Author: Darko Suvin File Type: pdf

Author: Yasmin B. Kafai File Type: pdf Over the last decade, video games designed to teach academic content have multiplied. Students can learn about Newtonian physics from a game or prep for entry into the army. An emphasis on the instructionist approach to gaming, however, has overshadowed the constructionist approach, in which students learn by designing their own games themselves. In this book, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke discuss the educational benefits of constructionist gaming -- coding, collaboration, and creativity -- and the move from computational thinking toward computational participation. Kafai and Burke point to recent developments that support a shift to game making from game playing, including the game industrys acceptance, and even promotion, of modding and the growth of a DIY culture. Kafai and Burke show that student-designed games teach not only such technical skills as programming but also academic subjects. Making games also teaches collaboration, as students frequently work in teams to produce content and then share their games with in class or with others online. Yet Kafai and Burke dont advocate abandoning instructionist for constructionist approaches. Rather, they argue for a more comprehensive, inclusive idea of connected gaming in which both making and gaming play a part. **

Author: Kate van Orden File Type: pdf What does it mean to author a piece of music? What transforms the performance scripts written down by musicians into authored books? In this fascinating cultural history of Western musics adaptation to print, Kate van Orden looks at how musical authorship first developed through the medium of printing. When music printing began in the sixteenth century, publication did not always involve the composer printers used the names of famous composers to market books that might include little or none of their music. Publishing sacred music could be career-building for a composer, while some types of popular song proved too light to support a reputation in print, no matter how quickly they sold. Van Orden addresses the complexities that arose for music and musicians in the burgeoning cultures of print, concluding that authoring books of polyphony gained only uneven cultural traction across a century in which composers were still first and foremost performers.**

Author: Simon F. Oliai File Type: epub Our contemporary world presents a seemingly inexplicable paradox. It is a world where interaction among societies of different cultural traditions has never been easier. A world in which modern technology has visibly overcome the physical barriers that had long condemned the majority of men to relative isolation from one another. Yet, our world is also one in which the illusion of a lost original cultural or religious identity, grounded by a metaphysical absolute, pits men against one another. A physically more accessible world has thus become an increasingly fundamentalist one. In this book, written in the wake of such influential European thinkers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and Vattimo, Simon Oliai analyzes the conceptual underpinnings of this paradox and argues that, unless the European affirmation of mans finite existence becomes universal, we shall never rid ourselves, to echo Nietzsche, of the repressive shadow of a long dead metaphysical idol.**ReviewI am strongly convinced that the crucial analysis of the metaphysical underpinnings of all manner of contemporary fundamentalism by Simon Oliai shall have not only contributed to elaborating a more precise definition of the current role of Western philosophy, but, more significantly, shed light on the universal function of all critical thought in our world. (Gianni Vattimo, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Turin) Ever since its first efforts at integration were undertaken, Europe has constituted, historically that is, a space for reconciliation. Moreover, Europe has been founded on values among which tolerance and acceptance of differences occupy a privileged position. Simon Oliai is thus right in underscoring this line of thought whilst insisting on the need for its constant application. (Michel Rocard, former prime minister of France and senior member of the European Parliament) Very few people have such a profound and intellectual appreciation of the cultural history and significance of Europe and Persia whilst also having lived in and experienced North America. (Lord David Owen, CH, former British foreign secretary and EU envoy to Yugoslavia) About the Author Simon F. Oliai is a former UNESCO adviser on the worldwide promotion of the humanities, as well as a philosopher of history who has studied and lectured in the United States, France, and Iran. He has organized several noted international seminars in Europe and the Middle East and is the editor of the landmark international anniversary dossier on the Martin Heidegger, which was published by the French review Portique in 2006.