Growing A Gaming Group.

Amy Alessio, Joe Torres, Jason Larson, Amy Tyle "Growing a Gaming Group."
Gaming works. Here are 3 local, wildly different libraries that responded to patrons to create gaming and have responded to the positivity it creates.

Amy Tyle, Homer Public Library

• Gaming events bring in kids who otherwise did not come in, many checked out other things.Open sessions attract kids who won't do tournaments and vice-versa.
• Change settings/levels/open up memory.
• Buy extra equipment and test it every time. DDR Pads are $20 on ebay. Wii, lots of batteries and space needed. Some games come with remotes.
• Tables, chairs, food, board games, leftover craft projects
• Costs less than presenter or electronic database. Good source: Red Octane who publishes Guitar Hero.
• Borrow, shortlist, share.
• Publicize thru TAC, schools, posters, press releases, blog. Expand to kids, adults.

Kelly Laszczak, Orland Park Public Library
Large events, tournaments are best for big populations. 32 finalists, 70 spectators.

• Qualifying rounds, take highest scores for tournaments (make brackets in Publisher, print on 11X17 posters).
• 3 rounds held over 3 months. Perfect amount of time. Tried & True.
• Keep track of scores on a spreadsheet.
• Prizes are a must. Best buy cards, coupons for local stores, etc.
• Chess tournaments. 2 qualifying rounds. Opponents selected at random. Earn points for wins. This can be all ages.
• Bag-o, like horseshoes.
• Game On -- good practice for tournaments.
• Family DDR, Preschool game day, good use of teen volunteers.
• SRP final game showed increase of finishing rate by 10% very first year.
• Open play sessions any day off.
• Friends of the Library love these events, show them that they are good to support.
• Can rent, then show attendance and get funding that way.
• Local charities may support this. Kiwanis for kids' programs, fit the program to the mission of the particular charity.
• Teen writers club. For after TAC?

Amy Allesio, Schaumburg District Township Library

• Summer board game design contest program. Cheap, easy to do. Posterboards, markers.
• Gamestop sells used games with warranties. Gamecube $40 Ps2 $80.
• Gamer's group began due to teen request. Only 7 per session. Stick to E through T ratings. They come for social component. Multiplayer games are best for this.
• MySpace, blog, wiki, helps gamers interact, comment, set up groups, Flickr, 2.0, podcasting and videocasting can be done as well.
• DeVry has gaming/design simulation. Guest speakers will come.
• Intergenerational Wii tounrament.
• Always play along!

Libraries, Gaming, Equity Crisis

James Paul Gee. "Libraries, Gaming, and the New Equity Crisis."
--author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us.

Learning Available on the Internet, but Not at School:
Adaptive computer-based training, dynamic multimedia, hypertext, hypermedia, interactive simulation, intelligent tutoring systems, inquiry-based info retreival, animated pedagogical agents, etc.

Gaps
-- literacy: stopped progress, yet widened after 1984. Still essential.
--applications: most kids fail, while still getting A's.
--knowledge: simply handing over technology widens gap. No mentoring in place for poor.
--tech-savvy: no fear of technology. Can use it. Necessary.
--innovation: simple jobs outsourced, school curriculum kills innovation.

Kindergarten vocabulary -- predilector for success in 4th grade and beyond. School is in academic, not everyday English. We fail to realize that kids can hate this language, can't use it.
--------Yu-Gi-Oh cards contain 3 if/then clauses. It is hard to process one. This is academic English. Kids learn this readily. Just not in school. Which makes things kids are good at hard. With 10,000 cards, there is no limit to what a kid can learn.

Learning Principles
Learning is a passion -- Lower the consequences of failure. IDEO's credo, "fail early, fail often" is good to apply. Every failure event is an opportunity to map out the maze, make progress in new ways.
Performance before competence -- Like learning English! Learn while you do. With support and help. Works in life, not in school...
Players high on agency tree -- Your choices make the game what it is. Codesign the game.
Problems are well-ordered -- Education, organic, in a way that is neither progressive or conservative. In a rich environment, be sure there is a progression, to form "right path," useful for later problems.
Cycles of challenge, consolidation, and new challenge (expertise) -- problem leads to routine mastery upon repetition. Offer new problem where old solution no longfer works. Keep ratcheting up problem, keep ratcheting up intelligence. Stay within, but at outer edge of players Regime of competence principle -- where work takes over life, a state of "flow."
**poor kids get too little practice while rich kids rarely get challenged.
----We need leaders that can think big----
Players encouraged to think about systems -- gain empathy for a complex system (Sims, ex). Give verbal information "just in time" when players need and can use it. Or "on demand" when the player asks for it.
Situate (show) associations -- the meanings of words and symbols and show how they vary across different actions, images, and dialogues. Don't just offer words for words, definitions.
Modding Attitude --Modern games allow you to make characters, setting, equipment, etc (Civilization, Tony Hawk, etc.)

What We Must Do

1. Change attitude towards learning! Embarrass schools into changing. Schools produce serviceworkers; 3/5 of us, according to former Secretary of State Robert Reich's book.
2. Change attitude towards learning! Games don't have to be educational to educate.
3. Change attitude towards learning! Kids always say they learn more at home than at school, when they're privileged enough to have access.
4. Change attitude towards failure! Failure is a judgment on the game according to a kid, this is a healthy attitude. Failure in school is on their part? Middle class kids are starting to fail out for the first time.
5. Follow new models! ARMY trains by games, for everything. The kids they get are the ones school faild with. We need new forms of learning. Anime culture leads some kids to learn Japanese! Literacy, art, drawing, environment linked here -- supermulticultural.
6. Takes 10 years to become an expert, conventional wisdom. Start today!