Gaming literacy suggests a changing stake in what it means to be literate in the era of ubiquitous computer and Internet access and increasingly ‘natural’ user/player–machine interfaces (Beavis et al, ; Zimmerman, ). During gameplay, pupils draw on their gaming literacies to accomplish difficult but motivating tasks and develop new knowledge by navigating the complex, changing virtual environment.…”

Section: Gaming Literacymentioning

confidence: 99%

What digital games and literacy have in common: a heuristic for understanding pupils' gaming literacy

Apperley

Walsh²

2012

Literacy

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This article argues that digital games and school‐based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts – ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games – can play in connecting pupils’ gaming literacy practices to ‘traditional’ school‐based literacies still needed for academic success. By including the reading, writing and design of digital game paratexts in the literacy curriculum, teachers can actively and legitimately include digital games in their literacy instruction. To help teachers understand pupils’ gaming literacy practices in relation to other forms of literacy practices, we present a heuristic for understanding gaming (HUG) literacy. We argue our heuristic can be used for effective teacher professional development because it assists teachers in identifying the elements of gameplay that would be appropriate for the demands of the literacy curriculum. The heuristic traces gaming literacy across the quadrants of actions, designs, situations and systems to provide teachers and practitioners with a knowledge of gameplay and a metalanguage for talking about digital games. We argue this knowledge will assist them in capitalising on pupils’ existing gaming literacy by connecting their out‐of‐school gaming literacy practices to the literacy and English curriculum.

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Literacy in the digital age: Learning from computer games

Cited by 33 publications

References 11 publications

Games as Text, Games as Action

Games as Text, Games as Action

Free Play or Tight Spaces? Mapping Participatory Literacies in Apps

What digital games and literacy have in common: a heuristic for understanding pupils' gaming literacy

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