Zoo Tycoon


Book Description

This book is about leaving property to a loved one with a disability who likely will require longterm support and medical assistance under the SSI and Medicaid programs. This might be a son with Down syndrome, a daughter with Cystic Fibrosis, a niece or nephew with severe autism, a grandchild with schizophrenia, or any other person with a similarly disabling condition that will (or may) require a lifetime of subsidized support and medical care. A special needs trust can benefit anyone over 65 and anyone of any age with a disability that makes them eligible for federal SSI and Medicaid benefits.




Let's Write


Book Description

Let’s Write offers a wealth of suggestions for approaches to developing primary school pupils’ writing skills that will capture the children’s interest, while enabling them to improve their ability to express themselves in writing. It aims to meet the requirements of the new national curriculum for English at KS2 in a way that will develop the children’s standard of writing by presenting activities that they will find enjoyable and stimulating. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on providing activities that will engage the pupils in a discussion of how texts are structured, before producing their own writing. John Foster suggests a range of imaginative tasks that both literacy specialists and non-specialists will find useful in developing children’ ability to write coherently and correctly. Let’s Write includes: a clear explanation of the writing process with activities designed to improve pupils’ drafting skills examples of the different types of writing for pupils to analyse, which they can use as models for their own writing a range of imaginative ideas for writing tasks, together with suggestions of curriculum opportunities for practising particular forms writing challenges which can be used to stretch more able writers and thus to introduce differentiation by task, as well as by outcome writing tips, for example, on sentence structure and paragraph structure, appropriate to the different types of writing activities involving pupils in the assessment of their writing a section on writing correctly, focussing on grammar, spelling and punctuation a section containing games and activities designed to extend pupils’ vocabulary. Let’s Write provides teachers with a lively collection of resources that will be welcomed by teachers and that will help to develop children’s writing.




Computer Games and New Media Cultures


Book Description

Digital gaming is today a significant economic phenomenon as well as being an intrinsic part of a convergent media culture in postmodern societies. Its ubiquity, as well as the sheer volume of hours young people spend gaming, should make it ripe for urgent academic enquiry, yet the subject was a research backwater until the turn of the millennium. Even today, as tens of millions of young people spend their waking hours manipulating avatars and gaming characters on computer screens, the subject is still treated with scepticism in some academic circles. This handbook aims to reflect the relevance and value of studying digital games, now the subject of a growing number of studies, surveys, conferences and publications. As an overview of the current state of research into digital gaming, the 42 papers included in this handbook focus on the social and cultural relevance of gaming. In doing so, they provide an alternative perspective to one-dimensional studies of gaming, whose agendas do not include cultural factors. The contributions, which range from theoretical approaches to empirical studies, cover various topics including analyses of games themselves, the player-game interaction, and the social context of gaming. In addition, the educational aspects of games and gaming are treated in a discrete section. With material on non-commercial gaming trends such as ‘modding’, and a multinational group of authors from eleven nations, the handbook is a vital publication demonstrating that new media cultures are far more complex and diverse than commonly assumed in a debate dominated by concerns over violent content.




Gameworlds


Book Description

Game studies is a rapidly developing field across the world, with a growing number of dedicated courses addressing video games and digital play as significant phenomena in contemporary everyday life and media cultures. Seth Giddings looks to fill a gap by focusing on the relationship between the actual and virtual worlds of play in everyday life. He addresses both the continuities and differences between digital play and longer-established modes of play. The 'gameworlds' title indicates both the virtual world designed into the videogame and the wider environments in which play is manifested: social relationships between players; hardware and software; between the virtual worlds of the game and the media universes they extend (e.g. Pokémon, Harry Potter, Lego, Star Wars); and the gameworlds generated by children's imaginations and creativity (through talk and role-play, drawings and outdoor play). The gameworld raises questions about who, and what, is in play. Drawing on recent theoretical work in science and technology studies, games studies and new media studies, a key theme is the material and embodied character of these gameworlds and their components (players' bodies, computer hardware, toys, virtual physics, and the physical environment). Building on detailed small-scale ethnographic case studies, Gameworlds is the first book to explore the nature of play in the virtual worlds of video games and how this play relates to, and crosses over into, everyday play in the actual world.




HWM


Book Description

Singapore's leading tech magazine gives its readers the power to decide with its informative articles and in-depth reviews.




If I Ran the Zoo


Book Description

Gerald tells of the very unusual animals he would add to the zoo, if he were in charge.




HWM


Book Description

Singapore's leading tech magazine gives its readers the power to decide with its informative articles and in-depth reviews.




The Ecology of Games


Book Description

An exploration of games as systems in which young people participate as gamers, producers, and learners. In the many studies of games and young people's use of them, little has been written about an overall “ecology” of gaming, game design and play—mapping the ways that all the various elements, from coding to social practices to aesthetics, coexist in the game world. This volume looks at games as systems in which young users participate, as gamers, producers, and learners. The Ecology of Games (edited by Rules of Play author Katie Salen) aims to expand upon and add nuance to the debate over the value of games—which so far has been vociferous but overly polemical and surprisingly shallow. Game play is credited with fostering new forms of social organization and new ways of thinking and interacting; the contributors work to situate this within a dynamic media ecology that has the participatory nature of gaming at its core. They look at the ways in which youth are empowered through their participation in the creation, uptake, and revision of games; emergent gaming literacies, including modding, world-building, and learning how to navigate a complex system; and how games act as points of departure for other forms of knowledge, literacy, and social organization. Contributors Ian Bogost, Anna Everett, James Paul Gee, Mizuko Ito, Barry Joseph, Laurie McCarthy, Jane McGonigal, Cory Ondrejka, Amit Pitaru, Tom Satwicz, Kurt Squire, Reed Stevens, S. Craig Watkins




Windows Vista


Book Description

As the official publication for Windows Vista, we cover Microsoft’s latest OS with more depth, passion and clarity than any other magazine on the market. Each issue is packed with tips, tricks and service elements on every page. We give you an insider’s tour of the operating system and illustrate how to get the most out of your PC.




Video Games


Book Description

The evolution of the video game is incredible; from a two-colored screen with paddle and pong to fully immersive alternate playing worlds, it is one technology that seems to be constantly evolving. This volume explains the history of video games, the considerations of their impact on players and society, and how they can be used as educational tools. Readers will learn about the future of video games as well.