Yesterday over at Tame the Web, hosted a guest blogger Michael Westfall who shared his concerns over school libraries and video games.

But beneath my game racism – my gamecism – is a fear. What frightens me is that many of my students have significant difficulty reading and comprehending text online, whether it’s a Wikipedia entry, an advertisement, or even detailed directions for a game.

He also states his concern about the learning that happens from games since...

The tangible product doesn’t exist after playing a game.

His post got me thinking about how he and others could use the experience of playing video games to address his comments and concerns.

What about an activity like, let one group play for a few minutes, then have them write down what the game is, where it was found, and how to play it... the next group would rotate in but only use the written content. Their task would be to determine if they are able to read and understand what the previous student wrote, what's the game and how to play it. Then give them an equal amount of time to play and see if the directions were accurate.

This activity could be repeated for additional groups. If the instructor could use the student's gaming desire and gameplay to have them create some of their own content (reflections, directions, descriptions) the students could see the connection and relevance with reading and gaming. Tapping into the students' knowledge base and having them share it opens the door to a wide variety of information literacy and critical thinking skills.