Table Of ContentBridging Literacies with Videogames
GAMING ECOLOGIES AND PEDAGOGIES SERIES
Volume 1
Series Editors:
Hannah R. Gerber, Sam Houston State University, USA
Sandra Schamroth Abrams, St. Johns University, USA
Editorial Advisory Board:
Thomas Apperley, University of Melbourne, Australia
Jen Scott Curwood, University of Sydney, Australia
Julia Gillen, Lancaster University, UK
Jayne Lammers, University of Rochester, USA
Jason Lee, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
Alecia Magnifico, University of New Hampshire, USA
Guy Merchant, University of Sheffield, UK
Michael K. Thomas, USA
Mark Vicars, Victoria University, Australia
Allen Webb, W estern Michigan University, USA
Bronwyn Williams, University of Louisville, USA
Karen Wohlwend, Indiana University, USA
Scope:
Research suggests that a majority of today’s students play videogames on a regular
basis – five or more times per week. Research also suggests that more attention is
needed to understand and theorize the connections among multiple out-of-school
literacy practices and academic spaces. There are multiple ways that videogames
shape and inform people’s lifeworlds, and this series aims to provide an understanding
of gaming ecologies as a means to conceptualize and theorize gaming, learning, and
virtual environments.
We invite proposals that draw upon a broad range of methodological approaches
and theoretical perspectives in order to move the field forward and understand new
directions that videogames and MUVEs have in learning experiences. Books in this
series may be conceptual, theoretical, and empirical and can be edited compilations,
anthologies, single-authored and co-authored texts. We invite interested authors to
submit proposals relating to videogames and learning to
Hannah R. Gerber, [email protected]
or
Sandra Schamroth Abrams, [email protected]
Bridging Literacies with Videogames
Edited by
Hannah R. Gerber
Sam Houston State University, Texas, USA
and
Sandra Schamroth Abrams
St. John’s University, New York, USA
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-94-6209-666-0 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-94-6209-667-7 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6209-668-4 (e-book)
Published by: Sense Publishers,
P.O. Box 21858,
3001 AW Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
https://www.sensepublishers.com/
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved © 2014 Sense Publishers
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the
exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and
executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
To my nephews, Andy, Caleb, and Gabe, who inhabit a gaming world that
spans many literacies.
-Hannah
To my husband and our children who continuously remind me of the lessons
embedded in play.
-Sandra
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Allen Webb & Robert Rozema
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xv
About the Contributors xvii
Chapter Abstracts xxi
Bridging Literacies: An Introduction 1
Sandra Schamroth Abrams & Hannah R. Gerber
Section One: (Re)Creating Worlds and Texts
1. Exploring Imaginary Maps: Collaborative World Building in
Creative Writing Classes 11
Trent Hergenrader
2. Students’ Transmedia Storytelling: Building Fantasy Fiction
Storyworlds in Videogame Design 29
Ryan M. Rish
3. Reader, Writer, Gamer: Online Role-Playing Games as
Literary Response 53
Jen Scott Curwood
4. Teaching with Club Penguin: Re-creating Children’s
School Literacy through Paratexts in the Classroom 67
Anne Burke
Section Two: Massive Multiplayer Second Language Learning
5. Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming and English Language Learning 91
Jason YJ Lee & Charlotte Pass
6. Language Games: How Gaming Communities Shape
Second-Language Literacy 103
Javier Corredor & Matthew Gaydos
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
7. The Transformative Power of Gaming Literacy:
What Can We Learn from Adolescent English Language
Learners’ Literacy Engagement in World of Warcraft (WoW)? 129
Zhuo Li, Chu-Chuan Chiu, & Maria R. Coady
Section Three: Videogames and Classroom Learning
8. Reviewing the Content of Videogame Lesson Plans Available to Teachers 155
Mary Rice
9. Collaborative Videogame and Curriculum Design for
Language and Literacy Learning 171
Lan Ngo, Nora A. Peterman & Susan Goldstein
10. Writing in Virtual Worlds: Scratch Programming as
Multimodal Composing Practice in the Language Arts Classroom 187
Julie Warner
Index 209
viii
ALLEN WEBB & ROBERT ROZEMA
FOREWORD
In W hat Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003), James
Gee extracted the strategies and principles that keep videogame players motivated to
master increasingly difficult skills and knowledge, strategies and principles that he
believed were transferable to many different learning situations. Perhaps what was
most ground-breaking about Gee’s work was not the learning strategies he found–
many were familiar–but that an academic scholar, a leading expert in linguistics and
literacy, approached videogames with a high level of respect for their complexity, their
ability to engage participants, and their educational methodology. Gee investigated
videogames as new semiotic domains–new contexts for the construction of meaning
and the practice of literacy.
Bridging Literacies in Videogames draws on Gee’s work, but goes to a different
level. The editors and authors here are thinking deeply about the intersection between
videogames and learning. But they are also interested in what happens when students
develop virtual worlds, design video games, engage in online role play in response
to real world issues, and learn language, especially English, in games that transcend
culture, class, and nationality.
E ven as cultural critics blame videogames for a host of social ills—violence,
illiteracy, and antisocial behavior, to name a few—the contributors to this volume are
building bridges between the world of videogames and the world of school. Had they
been teaching in the late 1960s, the writers included here would likely be listening to
the Beatles along with their students, looking for instances of figurative language in
“Happiness is a Warm Gun,” even while all around, pastors and politicians decried
rock and roll.
B ut they teach today, a time when videogames may be more popular than
rock and roll. Today, nearly all adolescents play videogames. They play them on
smartphones, on media tablets, on laptop and desktop computers, and on standalone
gaming consoles such as the Xbox or PlayStation. They play them alone, with three
or four friends, or with thousands of others. They may be building intricate worlds in
Minecraft , stealing and joyriding cars in G rand Theft Auto V , completing dangerous
missions in C all of Duty , or simply wandering the vast realm of Skyrim .
And gamers themselves no longer fit a stereotype: many are indeed teenage boys,
but videogames are also increasingly popular with girls, with older people, and
with young children. Rob’s son Aidan began playing the Nintendo Wii at age five,
delighting in the whimsical worlds offered by L ego Wii games. In L ego Star Wars ,
Aidan found an immersive galaxy, stocked with familiar characters and settings but
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