This paper investigates affect as part of children's sensemaking in the context of a play-based mixed-reality science learning environment. We build on theories of affect as disciplinary work by investigating the multiple layers of affect that are essential to children's scientific inquiry and to identify pedagogical moves that recognize, value,…

Makerspaces can support educational experiences in prototyping for young learners, while physical computing platforms enable high levels of creativity and expression. However, each of these have high barriers of entry, especially for youth without prior experience. Commercial microcontrollers have become a popular tool to use when designing both…

The mobile gaming phenomenon "Pokémon Go" is one of the first successful mainstream games to feature augmented reality (AR) components, giving players the feeling of hunting Pokémon in real-life settings. "Pokémon Go" offers players access to "Pokélayer," a game layer laid on top of the real world, combining GPS and…

In this excerpt from the author's new book, "Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming," (Princeton University Press, 2018), she discusses some of the work game live streamers undertake to convert their private play into public entertainment. She details the layers involved in a typical broadcast and argues that this…

The paper first outlines a differentiation of play/game-motivations that include "negative" attitudes against the play/game itself like cheating or spoilsporting. This problem is of particular importance in concern of learning games because they are not "played" for themselves--at least in the first place--but due to an…

Background: Research into digital practices and cultures repeatedly calls attention to the complexity of communication spaces and meaning-making practices. With the blurring of boundaries between online and offline, these entangled practices involve the interweaving of human, material, semiotic, and discursive practices. Purpose: This introductory…

My daughter has always been drawn to the frightening and the spooky, with a special interest in zombies. When she was four years old, she and I played a zombie video game together which instigated a series of zombie-related events. This article is a collection of metonymic moments rendered in comics and writing, that revisits these events as…

Background: Today, children play in transmedia franchises that bring together media characters, toys, and everyday consumer goods with games, apps, and websites in complex mergers of childhood cultures, digital literacies, consumer practices, and corporate agendas. Recent research on youth videogames and virtual worlds suggests the productive…

There is a kind of seemingly nonsensical play behavior found in the simulation sandbox game genre. This behavior is very spontaneous and impulsive and associated with self-initiated learning, and here the author seeks to better understand what it is, and why it seems associated with simulation sandbox games. That is: What purpose does it serve,…

In collaborative learning scenarios, the role of the instructor is vital. This aspect directly carries over to the concept of collaborative multiplayer Serious Games, where a group of players is learning together using a Serious Game. In this paper, the authors propose a novel approach for integration and support of instructors in collaborative…

In vision-based augmented-reality (AR) environments, users view the physical world through a video feed or device that "augments" the display with a graphical or informational overlay. Our goal in this manuscript is to ask "how" and "why" these new technologies create opportunities for learning. We suggest that AR is…

This study introduces the concept of microgames to support situated learning in order to foster situational awareness (SA) of planners in seaport container terminals. In today's complex working environments, it is often difficult to develop the required level of understanding of a given situation, described as situational awareness. A container…

This article investigates 8-and 9-year-old girls' use of the popular game "Minecraft" at home and school, particularly the ways in which they performatively "bring themselves into being" through talk and digital production in the social spaces of the classroom and within the game's multiplayer online world. We explore how the…

Because computers generally make children passive listeners, new technological devices need to support children's storytelling activities. This article introduces the StoryTech, a smart toy that includes a virtual space comprised of computer-based graphics and characters as well as a real space that involves stuffed animals, background cards…

Amid the increasing interest in applying augmented reality (AR) in educational settings, this study explores the design and enactment of an AR-infused robot system to enhance children's satisfaction and sensory engagement with dramatic play activities. In particular, we conducted an exploratory study to empirically examine children's perceptions…