Connected Play


Book Description

How kids play in virtual worlds, how it matters for their offline lives, and what this means for designing educational opportunities.




Connected


Book Description

Celebrated scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler explain the amazing power of social networks and our profound influence on one another's lives. Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Dr. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. In Connected, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.







Innovating Play


Book Description

Tech integration for early childhood education as thoughtful as it is wholehearted Technology isn't just a way to innovate instruction; it's also the key to building classrooms that are dynamic, playful, and truly connected. In Innovating Play, early childhood educators Jessica LaBar-Twomey and Christine Pinto share the insights that led their kindergarten classes to generative, daily collaborations from opposite ends of the United States. In the process, they offer elementary educators a powerful set of digital tools that transform social-emotional learning. LaBar-Twomey and Pinto guide readers through the process of leveraging classroom technology in order to foster empathy and broaden horizons. With a warm, inviting style, and drawing from the rich examples of their own classrooms, Jessica and Christine offer a treasure trove of actionable, impactful tips that will help you seamlessly connect your students with the world around them. "Christine and Jessica have created an incredibly insightful, realistic, robust guide to innovating early childhood education based on their own classroom instruction. Their masterfully crafted pedagogy weaves together authentic learning, design thinking, and tech integration all through the play and discovery learning so crucial for our youngest learners. Innovating Play is guaranteed to inspire, guide, and support meaningful technology integration for authentic learning experiences." -Lisa Highfill, technology integration specialist, co-author and creator ofThe HyperDoc Handbook and Teachers Give Teachers "This book will provide coaches the resources and detailed examples to support teachers in implementation. The examples drive digital literacy for all and never deviate from core curriculum practices. Jessica and Christine have showcased a multitude of ways in which equity and inclusion have been intentionally embedded through their cycle of learning." -Nyree Clark, curriculum program specialist, technology, TK-6 "Innovating Play is a fun, easy-to-read how-to resource for early childhood educators that blends core curriculum and purposeful tech beautifully. Christine and Jessica not only model their design to teach twenty-first-century skills to our littles, they will inspire you to reimagine and innovate play in your own class!" -Erika Sanchez, MEd, kindergarten teacher




Families at Play


Book Description

How family video game play promotes intergenerational communication, connection, and learning. Video games have a bad reputation in the mainstream media. They are blamed for encouraging social isolation, promoting violence, and creating tensions between parents and children. In this book, Sinem Siyahhan and Elisabeth Gee offer another view. They show that video games can be a tool for connection, not isolation, creating opportunities for families to communicate and learn together. Like smartphones, Skype, and social media, games help families stay connected. Siyahhan and Gee offer examples: One family treats video game playing as a regular and valued activity, and bonds over Halo. A father tries to pass on his enthusiasm for Star Wars by playing Lego Star Wars with his young son. Families express their feelings and share their experiences and understanding of the world through playing video games like The Sims, Civilization, and Minecraft. Some video games are designed specifically to support family conversations around such real-world issues and sensitive topics as bullying and peer pressure. Siyahhan and Gee draw on a decade of research to look at how learning and teaching take place when families play video games together. With video games, they argue, the parents are not necessarily the teachers and experts; all family members can be both teachers and learners. They suggest video games can help families form, develop, and sustain their learning culture as well as develop skills that are valued in the twenty-first century workplace. Educators and game designers should take note.




Making Play Just Right: Unleashing the Power of Play in Occupational Therapy


Book Description

At the heart of Making Play Just Right: Unleashing the Power of Play in Occupational Therapy is the belief that the most effective way to ensure pediatric occupational therapy is through incorporating play. The Second Edition is a unique resource on pediatric activity and therapy analysis for occupational therapists and students. This text provides the background, history, evidence, and general knowledge needed to use a playful approach to pediatric occupational therapy, as well as the specific examples and recommendations needed to help therapists adopt these strategies.




Connected Gaming


Book Description

How making and sharing video games offer educational benefits for coding, collaboration, and creativity. 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.” 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.




Connected Golf


Book Description

Connected Golf offers a different approach: one that is simple, proven and trusted by hundreds of players who've been frustrated at their inability to improve, despite all the latest innovations and technology. Return to the origins of the Eastern practices, bring mind and body into a seamless whole and develop fundamental movement skills.




Connected Play


Book Description




Routledge Handbook of University-Community Partnerships in Planning Education


Book Description

This handbook explores two guiding questions – how can university-community partnerships in planning education work, and how can they be transformative? University-community partnerships – often referred to as service-learning or community-engaged teaching and learning – are traditionally based on a collaborative relationship between an academic partner and a community-based partner, in which students from the academic partner work within the community on a project. Transformational approaches to university-community partnerships are approaches that develop and sustain mutually beneficial collaborations where knowledge is co-created and new ways of knowing and doing are discovered. This edited volume examines a variety of university-community partnerships in planning education, from a number of different perspectives, with a focus on transformative models. The authors explore broader theoretical issues, including topics relating to pedagogy, planning theory, and curriculum; along with more practical topics relating to best practices, logistics, institutional support, outcome measures, and the various forms these partnerships can take – all through an array of case studies. The authors, which include academics, professional practitioners, academic practitioners, and students, bring an incredible depth and breadth of knowledge and experience from across the globe – Australia, Canada, Chile, Europe (including Germany, Spain, Slovakia, and Sweden), India, Jamaica, South Korea, and the United States.