Libraries booking young video gamers - The Diigo Meta page

• 30 Jul 08
  

  Anne Bubnic

  If you made a list of sounds you might hear at your local library, the rumbling of explosions and the loud hum of race-car engines probably wouldn't rank high on it. But in a darkened room at the Quincie Douglas Branch Library, about 20 preteens and teens gather around two screens. It's a mostly soundproof room, to make sure their efforts to rack up points on Nintendo's Wii and PlayStation 2 don't bother the consumers of decidedly more static media. It's a sight that could become more frequent at a library near you.
  

  ad4dcss library ALA gaming digital literacy digital media 21st century learning digital youth

  • The American Library Association has announced a new project funded with a $1 million grant from the Verizon Foundation, the charitable branch of Verizon Communications.
  • Libraries that already have mature gaming systems in place will be studied to gauge how electronic games improve players' literacy skills.

     

    Then, a dozen leading national gaming experts, including a Tucson librarian, will build a tool kit that libraries across the country can use to develop gaming programs.
  • There's growing evidence that games in general, from the traditional board versions to electronic and online ones, support literacy and 21st-century learning skills, she said, though libraries have been slow to capitalize on them.

     
  • for the first time ever this year, the American Library Association's annual conference had a gaming pavilion, showcasing efforts to reach a demographic — tweens, teens and 20-somethings — that's tough to pull into the library.
  • Then there's just the overall focus on puzzle-solving, Danforth noted. Unlike books, games often have multiple story lines, depending on decisions that gamers make along the way. In the overall scheme of things, deploying a warrior for one job and a wizard for another isn't that much different from a boss sending an engineer out for one task and a public relations professional for another.

     

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