{"id":2041,"date":"2008-03-30T15:22:32","date_gmt":"2008-03-30T20:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/?p=2041"},"modified":"2008-03-30T15:22:32","modified_gmt":"2008-03-30T20:22:32","slug":"gaming-learning-and-libraries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=2041","title":{"rendered":"Gaming, Learning, and Libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/param><\/param><\/object>It won’t come as a surprise that libraries are getting into gaming, whether to support game studies by making games available as they do books, or using games to teach information literacy. I came across na nice conference video report<\/a> by Tom Peters of the American Libraries Association (ALA) TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium<\/a> in 2007. I like how the video report is edited. It is a bit short of content, but it shows the atmosphere and people.<\/p>\n

I’m less convinced by games to teach library and information skills. Here are some I’ve found:<\/p>\n

Quarantined: Axl Wise and the Information Outbreak<\/a> is from Arizona State and lets you play a student, Axl, who works for the student newspaper and who has to figure out why the university is quarantined. It seems rather a lot of irrelevant puzzles for a little bit of simulating searching for information, but could be fun enough.<\/p>\n

I’ll Get It and Within Range<\/a> are two games from Carnegie Mellon, neither of which are much fun, but that may not be the point.<\/p>\n

I’ve been talking with Kevin Kee<\/a> at Brock about the logic of serious games or educational games. I’m tempted to say that games can’t by definition be both playful and serious. I gave a paper to that effect at Playing the Gallery<\/a>, but Kevin is convincing me that games are sophisticated enough a phenomenon that there can be all sorts of planned learning. I think the National Film Board The Cyber-Terrorism Crisis<\/a> site (which Kevin was involved in) might be a good example of a playful web site for learning, though parts of it are no longer working. I’m certainly convinced that designing games can be serious work through which learning happens. I also accept that there are things one learns through playing like “problem solving”. I just find games created to teach certain skills, like how to file books, are neither games nor particularly good at teaching.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned, Kevin and I are writing a dialogue where I will get to be a curmudgeon on this issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It won’t come as a surprise that libraries are getting into gaming, whether to support game studies by making games available as they do books, or using games to teach information literacy. I came across na nice conference video report by Tom Peters of the American Libraries Association (ALA) TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium … Continue reading Gaming, Learning, and Libraries<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-games","category-computers-and-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}