Learning by Playing

September 23


After reading this article in the NY Times that was published Sept. 15, 2010, I have begun to form some hypotheses about video games and learning:

Corbett, S. "Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

The highlights in the article for me were the following two statements:

"One way to ['make school more relevant and engaging'] would be to stop looking so critically at the way children use media and to start exploring how that energy might best be harnessed to help drive them academically" (4).

"Salen and Torres are at the forefront of a small but increasingly influential group of education specialists who believe that going to school can and should be more like playing a game, which is to say it could be made more participatory, more immersive and also, well fun" (2).

Salen and Torres are the two people who have started a school for 6th and 7th graders (which they hope to expand to the high school years) which has incorporated games into its everyday learning environment. They have incorporated the 'radical' idea of having students creating, designing, and playing video games into the more traditional sense of an educational environment. This idea is an alternative one towards video games as opposed to the other notions I have encountered that have a negative opinion of games. This negative opinion seems to separate learning and video games as two separate ideas all together. Video games, in the opposing viewpoint, are a distraction from learning, which is also a viable case, as the article brings up research "showing that the more time children spend playing video games, the less time they spend on homework" (4).

With these two viewpoints in mind, my question is whether or not public libraries should be providing video games to their users? In particular should the public library I work in be thinking about providing video games for users? Should games be offered? What about the consoles? What about events sponsored by the library involving video games? Who is the user/market?

Beginning Thoughts

August 27

Ideas/Brainstorming:

YA Department

-       How can we best serve this community of users?

-       Are there sufficient displays?

-       Is information easily found/displayed?

-       What does the collection look like in comparison and in conjunction with others in the network?

-       What is the connect ion to the HS like? Are there any programs with the HS?

-       Are YA listening to playaways and using new technology?

-       What materials are our users using most?

-       Who reads YA books?

-       How best approach these questions with the YA librarians?

Aug 30

I was at work, reading the minutes from the Reference and Administration meeting when I came across the description of what the YA Librarian’s are working on now and what they plan to work on in the future.

Notes from the Minutes:

“Laurie and Susan [the YA Librarian’s] plan to participate in creating bibliographies and instructional guides for the website, as well as in the podcast and YouTube departmental initiative. They will help with the creation of a podcast, narrated by teens, about conducting research (as for NNHS’s Junior thesis). They also plan to develop their YA blog further. Laurie talked about the YA Gaming program scheduled for next week, a program on which YA has received invaluable help from Ryan, Jeramy, and John” (Minutes NEED DATE).

I found this part of the meeting very interesting in coming up with possible ideas/knowing what current issues are out there in the YA world. I see that more technology-based initiatives are happening at the Newton Free Library. I find the idea of doing a research project on gaming in libraries also a possibility. Wondering how people feel about lending games out and about having gaming events sponsored by the library. We currently do not lend out games like Wii, but there are a few libraries in our systems that do or are “known” for buying videogames. There is one in particular that comes to mind (Franklin), which is a pretty small public library. Wondering if they do this to increase their circulation? Maybe they have a liberal director?

Sept 1

Was given the suggestion to talk with Brookline Public Library’s YA Librarian, Robin Brenner, who has a reputation for being a great YA Librarian. Plan to talk with her!

Checked out the Brookline Teen page, http://www.brooklinelibrary.org/teen-blog/ (their website links directly to this page from the main tab menu, which is a blog, which I find very interesting and is not something that we do on our website, even though we have a blog).

Sept 2

My supervisor gave me a few articles from the Public Libraries magazine today by an author that she has come to recognize/trust/find forward thinking, Michael Garrett Farrelly. Farrelly is a YA Librarian and graphic novelist (cool!). I copied the articles from the magazine and plan to read them ASAP.  Hoping they will help me to become more solidified on a topic.

