Well, yesterday I attended a full day of gaming sessions, and let me tell you how fun some of them were! Like all conferences, some sessions were amazing, some were really good, and some, as in the words of one conference goer in regards to a program on internet safely for teens, “This session makes me want to go shoot up and then seduce a teenager.”

There are many Second LIfe people here as well. I saw Maxito Ricardo, Lorelei Junot, Puglet Dancer, Bluewings Hayek, Cerulean Vesperia and many more whose names are escaping me.

As mentioned, Eli Neiburger is here as well. He ran the really cool gaming tournament Sunday night, and spoke 2 or 3 times, I believe. He’s here with his wife, who seems really sweet, his incredibly entertaining son, Nemo, and his toddler daughter, Rocket (who was named by Nemo!). You all know that I like kids about as much as I like sand in my shoes, but they were adorable.. really! I’m gong to call Eli next week about the possibility of having a gaming special workshop at MLC. Who knows if it will fly yet, but if it does, I think it would be REALLY cool.

There was a Second Life meet-up last night, but unfortunately, due to an incredibly dense waiter at dinner last night, and an overall confusion on where the reception was to be held, we didn’t make it. I was sad, but instead, I think we all just went back to our rooms and got in SL for real.

Sunday night, I was bad, and played in SL until 4:30 am, which was really 5:30 in MI! I can’t believe I did that. I need to remember that I’m not all that young anymore, and actually need sleep on a somewhat regular basis. Last night, I was slightly better, and only stayed online until like…2:15, I think. However, I had to get up earlier. Yeah, I haven’t been the smartest of people these past few days.

The conferences closes at 1:00 today, at which point we need to snag a cab and jet to the train station to go home. I’m REALLY anxious to get home. I’m not used to traveling this much, and really just want my own bed. I’ve been staying with Angela at the hotel since Sunday night… not sure if I mentioned the psycho kitty that attacked me at Monica’s. lol

http://del.icio.us.informationgoddess29/glls2007  Beth Gallaway’s de.licio.us account, with cool URLs.
Well, anyway, this has been the most fun conference every… I hope I get to come again!

Yay! It’s Eli time!!!! We LOVE Eli, we love his pics of him and his son spending quality time, and we just LOVE everything about him, but… as Ang would say, “not in a gross way,” well…at least not in my opinion.
Investments in games:

AADL has made quite an investment in gamers.

They do about 50 events per year. Their investment is substantial. They bought equipment. However, you don’t have to spend any money, you can borrow hardware and software. You also should spend on food and prizes.

After the first years, costs are pretty low, but rising because of the popularity. Promotion levels start to go down, but prizes start to rise.

After hardware, you can easily hold an event for $150 for promotion, food and prizes.

Average age of gamers: 33 69% of US Heads of Household.

Now, these statistics are different than what I saw at a presentation at ALA Here, they say Male 62%, age 33. There, I saw female, 35. Hmm…

Gaming is a huge mass market thing.

Only 31% of gamers are under 18.

Adult women make up more of gamers than teenage boys.

Pokemon has more text than anything in any elementary school curriculum and has more details than the periodic table.

The wii gross motor movements, those are what young kids, toddlers use.

Teen Gamers - a teenager is the least likely individual in the community to use the library. Knitting programs do not exist because people need socks, it’s for entertainment. LOL

Gamers as parents.

Senior Gamers - wii opens up games to the boomers and the seniors. People who are in retirement homes can now bowl in wii. Certain games have a very narrow appeal, but an extremely intense appeal.

A typical DDR even. Teens are the biggest. Check out Pollack Dick on YouTube… 78 year old men who get lost on the way to the VA. LOL

These are listed as “all ages” events. They encourage adult/child teams, heavy players, and light players.

While librarians’ role as content delivery deteriorate, what are they going to do?

teen gamers are the most avid users of the AADL blogs, the gaming program provides the framework, and they blog.

