Saturday, March 21, 2009

Home from ACRL

I've been overwhelmed this week after returning from ACRL with a nasty cold, but hope to post a series of thoughts as I reflect on my ACRL experience. I haven't yet sat down to write the follow-up e-mail I promised the people who came to see my poster, but may also do that tonight.

Last Friday morning contained two programs on gaming. Here are the notes I took from those sessions:

We’re Not Playing Around: Gaming Literate Librarians= Information Literate Students
  • Games also have outcomes, curriculum, pedagogy, …
  • Look at the Theory of Fun by Ralph Koster: www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf
  • Generation M. never really has had to work alone, in MMPORGs, they expect to get and give help. How does this translate into learning research?
  • In gaming, there’s no central authority
  • In MMPORGs, they get answers within 32 seconds
  • Students trust their peers
  • They want student-created resources to find information
  • They learn through scaffolding
  • www.informationgames.info/blog/?page_id=118
  • Worksheets they gave students will be added to the virtual conference materials

Percolating the Power of Play

  • Champlain College focuses on professional education and has an Emergent Media Center
  • Their library instruction program focuses on the Inquiry Method, and they see all students every semester
  • They got two students in the computer design program to develop information literacy games. The games aren’t quite ready for public viewing yet, but should be available soon.
  • Gaming is a very good petri dish for information literacy learning
  • They strive to make an learning environment students WANT to be in
  • “Hero’s Journey” game model can emphasize key thoughts and feelings during the research process
  • Their games were called “Dustin King in Locked & Literate” and “Searchlight”
  • How does this fit in with their instruction program? It provides an approachable place to test out what the students have learned in traditional bibliographic instruction.
  • One activity they do to get them to understand keywords and synonyms is to have them describe a normal can of soda. It forces them to think critically on something they already know very well
  • It focuses on information literacy rather than bibliographic instruction, and on students rather than the library

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