Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures

Recent work on children's digital cultures has identified a range of literacies emerging through children's engagement with new media technologies. This edited collection focuses on children's digital cultures, specifically examining the role of play and creativity in learning with these new technologies. The chapters in this book were contributed by an international range of respected researchers, who seek to extend our understandings of children's interactions with new media, both within and outside of school. They address and provide evidence for continuing debates around the following questions: What notions of creativity are useful in our fields? How does an understanding of play inform analysis of children's engagement with digital cultures? How might school practice take account of out-of-school learning in relation to digital cultures? How can we understand children's engagements with digital technologies in commercialized spaces? Offering current research, theoretical debate and empirical studies, this intriguing text will challenge the thinking of scholars and teachers alike as it explores the evolving nature of play within the media landscape of the twenty-first century.

Rebekah Willett is a lecturer at the Institute of Education, University of London, where she teaches on the MA in Culture, Language and Communication. Muriel Robinson is Principal and Professor of Digital Literacies at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln. Jackie Marsh is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield, UK, where she directs the EdD.

1. Introduction: Encountering Play and Creativity in Everyday Life Rebekah Willett and Muriel Robinson Section 1: Contexts of Digital Cultures. Introduction to Section 1 2. Games within Games: Convergence and Critical Literacy Catherine Beavis 3. Achieving a Global Reach on Children's Cultural Markets: Managing the Stakes of Inter-Textuality in Digital Cultures Valérie-Inés de la Ville and Laurent Durup 4. Consumption, Production and Online Identities: Amateur Spoofs on YouTube Rebekah Willett Section 2: Children and Digital Cultures. Introduction to Section 2 5. The Texts of Me and the Texts of Us: Improvisation and Polished Performance in Social Networking Sites Clare Dowdall 6. Exciting Yet Safe: The Appeal of Thick Play and Big Worlds Margaret Mackey 7. Online Connections, Collaborations, Chronicles and Crossings Julia Davies 8. Mimesis and the Spatial Economy of Children's Play across Digital Divides: What Consequences for Creativity and Agency? Beth Cross Section 3: Play, Creativity and Digital Learning. Introduction to Section 3 9. Creativity: Exploring the Rhetorics and the Realities Shakuntala Banaji 10. What Education Has to Teach Us about Games and Game Play Caroline Pelletier 11. Digital Cultures, Play, Creativity: Trapped Underground.jpg Victoria Carrington 12. Productive Pedagogies: Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures in the Classroom Jackie Marsh 13. Conclusion Muriel Robinson and Rebekah Willett