Alan Amory
Alan Amory (born in Rustenburg, South Africa) is a professor of educational technologies at the University of Johannesburg, where he promotes and drives the use of educational technologies. He has contributed to numerous fields of research, including information and communication technologies in education, video games and learning, tool-mediated knowledge construction, authentic learning, and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Career. Amory received his doctorate in Plant Biochemistry from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He lectured in the Biology Department of the University of KwaZulu-Natal for 15 years before he was employed as the Director of  the Centre for Information Technology in Higher Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. In 2007 he was acting Chief Director for Education Support Services at the Gauteng Department of Education, Johannesburg, before joining the Faculty of Education at the University of Johannesburg in November that year where, in 2011, he became Head of the Department of Mathematics, Science, Technology and Computer Education. In 2012, Amory was appointed as Director of the Centre for Academic Technologies at the same university. Research. Amory is evaluated by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) as a B-Rated researcher. This  rating is done by national and international peers and reviewers and a B-Rating is defined as Researchers who enjoy considerable international recognition by their peers for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs Amory's research focuses on the use of computer games as educational tools and his papers were some of the first written on this subject. Together with other researchers, Naicker, Vincent and Adams, he identified a number of useful design criteria for educational games. The Game Object Model was developed, which includes abstract attributes, such as pedagogical and theoretical ideas useful in the  conceptualisation of the game, and concrete attributes − the design elements used to construct the game. The main body of Amory's research concentrated on developing frameworks to support the design, construction, evaluation and use of computer games in teaching and learning, but also the development and critical appraisal of other educational technologies. He wrote a number of critiques of the use of information and communication technologies in teaching and learning, challenging the notion of learning from technology, an instructivist position The Vygotskian notion of tool-mediated knowledge construction, a core principle in learning while playing computer games, formed the  basis for the development of a framework to include all educational artifacts into a coherent framework to support teaching and learning with technology. This framework is based on three interrelated concepts: Cultural Historical Activity Theory, authentic tasks and technology-mediated knowledge construction and is called the CAT framework. Publications. Amory is the author of 29 peer-reviewed articles, 25 peer-reviewed conference proceedings and 106 conference presentations. Selected publications include: