ABSTRACT

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.

chapter 1|10 pages

Introduction

Encountering Play and Creativity in Everyday Life

part I|57 pages

Contexts of Digital Cultures

chapter 2|21 pages

Games Within Games

Convergence and Critical Literacy

chapter 3|18 pages

Achieving a Global Reach on Children's Cultural Markets

Managing the Stakes of Inter-Textuality in Digital Cultures

chapter 4|14 pages

Consumption, Production and Online Identities

Amateur Spoofs on YouTube

part II|74 pages

Children and Digital Cultures

chapter 5|19 pages

The Texts of Me and the Texts of Us

Improvisation and Polished Performance in Social Networking Sites

chapter 6|16 pages

Exciting Yet Safe

The Appeal of Thick Play and Big Worlds

chapter 8|18 pages

Mimesis and the Spatial Economy of Children's Play Across Digital Divides

What Consequences for Creativity and Agency?

part III|85 pages

Play, Creativity and Digital Learning

chapter 9|19 pages

Creativity

Exploring the Rhetorics and the Realities

chapter 11|17 pages

Digital Cultures, Play, Creativity

Trapped Underground.jpg

chapter 12|19 pages

Productive Pedagogies

Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures in the Classroom

chapter 13|9 pages

Conclusion