This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education points to the connections between the real world and the teaching world.
A Librarian's Plea for 'Serious Gaming'
Here’s a sign that “serious gaming” is hitting its stride: Corporate monoliths like MTV,
Reebok, and Starbucks are all giving it a shot. The companies have
commissioned games that tackle weighty topics like global warming and
the genocide in Darfur, notes Michelle Boule, the social-sciences
librarian at the University of Houston.
In a guest post at ACRLog,
Ms. Boule argues that libraries could learn a lot from those
corporations. In seminars and workshops, information literacy can seem
like an abstract topic. But in video games, she says, the topic might
come to life: “Information modeled in an online environment can become
almost anything from a maze, to an amusement park, to a fully formed
world and story.”
Most libraries lack the budget and expertise to
create fully formed information-literacy games of their own, Ms. Boule
notes. But now that some libraries are carving out space and buying
equipment for video-game players, she says, it might be time for those
institutions to take a closer look at serious gaming. —Brock Read
