Connected Learning: Gaming and Writing

I was doing some searching for something else entirely when I came across this piece by Mimi Ito about the connections between gaming and writing. Ito shares a case study profile of a girl whose interests in Minecraft expanded her sense of self as a writer.

Read From Writing to Gaming to Writing

I appreciate this section, where Ito talks about how the student followed her interest in gaming by writing scripts that take place in Minecraft, and how the teacher was open enough to understand that the students was following a passion.

Tal got the idea to write scripts for her and her friends to film as animated plays in the game from a post on a Minecraft online forum. She got support for doing so from her social studies teacher, who had noticed Tal’s interest in creative writing. While the teacher wasn’t a Minecraft player herself, she did recognize that the game created a socially rich and creatively driven context for nurturing Tal’s writing interests.  — from Writing to Gaming to Writing by Mimi Ito

I’ve written quite a bit here about how to connect writing to game design, and still find it a powerful connector point. This chart comes from my Game Design Unit in the writing classroom.

There are more interesting articles profiling students and teachers under the umbrella of Connected Learning, if you are interested.

Peace (game it for success!), Kevin