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Playing with Teaching Considerations for Implementing Gaming Literacies in the Classroom
Considering the complex demands in schools today, Playing with Teaching serves as a hands-on resource for teachers. Focused on how games can shape unique literacy learning experiences for young people, this book provides substantial examples to adapt in classrooms today.
122 pages, Hardcover
Published February 13, 2020
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About the author
Antero García
39 books9 followersAntero Garcia is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University where he studies how technology and gaming shape both youth and adult learning, literacy practices, and civic identities.
He is the author of Good Reception: Teens, Teachers, and Mobile Media in a Los Angeles High School (MIT Press).
He is the author of Good Reception: Teens, Teachers, and Mobile Media in a Los Angeles High School (MIT Press).
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 8, 2020
For my master's thesis, I wrote about and researched how collaborative film making offers students more agency and ownership over their learning than just teaching the writing process with the expectation of an essay as the summative artifact ever could. This volume has inspired me to evolve my thesis beyond my original scope to intentionally and thoughtfully include gaming literacies in my curriculum, too.
Students are avid consumers of digital media, but, as a teacher, I never knew how to authentically infuse the learning in my classroom with gaming literacies, something a friend and colleague and I have spent a lot of time discussing (he now works for ClassCraft, an RPG LMS developer). This volume has provided some research-based rationales, strategies, and examples of why I need to consider more playful approaches for learning with my students and how I can lay the foundation of implementing it.
Ultimately, teaching is an empathetic act. This research doesn't just urge teachers to implement gaming to meet students where they are as media consumers; rather, this research urges us to consider games as vessels of empathy, as conduits for developing agency, as a way to learn about the world through understanding the mechanics of fictional worlds so that they can take ownership of the change positive change they intend to impart on the "real" world.
My biggest takeaway from this volume is that just having games in a classroom doesn't necessarily make for a games-based classroom if they aren't used for learning; however, if a classroom is "connected or democratic [...or] participatory [...or] one run according to student inquiry," it doesn't need very many games to appreciate the mechanics that make games and gaming literacies powerful tools for students. I learned that I already had a de facto gaming literacy classroom (or, at least strive to have one): "The best classrooms, like the best games, deliver on real-time feedback, student decision-making, scaling difficulty and support, and a compelling story for self for each student that helps them each understand their learning and growth as an individual accomplishment supported by a caring community of teachers and peers." The intention of gaming literacy in the classroom is more than having a game in the classroom--it is the learning derived from the moments of play within the game, and how that play can translate to understanding concepts beyond the game. Concepts that can be standards, skills, and, most importantly, working to reduce injustices in the world by building empathy.
This is not a volume of how-to's; this is a volume of taking already established best teaching practices and applying gaming mechanics to them to better reach students who will graduate into a world fueled by 21st century literacies and run by those who understand them.
Students are avid consumers of digital media, but, as a teacher, I never knew how to authentically infuse the learning in my classroom with gaming literacies, something a friend and colleague and I have spent a lot of time discussing (he now works for ClassCraft, an RPG LMS developer). This volume has provided some research-based rationales, strategies, and examples of why I need to consider more playful approaches for learning with my students and how I can lay the foundation of implementing it.
Ultimately, teaching is an empathetic act. This research doesn't just urge teachers to implement gaming to meet students where they are as media consumers; rather, this research urges us to consider games as vessels of empathy, as conduits for developing agency, as a way to learn about the world through understanding the mechanics of fictional worlds so that they can take ownership of the change positive change they intend to impart on the "real" world.
My biggest takeaway from this volume is that just having games in a classroom doesn't necessarily make for a games-based classroom if they aren't used for learning; however, if a classroom is "connected or democratic [...or] participatory [...or] one run according to student inquiry," it doesn't need very many games to appreciate the mechanics that make games and gaming literacies powerful tools for students. I learned that I already had a de facto gaming literacy classroom (or, at least strive to have one): "The best classrooms, like the best games, deliver on real-time feedback, student decision-making, scaling difficulty and support, and a compelling story for self for each student that helps them each understand their learning and growth as an individual accomplishment supported by a caring community of teachers and peers." The intention of gaming literacy in the classroom is more than having a game in the classroom--it is the learning derived from the moments of play within the game, and how that play can translate to understanding concepts beyond the game. Concepts that can be standards, skills, and, most importantly, working to reduce injustices in the world by building empathy.
This is not a volume of how-to's; this is a volume of taking already established best teaching practices and applying gaming mechanics to them to better reach students who will graduate into a world fueled by 21st century literacies and run by those who understand them.
October 28, 2023
A very interesting book on teaching through gaming. Perhaps one day I will be able to create my own game and help my students learn!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews