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Public historians have recently directed significant attention toward video games as a media form for engaging diverse audiences with participatory historical representations and arguments. Yet despite the availability of easy-to-use game creation tools, historians have been slow to adopt game development. I developed a video game, Ab Uno Sanguine, based on my PhD research to assess the practicality of game design as a venue for public history practice. This article reflects on my experiences in historical game development along the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) process of game production. This paper connects game studies, historical game studies, and digital public history scholarship to demonstrate how historians can become historian-developers to disseminate their research without a large budget or a professional game design team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital literacy games can be beneficial for children with reading difficulties as a supplement to classroom instruction and an important feature of these games are the instructional supports, such as feedback. To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge. However, there is limited research around the relationship between prior knowledge, instruction and feedback in the context of learning games. This paper presents an empirical study exploring the influence of prior knowledge on response to feedback, in two conditions: with or without instruction. Thirty‐six primary children (age 8–11) with reading difficulties participated: each child was assessed for their prior knowledge of two suffix types—noun and adjective suffixes. They subsequently received additional instruction for one suffix type and then played two rounds of a literacy game—one round for each suffix type. Our analysis shows that prior knowledge predicted initial success rates and performance after a verbal hint differently, depending on whether instruction was provided. These results are discussed with regards to learning game feedback design and the impact on different types of knowledge involved in gameplay, as well as other game design elements that might support knowledge building during gameplay. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topicInstructional supports, such as elaborative feedback, are a key feature of learning games.To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge.Prior knowledge is an important moderator to consider in the context of elaborative feedback.What this paper addsProviding additional instruction (eg, pre‐training) may act as a knowledge enhancer building on children's existing disciplinary expertise, whereas the inclusion of elaborative feedback (eg, a hint) could be seen as a knowledge equaliser enabling children regardless of their prior knowledge to use the pre‐training within their gameplay.Highlights the importance of children's preferred learning strategies within the design of pre‐training and feedback to ensure children are able to use the instructional support provided within the game.Possible implications for pre‐training and feedback design within literacy games, as well as highlighting areas for further research.Implications for practice and/or policyPre‐training for literacy games should highlight key features of the learning content and explicitly make connections with the target learning objective as well as elaborative feedback.Pre‐training should be combined with different types of in‐game feedback for different types of learners (eg, level of prior knowledge) or depending on the type of knowledge that designers want to build (eg, metalinguistic vs. epilinguistic).Modality, content and timing of the feedback should be considered carefully to match the specific needs of the intended target audience and the interaction between them given the primary goal of the game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The article is devoted to the problem of involving children of preschool and primary school age in the sphere of media education. How does the consumption of media content affect the formation of a reading culture and the related interest of 7-12 year old children in knowledge? This aspect, in our opinion, requires careful study and reflection. In the existing studies of media preferences of the new audience, as a rule, the focus is on the age segment from 12 to 20 years and older. The peculiarities of content consumption by younger children remain practically unexplored, while practice shows that “immersion” in the media environment and contact with gadgets in a child begins much earlier – even at an unconscious age, that is, from one and a half years. Particular attention in this article is paid to such a resource of media education as children's magazines that offer new, entertaining, popular science content and a special digital reading model. This article presents the results of a study whose purpose was to determine the key characteristics of the functioning of popular science magazines for children in the digital environment, taking into account the changed practices of media education and media consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various topics within the issue, including dementia, the agency and activism of people with disabilities, and the support needed by mothers with disabled children in South India.

Background: Approaches to teacher professional development, such as learning designs (LDs), can facilitate primary school teachers' appropriation of literacy technology in the classroom. LDs are detailed learning activities and interventions designed by teachers to plan their use of technology. Methods: Using a creative design methodology to carry out a series of LD workshops with teachers, we aimed to understand how primary school teachers envision learning and teaching with two distinct technologies designed to support children's reading skills: a game and an e‐reader. Employing systematic qualitative content analysis, we compared LDs developed by teachers for each technology. Results: Our study shows that while principles of teacher instruction are consistently incorporated across the LDs, the design of each technology plays an important role in how teachers plan their students' learning and focal reading skills. Further, teachers' perception of the technology is as important as the features of the design. Compared with the e‐reader, the game is perceived as an individual practice activity with less opportunities to learn with peers. Finally, across both technologies, teachers envision supporting additional literacy skills, beyond those designed in the technology, highlighting the importance of explicitly facilitating LDs intended to foster within‐subject learning. Conclusions: These findings raise a new set of considerations on how to support teachers to design literacy learning and teaching activities with technology, and also offer a new methodological approach to facilitate LDs in future research and teacher training. Highlights: What is already known about this topicProfessional development supports teachers to appropriate literacy technologies in the classroom.The learning design approach has been shown to facilitate professional development by placing teachers in the role of the designer.The learning design approach can support and complement existing pedagogical