I enjoyed the Gaming session on Tuesday with Kelly. She was super at the DDR demo! I learned something new – IMVU which is a neat messenger and reminded me of SL. I haven’t tried it but will soon. I found MUSH a bit abstract and I need to use it in order to really get a sense of a text-based storytelling game. We saw a demo of WoW through a Utube video and it is graphically advanced and very colourful. I can’t imagine playing in a team of up to 40 players!
I am most excited about virtual worlds such as SL. I feel comfortable with using it now and am really looking forward to providing virtual reference this summer. I love being in SL and experiencing the peaceful atmosphere and being part of a virutual world and observing and learning about what goes on in other institutions in SL.
I have had a bit of experience playing Zelda with my son a while back and before that it was games like Mario Bros. I never really got very clever with Zelda because I didn’t have the persistence to continue till the end. I see gaming as an important part of education in that one develops skills such as thinking, psychological and social strategies in knowing how other people play and how you can perhaps improve over them. Games also encourage a striving towards a goal which is a good discipline to have for any age especially the younger generation. Concentration and persistence learned through games can greatly benefit the outcome in real learning situations. I have learned that many libraries are having Gaming Nights, and it is not a bad idea if we had one in our library.
I have found a great resource which archives collections of games and they are easy to try out. There is a link at the University of Illinois at Urbana’s page to the internet archive page: http://www.archive.org/details/gamevideos . It gives a range of games in many categories and the page is navigable and the games ready to play. Try some out!
