Thursday, June 28, 2007

Librarians urged to play more video games

""[T]here's no doubt that libraries have embraced technology. But speakers said that there was a larger split between students - who are "digital natives," in one popular way of classifying people based on their experience with technology - and librarians, who are more likely to be "digital immigrants." They may have learned the language, but it̢۪s a second language." So says the article at Inside Higher Ed.

"So if this hierarchical model doesn't reach today's students, what will? James Paul Gee, a linguist who is the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the author of Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul, argued that librarians need to adapt their techniques to digital natives. A digital native would never read an instruction manual with a new game before simply trying the game out, Gee said. Similarly, students shouldn't be expected to read long explanations of tools they may use before they start experimenting with them.""

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