Happy Holidays

From my digital natives to you and yours - Merry Christmas.


Are your patrons or students are getting video games for the holidays? Find out... and find a way to incorporate it. At our Christmas, here are the games given as gifts for my niece & nephew, each game has applications to learning and research...

Guitar Hero 2: A fun rhythm game with classic rock music, great fun for multiple players of all ages; 40 year olds played alongside 10 year olds; the co-op mode is a nice parallel to any group work where each player has a role and strengths; without teamwork the game can't advance.

Kingdom Hearts II: The loved the first KH game which mixes classic Disney characters and locations with Final Fantasy characters into a fun and light action-rpg; although the game doesn't do anything new it still requires players multi task to balance and manage multiple characters and items; while there are some critical thinking strategies involved in some of the quest, unfortunately it often breaks down into simple button mashing;

There's a danger in games just being seen as button-mashers - just as there's a danger in research being seen as simple Google. Games are not that simple, and we all know that research is not that simple.

Madden 07: There is a lot of analysis, prediction, logic and strategy involved in most sports games and Madden excels here, the depth of options and management actually involves in-game research to exploit each teams and players' strengths and weaknesses.

These games are just the 3 PS2 games my niece and nephew opened on Christmas day. I received my own Christmas video game for the Nintendo DS, but I haven't had too much time yet to dig in... There are a wide range of systems out there all with games that can be tied into learning and research - we just need to try.

So ask and explore, find out what your students and patrons are playing or received over the holidays. Find out why they like it... and use those answers as the gateway to link games and learning in their minds.