Gaming and Virtual Worlds Group Project

Gaming and Virtual Worlds Group Project

By:Angie, Jane, Jen and Rebecca

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's group project on gaming and virtual worlds. As you have all read and explored this week's readings and case studies, it has surely become evident to you that gaming and virtual worlds can have a place within the library. It was our challenge to devise a way to engage with these possibilities and create a library service relevant and useful to both the library and the library patrons. So, for our project, we wanted to provide a forum that would host our library's contribution to the 'gaming and virtual worlds community' that would be accessible via the library's online location and that also incorporated an element of the interactive nature of gaming for both the online library presence and the physical library itself. To facilitate this concept, we decided to build a blog that would act as host of library news, upcoming gaming events at the library, and articles relevant to gaming and virtual worlds as well as interactive features - such as a virtual library tour and scavenger hunt. Being a blog, it would also present the opportunity for users to engage in a 'gaming and virtual worlds library community' by being able to leave comments and suggestions. In essence, our service combines both gaming and virtual worlds.

Using Blogger, we created a blog specifically for the youth patrons of our library (roughly ages 10-18). This target audience was not arbitrarily chosen - as evidenced in many of this week's readings, kids and teens are very likely to be involved in or interested in gaming and virtual worlds. We think expanding the presence of the public library to include being a part of the gaming community is a great way to not only reach kids and teens on a level they are familiar and comfortable with as well as interested in, but is also a great way to engage them as part of the library community - building a relationship that will hopefully keep them coming back for years.

While the blog itself will host any number and variety of articles and news about upcoming gaming events in the library, the main feature of the site (and one of the elements that will keep the users coming back for more) is the Virtual Library Tour and Scavenger Hunt, which you can explore here. This feature has been embedded within the blog using a tool called Pictobrowser. This tool is very similar to one we explored in class a few weeks ago - Feed2js - in that it allows you to use an RSS feed (in our case the feed froma Flickr photostream hosting our library photos) to generate a code that can be embedded in a Blogger site. The idea of the game is that every month the Youth librarian posts photographs of the library through Flickr; selected photos will include a hidden object, such as July's red apple. The kids using the feature can then find all of the hidden items in the photos, record their answers, and bring them into the library for a special prize. Not only does this feature provide kids with a fun and interesting way to virtually explore the library, but it may also prove a useful way to get them interested in coming to the physical library from time to time. This learning environment also allows youth to actively solve problems on their own, become educated on the library space and services, as well as gain interest in the library in response to fun photos and games. This will be a regular feature -with photos and the goal of the scavenger hunt changing monthly, so Pictobrowseris an optimal tool to use as it allows the librarian to upload photos to theFlickr account and the feature within the blog (because it is built using an RSS feed) will automatically update. Also, as a benefit to the library, all the software used is free and requires minimal technological skills, making this service feasible for any library to implement.

One aspect of our project we wanted to stress is how this scavenger hunt has the potential to foster information literacy skills, problem solving and engage learners on all sorts of levels. As a result of the scavenger hunt experience, youth are encouraged to visit the library to obtain prizes for completing the scavenger hunt, helping alleviate a common resistance to the library. The game also exercises computer skills such as Internet navigation, using popular technologies, folksonomines, and blogging, all of which extend reading and writing skills outside of an educational setting; this is another dimension in facilitating youth literacy. Each monthly photo collection can be specifically aimed at developing each of these skills - for instance the photos could be answers to information literacy questions such as "Where would I go to find basic research tools such as dictionaries and almanacs?" - where the answer would be a photo of the Reference Section.

For this week's project, we also experimented with Second Life as it is one of the most popular and well-known of the virtual worlds currently available. Each of the group members setup an avatar, as we had originally planned to create a scavenger hunt using Second Life. After exploring, we collectively found several drawbacks to this virtual world: its features do not reach our target group since there are age restrictions on membership (minimum age of 18 years), system requirements for downloading software are impractical, demanding high-speed cable internet, 1 GB of memory, XP or Vista and 1024x768 pixels or higher, and creation of virtual world land is costly for a library service. One suggestion we came up with is hosting a book discussion club on Second Life using the Local Chat feature. This is something we could have experimented with further had it not been for a school project (thus having to pay out of our pockets). Second Life has answered one of these issues - that of age restrictions - by creating a service for the younger age demographics (ages 13-17) called Teen Second Life. Since the age restrictions are firm, it has the ability to quell some of the parental concerns about teen safety and privacy in an online virtual world. There are exceptions - it allows certain adults access when providing a legitimate service and after background checks have been performed (for instance librarians) but, similar to its predecessor, it has all of the drawbacks of cost and practicality. Barring the ability to build and host a library service within Second Life or Teen Second Life, our blog readers will be able to find articles and news items about the virtual world on our site -providing them with introductory information and perhaps leading them to a decision to create an avatar of their own!

As a result of this week's project, we have all learned about the benefits of gaming and virtual worlds - especially with relation to the library. Gaming and exploring worlds in a virtual setting gives our youth a chance to use multiple senses, social skills such as communicating and decision making, ability to take control of a situation, participate without pressure and, most of all, to be themselves - with thelibrary as a valuable partner in these endeavours. Gaming and virtual worlds exercise creativity and individual thinking in our youth. Most importantly, by libraries embracing the world of gaming, we are encouraging our youth to learn objectively by incorporating varying learning methods and welcoming perspectives. In a non-traditional library setting, we say, "so what if they're playing games, as long as they are exercising their minds!"