Connected Gaming

<b>How making and sharing video games offer educational benefits for coding collaboration and creativity.</b> <p/>Over the last decade video games designed to teach academic content have multiplied. Students can learn about Newtonian physics from a game or prep for entry into the army. An emphasis on the instructionist approach to gaming however has overshadowed the constructionist approach in which students learn by designing their own games themselves. In this book Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke discuss the educational benefits of constructionist gaming--coding collaboration and creativity--and the move from computational thinking toward computational participation. <p/>Kafai and Burke point to recent developments that support a shift to game making from game playing including the game industry's acceptance and even promotion of modding and the growth of a DIY culture. Kafai and Burke show that student-designed games teach not only such technical skills as programming but also academic subjects. Making games also teaches collaboration as students frequently work in teams to produce content and then share their games with in class or with others online. Yet Kafai and Burke don't advocate abandoning instructionist for constructionist approaches. Rather they argue for a more comprehensive inclusive idea of connected gaming in which both making and gaming play a part.