{"id":752,"date":"2009-04-19T04:29:18","date_gmt":"2009-04-19T11:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=752"},"modified":"2009-04-19T04:29:18","modified_gmt":"2009-04-19T11:29:18","slug":"professional-reading-how-computer-games-help-children-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2009\/04\/professional-reading-how-computer-games-help-children-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"Professional Reading: <i>How Computer Games Help Children Learn<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>posted by Teresa Walls<\/p>\n<p>Have you read <em><a href=\"http:\/\/epistemicgames.org\/eg\/?cat=64\">How Computer Games Help Children Learn<\/a><\/em> by David Williamson Shaffer? I have just begun. Already, there is plenty of food for thought, especially regarding games that allow children to role-play, moving beyond rote memorization. I imagine many of us who became librarians like trivia and random facts. But, really, where does that get you? O.K., perhaps on<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonypictures.com\/tv\/shows\/jeopardy\/\"> Jeopardy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Shaffer discusses <a href=\"http:\/\/sodaplay.com\/creators\/soda\/items\/constructor\">SodaConstructor<\/a> as a &#8220;free, Java-based spring-mass modeling system&#8211;and when described that way it sounds like it might be about as interesting as a simulation of growing grass&#8221; (p. 42). I hadn&#8217;t heard of it, but I am inspired to learn more. It is a project created by Soda Creative Ltd. (a team of artists, developers and entreprenurs) and supported by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nesta.org.uk\/\">NESTA<\/a>, the United Kingdom&#8217;s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Since being mentioned in Shaffer&#8217;s book, things have changed a bit (isn&#8217;t that the way with life on the World Wide Web?), but registration is now <a href=\"http:\/\/sodaplay.com\/\">open<\/a> if you want to play.<\/p>\n<p>Shaffer and other researchers contribute to a blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/epistemicgames.org\/eg\/?cat=63\">Epistemic Games: Building the Future of Education<\/a> where they &#8220;welcome questions, insights, and comments on education, gaming, media literacy, and other related topics.&#8221; The Epistemic Games Research Group is housed within the Educational Psychology Department and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>posted by Teresa Walls Have you read How Computer Games Help Children Learn by David Williamson Shaffer? I have just begun. Already, there is plenty of food for thought, especially regarding games that allow children to role-play, moving beyond rote memorization. I imagine many of us who became librarians like trivia and random facts. But, really, where does that get you? O.K., perhaps on Jeopardy. Shaffer discusses SodaConstructor as a &#8220;free, Java-based spring-mass modeling system&#8211;and when described that way it sounds like it might be about as interesting as a simulation of growing grass&#8221; (p. 42). I hadn&#8217;t heard of it, but I am inspired to learn more. It is a project created by Soda Creative Ltd. (a team of artists, developers and entreprenurs) and supported by NESTA, the United Kingdom&#8217;s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Since being mentioned in Shaffer&#8217;s book, things have changed a bit&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[24,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-world","category-professional-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}