Linking up with Games+ Learning+ Society

Last week the fourth Games+Learning+Society conference happened in Madison, WI. Each year the conference has provided a wealth of information, research, and application on gaming in education. GLS services the research community well by recording their sessions and making them available via Mediasite. Some of this years presentations are already up and online... here.

In addition to the video content, there are a wealth of good blog posts about individual sessions. Serious Game Source had a news story about the start of the conference and James Paul Gee opening statements. The Brainy Gamer has a great write up on Gee's speech and John Rice over at Educational Games Research links to Gamasutra's write up of Gee speech as well.

Mark Chen, who's presented at GLS the last two years, has some nice overviews and commentaries of the day by day sessions: Session 1, Session 2, Session 3 , the second day's Session 3 covering virtual worlds, and Session 4. Mark also provided a list of other blogs covering GLS which is a great resource for more analysis on the sessions.

There were a number of sessions that seem relevant to libraries looking at gaming and I'll post some reflections once I view the session. But one session by Erica and Rick Halverson covered fantasy baseball and the learning that goes on within fantasy baseball games. The Brainy Gamer posted his thoughts on the session and GameSetWatch picked up the session and posted about it as well.

With the wealth of scholarship at GLS and elsewhere, libraries looking at gaming and education should take some time to read through these sessions, view a few presentations, and begin the discussion about what this research means for us in libraries.