Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Playing Games at the Library



Does the weather have you retreating inside to play some video games? What if you could turn that favorite hobby into a research topic? Read on!

Video games have a 50-year history, reaching back to the crazy computer scientists in MIT's Building 20 knocking out walls according to Supercade: a visual history of the video game age. And while we're no longer building bookcase-sized machines to play them, video games are even more popular today than ever before: some online games have 12 million subscribers (That's more people than the entire population of Greece)!

The average gamer will have spent 10,000 hours playing by the time they're 21 years old. According to Michael Gladwell in his book, Outliers, that's roughly the amount we need to become an expert in any field.

So what can all this game playing do? Dr. Jane McGonigal, a theorist and multiplayer game designer, thinks that games might save the world:

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world | Video on TED.com

I really hope that we can come together to play games that matter, to survive on this planet for another century. And that's my hope that you will join me in making and playing games like this. When I look forward to the next decade,I know two things for sure, that we can make any future we can imagine, and we can play any games we want. So, I say let the world-changing games begin.


Sound good?

Want to get started on creating games right away?




These books and more are waiting for you at the library- game on!

Friday, February 29, 2008

Online Research: blog & social web links

Ready to get started with your own blog, or just want to explore some of the tools we discussed in class? Check out the links below:

Common Craft: Blogs in Plain English (video; 3 mins. long)



Blogger
Create, edit, and share your very own blog in three steps with this platform from Google.

Technorati
Search blogs and see the results ranked by the popularity of the blog site (listed as "Authority").

Google Blog Search

Evaluating Research Sources: (video) and (handout- requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Twitter
Post tiny blog entries using your cell phone's texting service.

TwitterVision
Watch what people are posting on Twitter, displayed on a map by their location.

Map of Online Communities (and related points of interest)
From the webcomic, XKCD. A "map" of social communities online, where country size equals the number of members in Spring 2007.

LibraryThing
Find book recommendations, or share titles in your library with like-minded readers.

Flickr
Post and share your own digital photos, or browse others' from around the world. Owned by Yahoo.

del.icio.us
A "socal bookmarking" service owned by Yahoo. Save your website links for access on any computer, and see what others are saving at the same time.


Type in an artist or song and receive recommendations for similar music based on the suggestions of others who like the same.

Edited on March 3, 2008 8:38 am.