Digital Play

By grahamstanley 　http://digitalplay.info/blog/2010/01/ludoliteracy-a-book-about-games-in-education/

Ludoliteracy is a book about games in education by Jose Zagalwhich is now available as a free PDF download from Lulu .

The book’s preface makes the point that games education can be surprisingly complex and that “extensive prior videogame experience often interferes with students’ abilities to reason critically and analytically about games”.

Zagal suggests that anyone serious about games and education should make use of an online learning environment when analysing games. He examines two in the book:

1) Gamelog (http://www.gamelog.cl/) is a site where gamers “keep track of the games that they are currently playing. …basically a record of a game you started playing”
2) Game Ontology Wiki (http://www.gameontology.org/index.php/Main_Page), which provides “a framework for describing, analyzing and studying games”

His research has shown that “participating in these online learning environments was a positive learning experience.” and that “In addition to improving their relationships to videogames as a medium, it also helped students broaden and deepen their understanding of videogames.” He said the most important aspect of blogging about games meant that students “stepped back from their traditional role of “gamers” or “fans” and engaged in reasoning critically and analytically about the games they were studying.” and he highlights that it is the reflective nature of blogging that makes it a very “useful activity for supporting learning and understanding about games.”

Early on, Zagal provides a number of different contexts for understanding games: 1) understanding the relationship and the role a game plays within culture in general 2) understanding what the game’s relationship is to other games 3) understanding the game in the context of the technology/platform it is designed for… and finally 4) understanding the structure and components of the game.

He then writes at length about Games Literacy and Learning Theory, Communities of Practice, Knowledge Building, Methods and Data Analysis. The report on his research that led him to the conclusions mentioned above follows. All-in-all it makes for an interesting read for anyone interested in designing games for education or teaching game design.

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