# PLAYING

This book develops a theoretical concept of teaching that is relevant to early childhood education, and based on children's learning and development through play. It discusses theoretical premises and research on playing and learning, and proposes the development of play-responsive didaktik. It examines the processes and products of learning a...

Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North breaks new ground by exploring the concept of lifestyle from a distinctly anthropological perspective. Showcasing the collective work of ten experienced scholars in the field, the book goes beyond concepts of tradition that have often been the focus of previous research, to explain how political, economic ...

For MonoGame developers looking to build their own role-playing game, this ebook is an essential guide. Authors Jim Perry and Charles Humphrey break down design complexities into smaller topics that are easy to think through to help you produce a working game. Learn how to animate sprites, construct conversation trees, build multilevel maps, manage...

This book offers an original interdisciplinary overview of the role of haptic feedback in musical interaction. Divided into two parts, part I examines the tactile aspects of music performance and perception, discussing how they affect user experience and performance in terms of usability, functionality and perceived quality of musical instruments. ...

This book presents a picture of the current energy challenges on the African continent (and the Sub-Saharan region in particular) and proposes pathways to an accelerated energy transition. Starting with an analysis of the status quo and the outlook for Africa's energy demand and energy access, it provides an account of the available resources,...

This book brings out the state of the art on how informatics-based tools are used and expected to be used in nanomaterials research. There has been great progress in the area in which "big-data" generated by experiments or computations are fully utilized to accelerate discovery of new materials, key factors, and design rules. Data-intensi...

This book bridges the gap between playing with robots in school and studying robotics at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels to prepare for careers in industry and research. Robotic algorithms are presented formally, but using only mathematics known by high-school and first-year college students, such as calculus, matrices and probability. ...

The second volume in the SIRCA book series investigates the impact of information society initiatives by extending the boundaries of academic research into the realm of practice. Global in scope, it includes contributions and research projects from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The international scholarly community has taken a variety of approach...

Actors and the Art of Performance: Under Exposure combines the author's two main biographical paths: her professional commitment to the fields of both theatre and philosophy. The art of acting on stage is analysed here not only from the theoretical perspective of a spectator, but also from the perspective of the actor. The author draws on her ...

Consumers prefer fast, no-nonsense web experiences, yet reports show that the top 2,000 retail websites have grown increasingly bigger and slower over the past three years. In this O'Reilly report, content strategist Terrence Dorsey examines why web pages have become so fat, and offers guidelines to help your company reverse the trend. Bigg...

This free book explores questions such as why and how did the first biological cells appear? And then complex organisms, brains, societies and –now– connected human societies? Physicists have good models for describing the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang, but can we apply the same concepts to the evolution of aggregated matter –l...

This book is about digital games, the people who play digital games, and how they play them. This poses a large problem: even when discussing one game, each instance of play is different. Combine this with the thousands of digital games, and the millions of players, and it is apparent that the number of individual instances of game play is unfathom...

Introduction to Financial Accounting: U.S. GAAP, was intended for a first course in introductory financial accounting. It focuses on core introductory financial accounting topics that match pre-requisite requirements for students advancing to intermediate financial accounting. A corporate approach is utilized versus beginning with a sole proprietor...

Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple acc...

Akka.NET is an open-source actor model framework written exclusively for Microsoft.NET in C# and compatible with .NET Core. It simplifies the building of scalable, concurrent, high-throughput, and low-latency systems, making life for software developers a bit easier. Zoran Maksimovic's Akka.NET Succinctly will show readers what an actor model ...

If you love being involved in theatre and you're also searching for opportunities to make a positive difference in your community, this workbook was written for you. You may think that theatre and all the other things you are passionate about represent different directions in your life, but they don't have to be separate. They can converg...

This book is a compilation of all the general advice that a chess player needs to know. It's an excellent introduction to the wisdom of the game for novice players and a great refresher course for more experienced ones. It's recommended that this work be read monthly until all the information within it is instantly recallable....

Join us in the quest for building games for Firefox OS, the new mobile operating system by Mozilla. Empowered by this books practical approach you will learn thru examples how to develop a full game from the beginning all the way to the distribution in the Firefox Markeplace....

Games are increasingly becoming the focus for research due to their cultural and economic impact on modern society. However, there are many different types of approaches and methods than can be applied to understanding games or those that play games. This book provides an introduction to various game research methods that are useful to students in ...

Chronicles from Kashmir explores this question through a site-adaptive 24-hour theatrical performance. Developed between 2013 and 2018 by the Ensemble Kashmir Theatre Akademi and Nandita Dinesh, the play uses a durational, promenade format to immerse its audience within a multitude of perspectives on life in Kashmir. From a wedding celebration that...

Doggy wants to play, but Baby is scared....

Why do we play games and why do we play them on computers? The contributors of Games and Rules take a closer look at the core of each game and the motivational system that is the game mechanics. Games are control circuits that organize the game world with their (joint) players and establish motivations in a dedicated space, a "Magic Circle,&qu...

Yapo loves to play soccer! But he does not like to pass the ball to his teammates. How will Yapo discover that winning is not only about scoring?...

This open book highlights the major outcomes of the fourth edition of the Future of Higher Education - Bologna Process Researchers Conference (January 2020), which has already established itself as a landmark in the European higher education environment. The conference provides a unique forum for dialogue between researchers, experts and policy mak...

This stunning 224-page hardback book not only tells the stories of some of the seminal video games of the 1970s and 1980s, but shows you how to create your own games inspired by them using Python and Pygame Zero, following examples programmed by Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton. In the first of two volumes, we remake five classic video games - ra...

The diversity of musical expressions throughout the world is vast. Music can be found in every corner of the globe in a variety of different contexts. This open book provides just a small sampling of some of the various musical styles and traditions that might be found, though the skills developed in this course can be applied to any type of mus...

In Paris in the Dark Eric Smoodin takes readers on a journey through the streets, cinemas, and theaters of Paris to sketch a comprehensive picture of French film culture during the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing on a wealth of journalistic sources, Smoodin recounts the ways films moved through the city, the favored stars, and what it was like to go to th...

Cover songs are a familiar feature of contemporary popular music. Musicians describe their own performances as covers, and audiences use the category to organize their listening and appreciation. However, until now philosophers have not had much to say about them. In A Philosophy of Cover Songs, P.D. Magnus demonstrates that philosophy provides a v...

This book is designed to accompany a graduate-level instructional design course: Game-Based and Adaptive Learning, but could also be used for undergraduate teacher education or instructional design courses. The original texts and material for this book came from the development of a course for Brandeis University as part of their MS in Learner E...

Power up your TV and music system with Raspberry Pi: build the ultimate media centre, smart music system, and create a home server. - Inside Build a Raspberry Pi Media Player. - Create the ultimate media centre. Gather your parts and build your Raspberry Pi media player. - Install media player software. How to use RetroPie software for playing...