If you know of an excellent book, paper, or other media that says something significant about educational gaming, let us know about it in this thread. Similarly, if you happen to know of a website, wiki or journal that publishes academic findings on games in education, this is the place to share it with everyone. I’ll take the time to collate your suggestions and add them to the list of resources in the wiki. Perhaps someday we’ll have a system to allow users to rate these resources, but for now we’ll all just have to rely on Amazon for that. =P

To make this list a little more organized than glorified bullet points, I’m hoping we can include a bit of additional information the just book titles with any suggestions that are made.

Include the following information, if possible:
Category:
Title:
URL:
Author(s):
Source:
Topics it covers:
Description:

Unless you request to be made anonymous, your username will be included in the wiki entry so that other users reading it will be able to message you on Gameful to ask about your suggestion if they’re interested. Your email will only be available to them if you make it available in your profile settings, and only Gameful members will be able to contact you.

I should note that Gameful will not publish links to illegally distributed copies of books or other media. Any posts found to be linking to illegally distributed content will be removed. Linking to either freely available media (such as a website, wikipedia entry or freely hosted pdf) or the amazon.com page for a book is encouraged. This description may not apply to every kind of media but use common sense when providing links to your suggestions.

The academic resources wiki can be found here: http://gameful.org/wiki/index.php/Academic_Resources

– Jeff Rose, Educational Games Moderator

Just ordered this from Amazon. Anyone else familiar with Lee Sheldon’s work?

The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game
Lee Sheldon (author)
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (June 9, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1435458443
ISBN-13: 978-1435458444

His web page is at http://www.llc.rpi.edu/pl/people-590/lee-sheldon

I hope it is okay, here is an article of mine It bases on my book, but the book is in german (Live Action Role Playing – Die Entwicklung realer Kompetenzen in virtuellen Welten / The development of real skills in virtual worlds)

“Immersion as a Prerequisite of the Didactical Potential of Role-Playing”
In: International Journal for Roleplaying; Issue 2 (http://www.marinkacopier.nl/ijrp/wp-content/issue2/IJRPissue2-Article3.pdf)

Popular Abstract – The article deals with the relation of immersion and the didactical potential of role- playing. It fathoms the extent to which role-playing games without a didactical goal still have didactical potential, as well as the extent to which this potential is being exploited. Along the lines of the concept of surplus reality, I specifically look into the subject of the role-playing game’s alternative reality and demonstrate that the didactical potential of methodically applied role-playing can only unfold by means of the generation of an isomorphous model of a real subject matter. It can then be shown that recreational live role-playing indeed has an enormous didactical potential, just like the methodically applied kind. This potential unfolds just like in methodically applied role-playing, as live role-playing generates an isomorphous model of our reality.
On the basis of these explanations I conclude with the development of a process-oriented definition of immersion, which allows for an intermediary perspective on the phenomenon of immersion, instead of a purely subjective one.

Hi Jeff,

Of course. It would be great if you could add it to the wiki. Essentially the game provides a framework for a number of more traditional classroom lessons on animals, literacy and art/drama skills. It also tasks children with inventing games themselves. This lesson involves a discussion on rules and the purpose of them to govern games. The children then collectively discuss their favourite games and invent them as ‘missions’ to be performed by users of the website. In effect we have created an online game, created by children for children.

I have a bunch of these, as I am starting a nonprofit dedicated to edu-larp. Here are a few:

Videos
Role-playing as a teaching method (Sanne Harder)

Essays
Henriksen, Thomas Duus (2004): “On the Transmutation of Educational Role-Play.” In Montola & Stenros (2004): Beyond Role and Play, 107-130.

Larsson, Elge (2004): “Participatory Education.” In Montola & Stenros (2004): Beyond Role and Play, 243-247.

Harder, Sanne (2007): “Confessions of a Schoolteacher: Experiences with Roleplaying in Education.” In Donnis, Gade &
Thorup (2007): Lifelike, 228-235.

Book
LARP: Einblicke – Aufsatzsammlung Zum MittelPunkt 2010 – Methoden und Fallbeispiele – Karsten Dombrowski, editor, softcover, Zauberfeder GmbH, Braunchsweig publisher, languages: German, some in English (including my favorite “Four Reasons Why Edu-larp Works” by the assistant principal of Østerskov Efterskole in Denmark), ISBN: 978-3-938922-23-1, printed in Germany, http://zauberfeder-verlag.de/ – covers larp in education

I have more, too, if I can track down their original sources. Most are probably from the Knutepunkt books.

Here is an excellent piece by Charles Munro about why Angry Birds is so successful:
http://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/2011/02/why-angry-birds-is-so-successful-a-cognitive-teardown-of-the-user-experience/

Though it doesn’t explicitly connect to education, by breaking the game down into its psychological constituents, it makes a powerful case for how games might connect up with the machinery underlying learning.

Category: Report
Title: Best Practices For Using Games & Simulations In The Classroom
URL: http://www.siia.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=610&tmpl=component&format=raw&Itemid=59
Author(s): Lee Wilson
Source: SIIA
Description:
Covers best practices for ‘Seling the Idea’, ‘Preparation’ and ‘Implementation’.