approaches in the classroom, as well as to foster socio‐constructivist learning. What this paper addsIn the context of literacy, teachers rely on the learning aims of the technology and its pedagogical approach to determine how and what their students will learn.Teachers embed learning with peers when the technology aligns with existing social practice in the classroom.Teachers reappropriate literacy technology designed to support reading skills to extend into other literacy skills, such as writing and oral language. Implications for theory, policy or practiceThe paper offers a learning design methodology to support teachers in creating activities that integrate literacy technologies in the classroom.The methodology includes strategies that support teachers to embed learning with peers alongside reflecting a broad coverage of literacy learning objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital games for primary education are often designed to foster children’s learning through motivated practice with core subjects, such as literacy and math. Over the years, and accelerated by the pandemic, these games have become an embedded part of the primary school classroom. Many of them rely on AI and thus automation to adapt children’s learning game tasks and personalize the learning to the child’s learning needs. While removing the requirement for the teacher to plan what students do with the technology, children’s engagement with digital learning tasks, and the digital reports generated as a result have also been proposed to be a critical way to help teachers deliver targeted and time-efficient teaching interventions to those who need them the most ,. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating voice in research that involves children with disabilities is highly challenging. Very few studies have problematised voice for the purposes of designing new technologies for and with children who have disabilities. We embarked on qualitative fieldwork with children who have severe speech and physical impairments with the view to motivate designers to consider new child-centred perspectives for conceptualising new communication technologies. In this article, we use reflexivity as a tool to critically examine how empowering our methodological decisions were for children with disabilities, in advancing child-centred accounts of their communication experiences. We propose four considerations that can be useful for researchers and practitioners when undertaking participatory work involving children with disabilities. These are: 1.Theoretical lenses guiding data collection, analysis and interpretation; 2. Developing credible accounts through strong and prominent ideas; 3. Children's ways of participating evidencing their voices, and; 4. Methods hindering the promotion of child centred accounts. Children with severe speech and physical impairments are rarely involved in designing new technologies for supporting communication. It can be challenging to study what children with severe speech and physical impairments express as important about their communication. This article examines the ways in which researchers made decisions about how they worked with children. We studied communication by focusing on the child during their interactions. Our goal was to understand what children expressed as important for communication. We found that researcher beliefs, the use of different methods, and observing children's ways of participating all influenced the findings. The findings identify that it is important for researchers to be clear to others about the perspectives and different data sources that influence their decisions. Some data collection methods, such as taking photos, can be less empowering for children as they can focus on how the researcher sees the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, video footage of Franchón Crews-Dezurn's weave being forcibly removed from her head during a championship boxing match went viral on social media. A month later Deontay Wilder became an internet meme on account of the excuse he gave (the weight of his ring walk costume) for his first professional loss. In response to the incidents, Crews-Dezurn reclaimed ownership of the viral moment, patenting the hashtag associated with the clip and building a merchandising and branding campaign focused on challenging gendered narratives about Black female bodies and hair. A month after his incident, Wilder collaborated with AFROPOLiTAiN magazine in a photoshoot depicting him as an African king. We apply a reading of social avatars and futurism to these case studies. We argue perceptions of social avatars, as they pertain to both boxers, queer the hegemonic readings of their gendered and racial bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how primary aged children with reading difficulties attend to, understand and act upon different types of feedback within a digital literacy game. A systematic and structured video analysis of twenty‐six children's game play was carried out focussing on moments where children made an error and were followed by in‐game feedback. Our findings show that children benefited from outcome feedback, which supported an accurate interpretation of their game performance and prompted children to try again. In contrast, though the elaborative feedback attracted similar levels of attention, children struggled to understand the content, resulting in a reliance on implicit knowledge to correct their next response. Alongside identifying a set of new questions for future research, the study contributes a number of intrinsic and extrinsic recommendations for ensuring children with reading difficulties attend to and comprehend games‐based feedback. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic? Outcome and elaborative feedback provided in games can scaffold the learner to recognise errors and apply corrective strategies.Elaborative feedback, in particular, has been evidenced to support the learner's understanding and lead to learning gains, albeit with older populations.What this paper adds? An empirical evaluation of how young children who struggle with reading attend to, understand, and respond to feedback in a digital literacy game.Demonstrates that children attend to the outcome and elaborative feedback to equal degrees, but struggle to understand and apply elaborative feedback due to its metalinguistic complexity.Implications for practice and/or policy? Games that embed outcome feedback visually in the target response can enhance the child's attention to, and understanding of, their performance.Games that offer verbal elaborative feedback require additional instruction to maintain children's focus on the feedback and to support content understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ways in which sci‐fi films help consumers understand the tradeoffs between personal privacy concerns and other societal concerns that arise due to new technologies. Drawing upon media priming theory, the authors present a conceptual framework and accompanying research questions that suggest how priming from a futuristic movie influences consumers sentiment toward technology and privacy, from its release date and throughout its availability on movie streaming services. Through a series of studies, including qualitative analysis and text‐based sentiment analysis of reviews in the IMBD