by Here’s an interesting piece of news. Teens have been charged with theft of virtual property (they stole furniture from a hotel in Habbo, another virtual world).
In a related vein, there’s another report out linking aggression and gaming.
gaming
Gamers Gallore
By now, we’ve all heard that gamers are not just kids. Here’s another study by The Entertainment Software Association of Canada that suggests that almost half of our adults are gamers and the average age of gamers is 39. Most are computer game players rather than console gamers (XBox, etc).
Gaming in Libraries
I recently saw a playstation commercial that had gaming in a library. It’s quite funny and I’ll post a link as soon as I find it on youtube. They may be joking about a gaming room in a library but this may well be what we see frequently in libraries in the near future.
Gaming and Violence
I’ve been suspicous of the supposed link between games and violence. Here’s a news piece suggesting that although teens play violent games, they are not becoming violent. It also notes that games are not all solitary and that many play in groups.
Weee!
I got a Wii!!!! More to come once I finish playing…
It’s Official!
Canada now has it’s first professional gaming league. The gamers continue to grow (and I’m still waiting for my wii) and the recent increase in scholarly research into gaming continues to illustrate that gaming is something we need to be not only watching but doing something about.
Immersive Worlds Conference
I was quite excited when I heard this conference was being held at Brock and it turned out I had reason to be – it was a great conference and I’m still digesting it. One of the exciting things for me was that the conference was diverse – there were gamers, non-gamers, game designers, professors, teachers and librarians, all thinking about the same types of things in slightly different ways. The conference was a great start at collaboration from different spheres and I loved hearing from so many different points of view. As with most conferences, there were too many sessions to choose from for an one time slot. The keynote speakers (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, James Paul Gee, Denis Dyack) were thought provoking (I’ve left my notes at work and will post details of sessions later). As usual, conversation was great – this is where I find I often get the most from the conference. I was lucky enough to sit with Sarah Robbins (aka Intellagirl), Mark Bell, James Paul Gee and a number of other interesting, well-thought attendees for supper. Needless to say, I went to bed with lots to think about. I hope to attend this conference again.
Immersive Learning Librarian
This was announced a little while ago but I’ve only decided to blog about it now. I know there has been a lot of interest in this topic. We’ve hired our Immersive Learning Librarian, who will be looking into virtual worlds, gaming, and other immersive environments. Congrats to Shawn McCann! I hope to be working with him on our Second Life presence and I’m sure he’ll have some great ideas to help our presence grow there.
Congrats to the other librarians we have also recently hired:
- Communications, Marketing and Outreach Librarian – Catherine Baird
- Digital Strategies Librarian – Nicholas Ruest
- Digital Technologies Development Librarian – John Fink
More on Gaming
Well, we just finished our gaming week for learning 2.0, so I thought I’d post something (although I promise it will be short. People are likely tired of hearing my thoughts on gaming and Second Life). The week itself was great, with demos of MUSHs, World of Warcraft, Dance Dance Revolution (which I unfortunately wimped out from trying – must do it some day), and Second Life.
Gaming has become a huge discussion and research topic, with academic and library conferences on the issue. Gaming certainly isn’t for everyone or every course, but for many gaming offers a new more engaging way to learn content and theories. The biggest problem at the moment is that while lots of theory has be written and shared, there remains to be enough concrete evidence, especially for critics, that gaming truly makes a difference in the learning process. With the present emphasis in gaming in education, we should hopefully see some good strong results in the next couple of years.
Gaming as Learning, Research and Collections
This great session was presented by Lisa Hinchliffe, Karen Schmidt and David Ward of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They’re doing some great things around gaming and should be an inspiration to other libraries considering this path. The session began with background on gamers, stressing that many of us are gamers, including grey gamers and our students – for this reason we should be considering gaming.
They are collecting games, both new and vintage and are developing appropriate policies. They surveyed students during gaming nights, talked with faculty using games, and read relevant literature. This collection serves both to preserve the object and the experience. By collecting the games, students can both see the object but also experience what it is like to play the game. This experience is generally lost when the only way to play a vintage game is through an emulator.
While they are not actively pursuing creating games, they are considering a variety of uses for gaming. They have offered gaming nights which have been a smash with students. They also highlighted that short games (esp and a bartending game I can’t recall the name of) can be used for instruction and training. I think this is a great idea and can’t wait to try it out in my sessions next term. It breaks the ice, creates an atmosphere of fun and allows for easy conversation into more serious topics, such as controlled vocabulary and customer service.
They are also working with faculty to embed gaming in curriculum where appropriate and are supporting classes which are using gaming. They will be providing copies of Civilization 4 to a class. As one of the first to try this, they have discovered that gaming publishers don’t have a model to deal with this type of licensing and hope to help establish working models.
This is library and are ones to watch for future gaming innovation.