Making games for Libraries: game ideas

Showing posts with label game ideas. Show all posts

Saturday, 21 July 2018

I've just okayed the final proofs of "The librarians' book on teaching through games and play", so it'll be appearing on bibliographic databases over the next few weeks (already on Amazon!) to pre-order. Officially out on 3rd September, pre-orders should ship pretty much straight away!

At some point after publication I'll update the free / OA first draft version so it's available online as a PDF too.

Friday, 29 June 2018

New (early release) book, The librarians’ book on teaching through games and play

I've just finished the first draft of a new book, "The librarians’ book on teaching through games and play". It contains lots of materials aimed at librarians and information professionals to use games and play in their teaching.

As an experiment, I'm releasing it in a fairly raw* state. It still needs editing, plus some content is likely to be added over the next couple of months (and some edited out!). Sections may also move around to make more sense. BUT, the content is roughly complete. So take a look please! When the final version is ready it will be released as a print book (aiming for September 2018), but I'll also update the Open Access PDF too.

Please don't save and share this version elsewhere as it will be updated before too long, share the link to this blog, or the repository page instead so people will be able to access the most up to date version!

Full text, including updated files as they become available: https://osf.io/6xhrp/

* Note: This is the “early release” PDF version – it has not yet been edited and some content may still be missing. The final versions (print and PDF) will vary from this early version. 29th June 2018.

Monday, 4 June 2018

Video on play and libraries

I did a short presentation today in the form of a video for a lovely bunch of library staff in Lithuania - I think they'll be showing it in June. I talk a bit about play, games, gamification, and some of the playful things I've done over the last few years. If anyone fancies watching it, here you go!

I'm pondering doing a series of short (few minutes long) videos using something a bit funkier than PowerPoint - I might have a go over the summer :-)

Monday, 23 April 2018

Predatory conference game early thoughts

I've had spam from predatory journals for years, together with a much lower level of dodgy conference invites. The conferences used to be fairly easy to spot, sending the sort of email that says "We want to invite you to chair a session / give a talk at the <conference name> that covers <ever subject under the sun> in <exotic location>".

It may be my imagination, but the conference spam seems to be arriving much more regularly now and is a lot harder to critically evaluate than it used to be. It isn't as obvious any more which are predatory conferences (which may not actually run, or will be very poor quality, often at the same time as multiple other "conferences" organised by the same people), and which are "real" conferences that would be genuinely valuable for people to attend.

I came across one a little while ago that I thought would be great to speak at, but I'd never heard of before, so I was suspicious - but as far as I could tell, it was a genuine, good quality conference that would be a valuable experience. Alongside that, I got asked on 3 occasions over the period of about 2 weeks about conferences by early career researchers - they were the opposite to me and were either considering submitting to conferences, or on one occasion had already sent a paper in which (of course!) was accepted, thought the conferences seemed clearly dodgy to me.

So I started to think about what questions we should ask when we come across a conference to judge whether it is predatory or not... with the idea that at some point I can use these as a basis of a learning game.

I have heard of Think, Check, Attend by the way, but it seems a tad brief, and there isn't the same opportunity to draw out the grey areas that we might get through playing a game! I think a "checklist" approach can help with the ones that are most clearly "dodgy", but don't show the full picture a game and associated discussion might do...

Learning Theory possible game

Inspired by Eleanor Hannan's SOTL game at Playful Learning Conference, I wondered about making a learning theories game. Her game asked people to consider different Epistimologies, Research instruments, etc., to combine into a research design. I wondered if I could do something quite different, but based around learning theories, concepts, and interventions. So taking something like the HoTEL learning theory wheel as a starter, we could pick a "Learning paradigm" (supported by a key theorist), then a "key concept", perhaps a teaching approach that would fit underneath that, then a particular type of teaching intervention or interaction. So we end up picking teaching interventions that fit within a sensible framework at the end, rather than just because we fancy doing them.

It could even just be a set of cards that link these together, rather than a game too... I'll have to think about this one soon.