New Online Course and Publications
Teaching Digital Literacy: Videogames in Education
The School of Education is delighted to announce a new open online course that explores the links between videogames and education, featuring insights from games designers, academics, players and even folklorists!
Dive into the fascinating world of videogames in education and discover the positive impact games can have on children’s learning. The course will equip you with knowledge and expertise on using videogames to enhance your teaching and promote critical and creative engagement with learning.
Dr Fiona Scott, Lecturer in Digital Literacies and lead academic for the course, said: "Playing videogames is associated with a wide range of benefits for children, and this course offers a unique insight into cutting-edge research on the topic.
“We know that educators, parents and carers and game designers all have urgent questions about the nature of children's play in digital spaces; which games are most positive for children and why; and how to mitigate potential risks. This course will help learners think critically and deeply about these topics, offering timely insights into the importance of digital play for children's learning and broader well-being."
Rebecca Lawthom, Head of School of Education, added: "We are delighted as a School of Education to be ahead of the curve in thinking about how the digital is interacting with the everyday. This course is the third we have developed following the other successes of Play and Makerspaces for creative learning.
“This latest course showcases the innovation and practice which are at the heart of the School of Education, giving a flavour of the richer content of the masters in Digital Literacies, Culture and Education. Learning can happen at any point in life and this course allows anyone to find out more - we hope you find out more.”
To enrol for free, select the join with limited access option. This will grant you access to the course material for four weeks.
After that, you may wish to upgrade to continue having access to the materials and get a free certificate of achievement.
Here is the Full list of publications by staff in the School of Education that were published between May 2021 and June 2022.
We have featured a few of these below:
Plague Theatre is a novel published by the Prague-based Equus Press. It is a work of theory-fiction written in dialogue with the thought of Antonin Artaud
Set in Scarborough on the north coast of England, it narrates the pestilence or perversion which took hold of the town in or around 1720. The book is concerned with the plague that is already present in society before the virus, or bacterium, or rat. It offers an extended meditation on Artaud’s neglected essay ‘Theatre and the Plague’, in which Artaud claims that the pathogenic cause of each plague is secondary, or peripheral before the real calamity which is social. Both plague and theatre achieve, for Artaud, ‘the exteriorisation of a latent undercurrent of cruelty’. It is through cruelty which appears as revelation ‘that all the perversity of which the mind is capable, whether in a person or a nation, becomes localised’. The book is available on Kindle or in paperback direct from Prague.
Burton's Anatomy is an experimental poetic text produced by deleting over half a million words from Robert Burton's 16th century work of humanist erudition, The Anatomy of Melancholy.
It explores the situation of humanist discourse in its end days. The book was published by Schism Neuronics and is available free online and in paperback.
Home Learning Environments for Young Children - Professor Cathy Nutbrown
It was during an online ORIM Network meeting in May 2020, that the book Home Learning Environments for Young Children was conceived.
The book describes a range of work which focuses on parents’ roles in providing Opportunities, showing Recognition, sharing Interactions, and being Models. It includes fifty-five case study examples, generously provided by members of the ORIM network, provides accounts of home visiting individual families, and of organising and evaluating group events in settings and communities to share theory with parents in an accessible way, and offer practical ideas which they might use to enhance their young children’s learning.
There are many accounts of partnership in the book, demonstrating the commitment, collaboration and effectiveness of building on what families do at home to support their young children’s learning. Some examples document work during COVID-19 restrictions, others discuss work before the pandemic took hold. They are all examples of the amazing work that is possible using REAL approaches and building genuine partnerships between Early Years practitioners and families.
We end the book with a Manifesto for Home Learning – Birth to Five which sets out eight actions which we believe are necessary take forward meaningful and effective home learning practices and provision for all families with young children.