Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts

Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning) Review

Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and                Learning)
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Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning) ReviewFor me, this book is simultaneously insightful and nostalgic. I grew up playing games like "Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego", "The Castle of Dr. Brain", and "SimCity", so Ito's ethnographic coverage of kids at an after-school program who played such games reminded me of my own childhood, as viewed through the lens of a cultural anthropologist. For instance, while using SimCity's disasters to decimate a city was something I used to do as a kid, I'd always assumed it was a "bad" use of the game, but Ito actually interprets such actions in an entirely different way.
The book doesn't just look at how kids play these games, though. It also examines, for instance, how the marketing of some of these games mobilized middle-class parental anxieties about achievement, or how the entrepreneurs who started educational game companies soon found themselves to be victims of their own success. Or how the entrenched agendas of educational institutions can sometimes work against learning instead of fostering it.
The only thing I didn't like about the book is that because it's written for researchers, it can be a bit jargony at times. For instance, the first 20 pages or so are dedicated to explaining research methodology and what makes it different from other books in the field, which I wasn't terribly concerned with.
Ultimately, though, this book was a pleasure to read, and was complex enough to warrant multiple readings. What's covered in here would probably be useful for parents, educators, game developers, entrepreneurs, cultural anthropologists, marketers, and anyone who, like me, once played these games as a kid.
Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning) OverviewHow the influential industry that produced such popular games as OregonTrail and KidPix emerged from experimental efforts to use computers as tools inchild-centered learning.

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Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Digital Media and Society) Review

Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Digital Media and Society)
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Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Digital Media and Society) ReviewAt this point, the textbooks that cover technology-mediated communication are sparse, despite having quite a robust research presence. This book, which I just used for my course in technology and communication, is excellent. Baym conceptualizes the work in technology-mediated communication in a clear, easy to read fashion. I feel in no way this text is "over the heads" of undergraduates. At this point, I believe this text is the only viable undergraduate text in the subject area (although I am going to try my hand at it too). I feel this book would help advanced learners, such as practitioners and graduate students, as well. Really an exceptional work that fills a HUGE gap. Highly recommended.Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Digital Media and Society) OverviewThe internet and the mobile phone have disrupted many of our conventional understandings of our selves and our relationships, raising anxieties and hopes about their effects on our lives. This timely and vibrant book provides frameworks for thinking critically about the roles of digital media in personal relationships. Rather than providing exuberant accounts or cautionary tales, it offers a data-grounded primer on how to make sense of these important changes in relational life.
The book identifies the core relational issues these media disturb and shows how the ways we talk about them echo historical discussions about earlier communication technologies. Chapters explore how we use mediated language and nonverbal behavior to develop and maintain communities, social networks, new relationships, and to maintain relationships in our everyday lives. It combines research findings with lively examples to address questions such as whether mediated interaction can be warm and personal, whether people are honest about themselves online, whether relationships that start online can work, and whether using these media damages the other relationships in our lives. Throughout, the book argues for approaching these questions with firm understandings of the qualities of media as well as the social and personal contexts in which they are developed and used.

Personal Connections in the Digital Age will be required reading for all students and scholars of media, communication studies, and sociology, as well as all those who want a firmer understanding of digital media and everyday life.


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