Today, virtual worlds abound, avatars are every day occurrences, and video games are yesterday's news. But today's games are not just a pastime for millions - they are also a technological focal point for new forms of learning.

James Paul Gee and Elisabeth Hayes are leading researchers in the field of gaming, and here they argue that women gamers--a group too often marginalized--are at the forefront of today's online learning world. By utilizing the tools of gaming in ways never before imagined - actively engaging in game design, writing fan fiction, and organizing themselves into collaborative learning communities - women of all ages acquire the tools to successfully navigate the complex social, cultural, and economic problems of the 21st century.

Women are leading the way to a new understanding of online learning techniques, from cultural production to learning communities to technical proficiency in the latest software. This book draws on case studies about women who "play" the "Sims," the best selling game in history, to argue for a new general theory of learning for the 21st Century.

The authors argue that women gamers, too often ignored as gamers, are in many respects leading the way in this trend towards design, cultural production, new learning communities, and the combination of technical proficiency with emotional and social intelligence.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT104323Dated at end: January 1765. London, 1765] 40p.; 8