Digital literacy scholar Dennis Jerz set his eleven-year-old child in front of Colosal Cave Adventure and — using a piece of software like Screenflow — captured both the unfolding of the game on-screen and the young gamer’s interaction with his father as he played. The example is rich because it is so raw (even if it is edited). A great scholarly use of the technology.

Stacey Mason, at HTLit.com, observes

Interesting to note are Peter’s questions to his father, which are all highly influenced by his experience with other software as he tries to draw correlations to the new form. He asks, “If a word isn’t recognized, can I add it to the dictionary?”

It is worth pointing out that the roots of some great scholarship in play and the ludic come from the first impressions of parents as they watch their own kids romp about and learn: Piaget comes to mind, for example; and James Paul Gee has repeatedly suggested that it was his grandson who initially interested him in the power of video games.