They also have kids do commentaries, validating their skill. Way cool!

Within this framework, users can interact outside of the tournaments. In open play, different aged users interact, creating mentorship roles.

Clans. they get point bonuses for bringing in new players, and 1000 points for having girls in the clan. Kids go outside their class, their race, and even their language.

Almost every kid has access to video games, it is not just for the affluent. They can have access to games at home, at friends’ houses, at the library, etc.

Library as Source of Cred. It gives credibility. boys like to demonstrate their superiority. The library can become a dispenser of credibility, not a taker of credibility.

If every library had a gaming program 1/10 as good as Eli’s… I think.. well, I think more teens would smile when they hear the word “library”.

GT SYSTEM

Opening it up!

• Online tournament scoring and management tools
• blogs, registration, brackets, scoring, overlays
• local, regional and national leaderboards
• GT-System wiki for tournament rules and histories
• Synchronized Tournament Days with online finals.
• national marketing and sponsorship opportunities

gtsystem.aadl.org

I think this thing is going to be fun! This conference is very casual and relaxed, which I definitely like! Well, with Jenny Levine, what else could you expect?

Today we are hearing the opening remarks, and several keynote speakers including Henry Jenkins, Scott Nicholson and our own favorite, Eli Neiburger.

It’s funny, everyone is wandering around here with their Harry Potter books clutched against their chests, I must admit, to my greatest dismay, that mine is probably sitting in my mailbox at home. Monica has a copy, but I didn’t even want to start it, because I know that once I did, the rest of my life would come to a halt. Also, i was playing in Second Life with Brian, Shaylin and Semife last night, and chatted w/ Aeon later. That combined with Chicago style pizza, and being brutally attacked by Monica’s cat, provided me with a very busy evening.

Keynote Henry Jenkins MIT - What Librarians Need to Know about Games, Media Literacy, and Participatory Culture

Henry’s talk was pretty formal and academic, though very important. I’m embarrassed to admit that I missed the first part of his talk, because I was freaking out with issues on not being able to connect to the wireless network. So, for what I missed, I apologized. I’m been in wireless hell these past few days. I’ve gone the longest that I have in a long time without being online… like… 16 hours. LOL. Pathetic, I know.

Anyway, Henry spent a lot of time speaking on how games connect to learning.

Statistics are showing that 83% of kids six and under use screen media for under 2 hours per day. However, it’s pretty equal with the amount of time they spend reading, playing outside and listening to music. It’s actually a pretty balanced level of activities.

More than half of all American teens, and fifty seven percent of teens who use the internet couedl be considered media creators

33 percent of teens share what they create online with others

22 percent have their own home pages.

19 percent blog and 19 remix content they found online.

Urban kids are most likely to play online, followed by rural, then by suburban.

participatory culture

• Low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
• strong support for creating and sharing what you create with others
• some kind of informal membership
• members feel that their contributions matter
• some degree of social connection between members.

The Participation Gap

• No longer are children and young people only or even mainly divided by those with or without access, though “access” is a moving target in terms of speed, location, quality and support and inequalities in access do persist. Increasingly, children and young people are divided into those for whom the internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimulating resource of growing importance in their lives and those for whom it remains a narrow, unengaging, in occasionally useful, resource or rather less significance -Sonia Livingstone (2005)

The Transparency Problem - Fish in an aquarium with no awareness of the water in the class?

The Ethics Problem - No one’s helping them to know how to use things like LiveJournal safely and ethically.

• How do we insure that every child has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant in teh social, cultureal, economic, and political future of our society?

What do students need to know?

• Traditional Print Literacy
• Research Skills
• Technical Skills
• Media Literacy

Ugh, my computer just froze and I thought it was going to crash!!! I’m SO glad that it didn’t. I will be saving much more often now. LOL Well, I think Monica is blogging this talk, she’s sitting in front of me, and I see her blogger account open, so I’ll link to her so that you can hopefully see what I missed.
Appropriation - the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content. We must acknowledge remix, we know that. We need to think of remixing as a skill that shaped human creativity throughout history. Shakespeare was fan fiction.