database, the authors provide evidence to support this theoretical conceptualization. The findings demonstrate that online reviews are useful as a data source to gauge emotional intensity and text analysis of science fiction film reviews provides a useful methodology for understanding consumer perceptions about the future. Science fiction movies may help consumers frame privacy‐technology tradeoffs and take action to protect their privacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of learning games within the classroom is becoming increasingly common because of their potential to positively impact learning. Recent developments in adaptivity offer further possibilities to personalise learning by tailoring the game to an individual child's level or particular learning needs. However, designing an adaptive learning game is a complex process as many different game components have an impact on the provision of optimal challenge, crucial for maintaining player engagement, with limited prior work considering the multifaceted nature of this concept. This paper explores how to design for "challenge" within large‐scale adaptive learning games through a case study focused on the design of a literacy game for three linguistically and cognitively diverse learner groups—novice readers, children with dyslexia and children learning English as a foreign language. In reflecting on our design process, we identify three key design tensions that arose: (a) supporting longer‐term learning goals through game replayability; (b) fostering either replication or innovation in pedagogy through adaptivity rules; and (c) addressing diversity between learner groups. We present a set of design recommendations to guide researchers and designers in taking a multidimensional view of challenge when designing large‐scale adaptive learning games. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic? Adaptive learning games can have a positive impact on children's learning outcomes.Ensuring optimal challenge within games is important for maintaining engagement.Designing adaptive learning games is a complex process.What this paper adds? Designing for optimal challenge within adaptive learning game should be considered as a multifaceted concept.Identification of key tensions related to optimising challenge that can emerge during the design of large‐scale adaptive learning games.Recommendations for adaptivity researchers and learning game designers for how to address these tensions in adaptive learning game design.Implications for practice and/or policy? We need a more systematic approach to adaptivity game design to ensure wider spread adoption.Learning game designers seeking to utilise adaptive components in designing for optimal challenge should consider a focus on learners who may require a more targeted approach.Adaptive learning games offer opportunities for pedagogical innovation in the classroom through exploiting innovative game features as well as large‐scale data collection to support adaptive learning over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media companies face an ongoing struggle in how to manage user-generated content that is racist, sexist, or otherwise hateful. This Article provides an analysis of online games and social media platforms as fora for user communication and the similarities in how they have developed. The authors conclude that social media companies can learn from the experiences of online gaming groups in how to involve their users in their own speech regulation. Such shared responsibility has the potential to empower both media organizations and their consumers toward common goals of increased enjoyment and stronger community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through two studies, this research examined consumer responses to empowerment hashtags in social media–based fashion advertising. The findings of Study 1 indicated that consumers showed more favorable attitudes toward empowerment-campaign hashtags than brand-name hashtags, and that the perceived information value of hashtags meditated the relationship between hashtag type and attitudes toward the hashtags. Furthermore, consumer responses to the two hashtag types varied depending on the sophistication dimension of brand personality. Study 2 extended Study 1 by further examining the effects of empowerment hashtags on consumers' attitudes toward ads and consumer–brand identification. Participants perceived greater information value from empowerment hashtags, showed more favorable attitudes toward the ads with empowerment hashtags, and identified more strongly with advertised brands. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating the potential of video games as an aid to community mapping and participatory architectural design, the author discusses the use of the sandbox game Minecraft by the Block by Block Foundation in collaboration with Mojang Studios, Microsoft, and UN-Habitat for three projects--Model Street (Dandora Phase 2, in Nairobi, Kenya), Mind the Step (Jardim Nakamura, in São Paulo, Brazil) and Former Marketplace (in Pristina, Kosovo). The author offers different perspectives or "lens" from which to view the projects, including as an architect (which he calls a spatial lens) and as a community member (which he dubs a player lens). Favoring agency over participant choices, he claims, the institutional forces at work can prevent true access to space making by either the foundation or the game, each of which suffers from accessibility problems for both players and the communities. He argues for a need to look more closely into the politics of the Block by Block Foundation and Minecraft and seeks to make readers explicitly aware of the systemic mechanisms of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robots exhibiting social behaviors have shown promising effects on children's education. Like many analogue and digital educational devices in the past, robotic technology brings concerns along with opportunities for innovation. This article is an invitation to reflect on the role that robotic technology, especially tutor robots and intelligent playthings, could play for children's learning and development. The complexity of designing for children's learning highlights the necessity to start a trans-disciplinary discussion to shape the future of education and foster a positive societal impact of robots for children's learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the institution of consent within the General Data Protection Regulation intends to facilitate the exercise of personal autonomy, reality paints a different picture. Due to a host of structural and psychological deficits, the process of giving consent is often neither informed nor does it foster self-determination. One key element in addressing this shortcoming is the visualisation of relevant information through icons. This article outlines a risk-based methodology for the selection, design and implementation of such privacy icons. It lays the groundwork for identifying risky data processing aspects as a first step in a larger project of creating a privacy icons set to accompany privacy policies. The ultimate goal of the privacy icons is to assist users in making better informed consent decisions through the visualisation of data processing aspects based on their inherent risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]