Kurt Squire's Books

Making Games for Impact

By: Kurt Squire

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Designing games for learning: case studies show how to incorporate impact goals, build a team, and work with experts to create an effective game. Digital games for learning are now commonplace, used in settings that range from K–12 education to advanced medical training. In this book, Kurt Squire examines the ways that games make an impact on learning, investigating how designers and developers incorporate authentic social impact goals, build a team, and work with experts in order to make games that are effective and marketable. Because there is no one design process for making games for impact—specific processes arise in response to local needs and conditions—Squire presents a series of case studies that range from a small, playable game created by a few programmers and an artist to a multimillion-dollar project with funders, outside experts, and external constraints. These cases, drawn from the Games + Learning + Society Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, show designers tackling such key issues as choosing platforms, using data analytics to guide development, and designing for new markets. Although not a how-to guide, the book offers developers, researchers, and students real-world lessons in greenlighting a project, scaling up design teams, game-based assessment, and more. The final chapter examines the commercial development of an impact game in detail, describing the creation of an astronomy game, At Play in the Cosmos, that ships with an introductory college textbook.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

253

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

026236249X

ISBN 13

9780262362498

The New Humanities Reader

By: Richard Earl Miller,Kurt Spellmeyer

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The New Humanities Reader

By: Richard Earl Miller,Kurt Spellmeyer

The New Humanities Reader presents 32 challenging and important essays from diverse fields that address current global issues. The authors contend that there is a crisis within the humanities today due to specialization within narrow fields of scholarship, resulting in a higher education system that produces students who lack the general cross-disciplinary knowledge needed to better understand today's complex world. The selections encourage students to synthesize and think critically about ideas and research formerly kept apart. This approach challenges readers to resist mimetic thinking and instead creatively connect ideas to help them understand and retain what they read. Through this process of reading, discussing, and writing, students develop the analytical skills necessary to become informed citizens. Focused on today's issues, the selections represent both well-known nonfiction authors and newly published writers and are drawn from such periodicals as The New Yorker and Natural History and from best-selling books including Reading Lolita in Tehran, Fast Food Nation, and Into the Wild. Students will be engaged by reading and rereading, analyzing and working with these selections not simply because they are models of good writing, but because they are also deeply thought-provoking pieces that invite readers to respond.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

738

Publisher

Cengage Learning

Published Date

ISBN 10

0618568220

ISBN 13

9780618568222

Heyday

A Novel

By: Kurt Andersen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Heyday

A Novel

By: Kurt Andersen

Heyday is a brilliantly imagined, wildly entertaining tale of America’s boisterous coming of age–a sweeping panorama of madcap rebellion and overnight fortunes, palaces and brothels, murder and revenge–as well as the story of a handful of unforgettable characters discovering the nature of freedom, loyalty, friendship, and true love. In the middle of the nineteenth century, modern life is being born: the mind-boggling marvels of photography, the telegraph, and railroads; a flood of show business spectacles and newspapers; rampant sex and drugs and drink (and moral crusades against all three); Wall Street awash with money; and giddy utopian visions everywhere. Then, during a single amazing month at the beginning of 1848, history lurches: America wins its war of manifest destiny against Mexico, gold is discovered in northern California, and revolutions sweep across Europe–sending one eager English gentleman off on an epic transatlantic adventure. . . . Amid the tumult, aristocratic Benjamin Knowles impulsively abandons the Old World to reinvent himself in New York, where he finds himself embraced by three restless young Americans: Timothy Skaggs, muckraking journalist, daguerreotypist, pleasure-seeker, stargazer; the fireman Duff Lucking, a sweet but dangerously damaged veteran of the Mexican War; and Duff’s dazzling sister Polly Lucking, a strong-minded, free thinking actress (and discreet part-time prostitute) with whom Ben falls hopelessly in love. Beckoned by the frontier, new beginnings, and the prospects of the California Gold Rush, all four set out on a transcontinental race west–relentlessly tracked, unbeknownst to them, by a cold-blooded killer bent on revenge. A fresh, impeccable portrait of an era startlingly reminiscent of our own times, Heyday is by turns tragic and funny and sublime, filled with bona fide heroes and lost souls, visionaries (Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin, Alexis de Tocqueville) and monsters, expanding horizons and narrow escapes. It is also an affecting story of four people passionately chasing their American dreams at a time when America herself was still being dreamed up–an enthralling, old-fashioned yarn interwoven with a bracingly modern novel of ideas. "In this utterly engaging novel, the author of Turn of the Century brings 19th-century America vividly to life . . . While this is a long book, it moves quickly, with historical detail that's involving but never a drag on the action; the characters are beautifully drawn. A terrific book; highly recommended." –Library Journal "Heyday is fuled by manic energy, fanatical research, and a wicked sense of humor.... It's a joyful, wild gallop through a joyful, wild time to be an American." -Vanity Fair

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

644

Publisher

Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812978463

ISBN 13

9780812978469

Book's by Kurt Squire

Making Games for Impact

Making Games for Impact

The New Humanities Reader

The New Humanities Reader

Heyday

Heyday

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email