Multitasking - the ability to scan one’s environment andd shift focus onto salient details on an ad hoc basis.

Distributed Cognition - the ability to interact meaningfully with tools which expand our mental capacities.

Collective Intelligence - the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal.

Judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.

Transmedia Navigation - the ability to deal with the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.

Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information.

Negotiation - the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms.

I realize that this is just a huge list of definitions. Though Henry is a very good speaking and his talk is amazingly interesting, he’s going so quickly, I’m having trouble keeping it up. Basically this gist of it is: Kids are going to do it, help them, make it safe, and make it make them learn.

Scott Nicholson - Who Else is Playing? The Current State of Gaming in Libraries

Scott is a happy boy. lol. He began by “coming out” as a gamer. Wow. He’s loud.

He’s gaming past: Sears super pong 4. :)He then went on to role playing, working for the company that did Magic, and now is heavily involved with board games.

Library game lab: Exploring the intersection of gaming and libraries. Cool!

Right now, Syracuse is looking a recreational games. Libraries have brought in recreational music and movies, and now games.

Overall Goal of teh LGL

• Ludology - the study of games and play
• Focused on recreational games in libraries
• as compared to educational

There are console games, board games, jumping around games, card games, web based puzzle games, etc. Not so focused on casinos yet…

“The Trump Casino and Library” - solving funding issues in libraries, lol

Gaming is bigger than you think….

• console games
• computer games
• board games
• etc.

Best practices

• focused on specific settings
• difficult to generalize
• can not develop theory

Okay, Henry does NOT speak quickly at all. He was a snail compared to Scott. Omg, I thought I had too much caffeine.

2 studies

surveyed 400 public libraries on gaming. 382 responded.

collected information about every gaming program

• started with NCES listing of public libraries
• Randomly sampled 400

Do you support gaming?

He got the audience involved by running around taking our guesses. This man has a TON of energy AND he’s giving us each a game!!!

We like games

Wits and Wagers, I think.

Most of the gaming comes from the children’s areas and bridge clubs, etc. and then let patrons play games on their computers. The computer games are just digital forms of what had already been played in libraries, it’s nothing new.

most did board games, then followed by traditional games, then console games, and then physical games, summer reading games, card games, and so on.

20% of libraries circulate game…

I never even thought that games were SO prevalent in libraries. So, it’s more the tech-based games that libraries seem to be resisting.

support for games in libraries lean more toward analog games, the larger the library, the more they support games.

Study #2.

he talks TOO fast. LOL

80% of libraries do gaming because they view it as a source of entertianing

70% providing something for current users

76% bring in new users

75% increase role in community

More folks said they wanted to provided a sense of entertainment, but they don’t view it as being the most important role.

• May users involved with gaming.
• About half are competitive, and few are purely educational
• Entertainment is important, but not primary goal
• gaming programs improve reputations.

Are games appropriate?

• We don’t know.
• doing research
• some aspects are appropriate, while others are better served by private interests

If so, then

• what’s the best way to do it?
• how do you know if it’s working
• how do you improve?

Preparing the Future

Scott is teaching a Gaming for Libraries course in the fall at SU iSchool

for more info: http://gamelab.syr.edu

Eli Neiburger - They Payoff, Up Close and Personal

…the stupid word scramble thing was beyond me tonight!

What color is your soul painted? Purple Your soul is painted the color purple, which embodies the characteristics of sensuality, spirituality, creativity, wealth, royalty, nobility, mystery, enlightenment, arrogance, gaudiness, mourning, confusion, pride, delicacy, power, meditation, religion, and ambition. Purple falls under the element of Earth, and was once a European symbol of royalty; today it symbolizes the divine. Click Here to Take This Quiz

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