There are some really interesting developments going on within the 3D virtual reality world, "Second Life". A group of librarians, (Greg Schwartz, Lori Bell, Kelly Czarnecki, and Jami Lynn Schwarzwalder) have embarked on the virtual development of a library inside this world. The library is called the Second Life Library 2.0. It is free to create an avatar and download the Second Life software. The Librarians who volunteer their time inside this world offer virtual library instruction tutorials. It is well-worth taking a look at.

Listen to an mp3 explaining Second Life Library 2.0.

This mp3 is linked from another site that will be of interest to us - Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL).

I recently listened to a great online seminar from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. Richard Van Eck's talk was entitled "An Instructional Designer Looks at Digital Game-Based
Learning." If you have access to ELI, you can listen to the seminar in their archive:
http://www.educause.edu/Archive/8996

Van Eck's 4 principles of learning in games: 1) Games employ play theory, cycles of learning,
and engagement 2) Games employ problem-based learning 3) Games embody situated cognition and learning 4) Games encourage question-asking through
cognitive disequilibrium and scaffolding

From the Chat, a free game development tool was mentioned that might be worth checking out:
Game Maker: http://www.gamemaker.nl/download.html

A commercial game engine (that does not require hard core programming skills) is Torque - $100 for a single user. http://www.garagegames.com/solutions/games/indie/

If you can recommend any other game development tools worth investigating (preferrably free) - please comment here.

DIGRA (Digital Games Research Association) has a newly developed site, using the Plone Content Management System that allows members (it's free to register) to contribute and help organize the site. They explain: "this newly designed website / publishing environment / research archive is continuously under development, and the final form it will take depends on the direction you, as a member of the games research community want to take it into".

This should be an excellent place to get ideas and share ideas on gaming applications in education:

http://www.digra.org/

In this PowerPoint presentation, Dr. Atsusi “2c” Hirumi, Peterson Lorins, and James Hogg nicely identify some important considerations and procedures in educational game development.

Analysis of Game Engines

There are a lot of Open Source game engines available, and this might be a good post for us to discuss and evaluate some of these. One good example of this is Blender. For a good overview of Blender - read up on it at Wikipedia

My interest in using games to teach extends beyond gaming in the video game context. Any tactic, tool or technique that motivates a person to master new content is an effective teaching tool. Using video games in particular might be an effective way to reach our learners remotely - in the online world. The potential for games or gaming to be an effective teaching tool comes down to the level of engagement that is ultimately achieved. As an overview for those who may not know much about computer/video games, I think the wikipedia article on video games might be a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_and_video_games

It's my hope that if there are any successful applications of using video games to teach information literacy skills, readers of this blog will post their comments/findings here.

Learning retention - particularly retention of information literacy skills is another interesting area to explore. Will video games be effective? Will the gains be worth the pay-outs? I think the verdict is still out on that, but feel free to use this blog as an outlet for discussion.

There are some learning objects, games and simulations available in places such as MERLOT and CLOE. I haven't done a review to see who has been evaluating the effectiveness of these games in other disciplines, but it is definitely something that needs further exploration and may prompt future posts by me here.

There is a really great overview article in the March/April issue of Educause. See Richard Van Eck's "Digital Game-Based Learning: It's Not Just the Digital Natives Who are Restless".

Other journals that you might want to monitor include:

Game Studies
and
Games & Culture

I'm trying to gather a community of librarians together who are interested in using games (digitial games, in particular) to teach information literacy skills. If you're interested in contributing ideas here, please let me know.