Gaming & Virtual Worlds

I would like to first off apologize for posting this entry a little late- things at home and in my student life have been a little hectic lately and my blog got put on the back burner. The next few weeks are looking alot calmer for me (surprisingly since it's the end of term) so I don't expect to be posting this late again. So again, my apologies! I don't like to drag out too long because I know we are starting a new topic tomorrow.

I have a pretty limited experience when it comes to gaming and virtual worlds and most of my experience occurred when I was in my teens. I played Nintendo (the original) and got into Civilization (the computer game) a little bit as well. When I go to university my game playing ended and I don't really have the desire to re-kindle it even though there has been lots of opportunity to do so through friends. Although I did try out the Wii recently- but it didn't really do it for me.

After reading this weeks articles I thought the way in which virtual worlds (Second Life specifically) were being used by medical students to simulate clinics (see 7 Things You Should Know About Virtual Worlds). I think this use of virtual worlds is a great way to give students clinical experience when they normally would not be able to attend clinic. I think the key here is that it is supplementing real life clinical experience and not replacing it, which I think is an alarmist reaction to the use of virtual worlds. This idea relates to an article I read for another class that showed email and text-messaging normally supplemented face-to-face contact with friends and family and did not replace it, as some people feared. I think that virtual worlds have a lot of potential to enrich formal educational experiences.

I was thinking that a great way for library schools to use virtual worlds is when students are learning about conducting the reference interview. We do have the opportunity to practice with our classmates, but a virtual reference interview provides are more realistic scenario even though we can never expect that it would be exactly the same as a real face-to-face interview. I think that people who are normally quite shy would especially benefit from conducting reference interviews in a virtual world initially as a way to build up their confidence in the area before having to do it in real life. It is also helpful because reference interviews are now being conducted online and would be practice for people to communicate effectively with patrons online in a "safe" environment (ie not a real patron).

With respect to the case studies this week, the gaming blog at AADL seemed to have a very active community, with some postings eliciting over 100 comments! I was very impressed with this, and a little disapointed with the lack of comments over at the gaming blog at the Library of Charlotte & Mecklenberg County. I think the AADL blog got more comments because they were posting about events, so a lot of the comments were about the details of the events. On the other hand, the Library of Charlotte & Mecklenbergy County's blog was a little meatier. In my opinion, there are lots of other blogs on the net dealing with gaming, and specific games, that have more authority on the topic and have well-established communities and they are difficult for the library to compete with.