Sept 8

Today at lunch I had a very interesting conversation with a coworker. First I decided to ask around, just to get an idea of how my fellow colleagues felt on the matter and to get myself talking about possible topics. I remember Robson mentioning this - the process of talking it out and how it can be helpful in working out ones ideas. I asked some of my coworkers about whether or not they felt that we be circulating video games or not in our library. Roxanne said ‘no.’ She thinks that we need to uphold what a library was originally meant for. Walter on the other hand said, ‘yes,’ he thinks that from a marketing perspective we should be keeping up with the times and what is available out there. I then asked him whether he thought that having video games would get young adults who wouldn’t normally come into the library, come in to rent games and then also possibly take out some books while they were there? He thought that this wouldn’t be the case; that they wouldn’t come in to get books along with games, that games wouldn’t act as a “gateway” to reading. We then started to wonder if there were any statistical information out there about young adults in our community and what they had checked out on their card. I know that at least two libraries in our network circulate games and it made me wonder what other, if any types of materials were checked out on their cards. Do the non-print materials increase with time? Is it even a remote possibility of finding out? Would there be a way to survey YAs about their view on having videogames in the library/parental voice? Would this information be helpful for a library deciding whether or not to add these items to their collection? What type of information would be helpful to a library still deciding on whether to add this item to their collection?  ---These are some of the questions I am beginning to ask myself!

Sept 10

Today I had a mother come into the public library that I work with her son (age about 8). She had come to pick up a Wii game on reserve (come from another library in our network). When I told her that her reserve wasn’t at the desk, but was being held on the third floor at the Audiovisual Desk, she responded, “We shouldn’t even be getting this at the library anyway,” referring to the video game.

I thought this interaction was pretty weird, seeing as I have been asking myself lots of questions about the perception of video games in public libraries. This mother, though she seemed to feel bad about getting this item out of the library, was still doing it. There does seem to be this perception that libraries should only circulate certain items that is still hanging around. Should or shouldn’t the library “get with it”?  

Sept 13

Here is the link to the YA article I read in Public Libraries. The article entitled “Why Young Adults Matter” by Michael Garrett Farrelly added some interesting points on the current teen generation that is caught up in the technological world of Wi-Fi. Farrelly writes:

All the shiny wonders of the world: that is why we lose young adults. I, and many young adult librarians like me, refuse to accept this. We dig our heels in, stare into the unblinking green eye of the XBOX 360 and say ‘This means war.’ Computer and multimedia classes and events that turn kids from consumers of media into creators is one way. Making the library space one that welcomes young adults, celebrates their excitement for life, and their eclectic, dare I say, liminal nature, is another (27).

The point that Farrelly is making here is that young adults matter because they are the ones that, if they are instilled with a love of their library, will continue to come as adults and bring their children and the cycle will continue.

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?recid=0bc05f7a67b1790ef2dd763d541a6564b8ee7308859933fae90e6280d8234b6e9d7fa2cb35406f61&fmt=P

Farrelly, M. G. Why Young Adults Matter. Public Libraries v. 49 no. 3 (May/June 2010) p. 26-7

Sept 14

Found this article on ERIC:

http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/mar09/index.shtml

Myers, Brian. “Imagine, Invent, Program, Share: A Library-Hosted Computer Club Promotes 21st Century Skills.” Computers in Libraries, v29 n3 p6-9, 38-40 Mar 2009.

Abstract:

During at least one afternoon each month, Wilmette (Illinois) Public Library (WPL) hosts a local group of computer programmers, designers, and artists, who meet to discuss digital projects and resources, technical challenges, and successful design or programming strategies. WPL's Game Design Club, now in its third year, owes its existence to a combination of elements: the library's commitment to supporting 21st-century literacy skills, a motivated population of teens for whom no comparable peer community exists, and the recent development of a variety of free and open source programming environments and content editing tools designed specifically to facilitate learning in a media development context. Like many public libraries seeking to enhance its services to teens, the Wilmette Public Library began offering open video game play and competition events in 2005. In this article, the author describes how the WPL's Game Design Club promotes 21st century literacy skills among its participants.

This article opened me up to this magazine, Computers in Libraries, which I’m sure will be extremely helpful. Just browsing it I see a bunch of other articles that I want to look at.