Post on 17-May-2015
description
transcript
Game On!: Using gaming to promote information literacy
Kristen Jacobson & John CaseyGlenbrook South High School LibraryGlenview, Illinois
Our Goal
Improve Freshman Library Orientation and increase student engagement
Introduce Freshman students to some key information literacy concepts and skills and prepare them for their initial research project
Introduce students to the Glenbrook South Library policies, staff and resources
Keep it light (and ideally, fun)
The Old Way…..The Deadly Dull Scavenger Hunt
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
The Old Way…..The Deadly Dull Scavenger Hunt
SNORE
The Old Way…..The Deadly Dull Scavenger Hunt
BORIN
G!
The One Good Thing About the Old Way
“Better worksheet with good questions”
“More hands on”“More interesting”“More computer based”
Why a Game?
More interactive More fun for students More “buy-in” from the students Opportunity to highlight different
information literacy skills Immediate feedback More fun for the librarians and
teachers Research suggests that educational
gaming has a positive effect on learning
Sounds good. So what did we do?
Organization of the Game
Trivial Pursuit-style format 5 categories:
Finding Information Choosing ResourcesSearch Strategies & Citing Sources Searching the WebLibrary Policies
Can have 1-4 players
Cool! How do you play?
Players must answer 2 questions correctly in each of the 4 main categories
Players receive a “light” for each category answered
Once all four “lights” are obtained, a player advances to the Home Stretch
Player must answer one more question from each category to win
Time for a history lesson
Invented by Scott Rice and Amy Harris at the UNC-Greensboro Libraries
Time for a history lesson
Open source Licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
That is a whole lot of words! What exactly does that mean?
Free to share and adapt the content, but you MUST: attribute Scott and Amy & link your
game back to their site use the game for non-commercial
purposes only license your modified game under a
similar license
Is there anything else I would need to do to adapt this game for my own library?
At minimum: Change library logo Change library name Change the link on the logo to direct to
your library’s website Change questions
What skills & software would I need?
Very few
No expensive software or programming knowledge required
Existing logo can be copied from your webpage
Questions can be modified in Notepad
Can I make more extensive changes?
What we changed: board art question functions designed a favicon created custom avatars feedback survey
Easy changes
logos question content board art favicon avatars
Avatars
Otaku Avatar MakerThis is the one we used. It is good for creating simple, manga style characters.
Create a MiiCreate your own Nintendo Wii-style "Mii" characters. Not affiliated with Nintendo Co. Ltd.
MinimizerMake "lego" minifigure avatars. Not affiliated with the LEGO Group ©.
MadMen YourselfMake early 60s style Madmen avatars. Very cute. The head-shots are distinctive even when made quite small and are popular avatars on Twitter.
Board Art/ Color Changes/Favicon
Photo/Image editing software Microsoft Paint
Adobe Photoshop
Free Software: GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program) Picnik
Hosting
Original Information Literacy Game hosted internally Uses an ASP.NET scripting language that
supports scoring and integrated feedback forms
GBS Library Game hosted externally on Go Daddy’s servers Does not include scoring or integrated
feedback forms
What was difficult
Apostrophes and ampersands
Magazine & Newspaper DatabasesMagazine & Newspaper Databases
GBS Library’s WebsiteGBS Library's Website
Changing question format
Surveys/Feedback
Unable to host the site to get quantitative feedback, so qualitative feedback is essential
GoogleDocs—easy to use, attractive templates
What went wrong
Firefox vs Explorer
Pop-up blocker (works now!)
What went wrong
THE DREADED NULL SET
What went wrong
Changing how questions function
Inconsistent feedback
No scoring capability because of hosting issue
What went right
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Concrete feedback (free response)
Easy to update this year
Help from Scott Rice, fix incorporated into his own version, yay open source!
Next Steps
Develop quantitative methods to assess the impact of the game on student learning Pre and Post assessments of knowledge
of the content areas (finding information, choosing resources, searching the web)
Contact Info
All of the files and links you need are at:
http://gbslibguides.glenbrook225.org/infolitgame
Kris Jacobson - Librariankjacobson@glenbrook225.org
John Casey - Library Lab Managerjcasey@glenbrook225.org