[UCI-Calit2] REMINDER: Seminar Tuesday on Children's Learning in Virtual Worlds

[Stuart Ross]

SURF-IT SEMINAR SERIES

 

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Information Technology

 

Tuesday, August 3    Calit2 Building, Room 3008

 

A light lunch will be available at 11:45 AM; the seminar will begin at
12:00.

 

"Literacy and Learning in Virtual Worlds for Children"

 

by Rebecca W. Black

 

In recent years there has been an explosion of virtual worlds intended
for early childhood populations; however, because the majority of
research on games and such worlds has focused on adults and adolescents,
we know very little about these spaces.  This presentation attempts to
address this gap by exploring the affordances that two popular online
environments, Webkinz World and Club Penguin, offer for children's
learning and development.  Analyses suggest that the sites provide
unique opportunities for immersion in literacy-rich contexts and
academically-oriented practices that may enhance those that are readily
available in many children's daily lives.  However, looking beyond the
discrete linguistic and technical aspects of learning in these spaces
reveals a designed culture with limitations on learning and a
constrained set of social messages that warrant further critical
exploration.  These findings also bring to mind questions about the role
that educational and developmental theory should play in the design of
virtual play spaces for young children.  

 

Rebecca Black is an assistant professor in the Department of Education.
Her research is on the literacy and socialization practices of children
and adolescents from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds who are
writing and participating in online, popular culture-inspired
environments.  She is the author of a 2008 book exploring how English
language learning youth represent their cultural and linguistic
identities through fan fiction texts.  

 

The SURF-IT Fellow working with Dr. Black this summer is Ana Maria
Sanchez, a psychology major.

 

--The SURF-IT program is co-sponsored by the Undergraduate Research
Opportunities Office.--

 

 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/uci-calit2/attachments/20100802/919fb54a/attachment.html