As children's digital lives become more relevant to schools and educators, the question of play and learning is being revisited in new and interesting ways. Children's Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning, and Participation provides a more reasoned account of children's play engagements in virtual worlds through a number of scholarly perspectives, exploring key concerns and issues which have come to the forefront. The global nature of the research in this edited volume embraces many different areas of study from school based research, sociology, cultural studies, psychology, to contract law showing how children's play and learning in virtual spaces has great potential and possibilities.
Contents: Anne Burke/Jackie Marsh: Introduction: The changing landscapes of children's play worlds - Susan Edwards: Post-industrial play: Understanding the relationship between traditional and converged forms of play in the early years - Kaveri Subrahmanyam: Developmental implications for children's virtual worlds - Anne Burke: Stardolls and the virtual playground: How identity construction works in the new digital frontier - Jackie Marsh: Breaking the ice: Play, friendships and online identities in young children's use of virtual worlds - Karen E. Wohlwend/Tolga Kargin: «Cause I know how to get friends - plus they like my dancing»: (L)earning the Nexus of Practice in Club Penguin - Jan Connelly: Virtual clay or virtual play: Identity shaping, consumer building and corporate affiliation versus literacies affordance inside barbiegirls.com - Isabel Pedersen/Jennifer Rowsell: May the force be with you: Harnessing the power of brain-computer games - Stephanie M. Reich/Ksenia A. Korobkova/Rebecca W. Black/Mariya Sumaroka: «Hey! Can you show me how to do this?» Digital games as a mediator of family time - Sara M. Grimes: Digital play structures: Examining the terms of use (and play) found in children's commercial virtual worlds - Eric Meyers/Robert Bittner: Green pixels to green behaviours: Sustainability literacy in virtual worlds for children - Victoria Carrington: An argument for assemblage theory: Integrated spaces, mobility, and polycentricity.
