Why are there still libraries?

I’m teaching a webinar today for Infolink, NJ’s regional library cooperative, titled “Pokemon, Learning, and Libraries”. Once the talk is archived I’ll pop the link in this post for all to see!

Here’s the “homework” from the talk. This stuff is valuable even if you aren’t going to the webinar:

Let’s start with the link to Bulbapedia. Those guy are terrific!

Next is an amazingly inspirational talk about what motivates us as humans, send to me by the fantastic @pcsweeney.

Next up is video-games-in-schools guru James Paul Gee talking about how the communities that video game players build are effectively identical to our professional communities.

In the September 15, 2010 issue of New York Times Magazine, they ran a cover story on “Learning by Playing“.

James Paul Gee again, on the PBS show Frontline, describing how video games can help schools (and how the modern library could be considered “competition” to traditional schooling.)

My article in Booklist on starting a video game collection & running video game programming in your library.

And, last but not least, the slides, which look strange in the Google Doc viewer:

We’ll start here. This is an old old 8bitlibrary post that leads to a video of James Paul Gee, one of the world’s experts on using gaming as a teaching tool. His idea that the traditional schooling structure now has “competition” was one that resonated with librarians. By competition, he meant this: in the past, if you wanted to learn something, you had to go to “school”. NOW, you can go lots of places; I’ve managed to get things like “Login with Facebook” and mobile “touch” integration on this site without ever going to school to learn it. Gee goes on to list LIBRARIES (along with the internet) as one of those “competitors” to schools.

But what does this “competition” mean for the traditional educational system?

This leads me to something I shared on Facebook a few days ago. It is just a short article from the New York Times that suggests cheating in K-12 schools isn’t just a problem, it’s an epidemic. We had a lengthy discussion on the topic, which was launched with the comment I made:

As someone who was a HS student just as the internet rose, we  never thought of it as “cheating”. IRL, you use all the tools at your disposal to accomplish a task, including working with others (aka “sharing answers”), using multiple information sources (aka “pasting from the web”), and choosing the fastest means to solve a problem (aka “texting”). All of my post-HS accomplishments (like 8bitlibrary.com) were partly because I employed the same “illicit” skills I learned in HS.

While in the traditional, 19th-century notion of “school”, these things might be considered cheating. But let’s analyze the skills that these students are learning in this process: they have learned to solve problems by communicating quickly and effectively (in their case, via txt message & sharing answers). File that under working with a group, team building, and effective communication skills. They are learning how to think outside the box. You know who else thought outside the box? EVERY INNOVATIVE HUMAN BEING, EVER. When Pink Floyd sang “we don’t need no education” on The Wall, they didn’t mean they didn’t need to learn. They meant they didn’t need that traditional learning structure. Our students are learning valuable life skills in many cases despite of the education system, rather than by it.

That leads me to the next link. It is another article from the NY Times that summarizes research on the relationship between student achievement and access to a computer at home in low-income households. The results were (seemingly) pretty dire, with a noticeable achievement gap by the low income students at school when a computer was introduced at home. One of the findings was that the students spent their time playing games, which is presented as a negative in the article. Our readers are here at 8bitlibrary.com because they know games are not bad, and this leads us back to the first link where James Paul gee suggests that using games to teach is the wave of the educational future. I could link you to my School Library Journal article on using Pokemon as a Teaching Tool, but I won’t, because I’ve done that already.

So in that NY Times article, there’s just negative comment after negative comment about low-income students who have computers at home (and, let’s not forget that old basic rule of comparisons “Correlation does not imply causation“). So in one of the studies, there were strict filters put on the computers so the students could only use them for what was deemed “educational” by those performing the study. What the most interesting line in this article says is:

When devising ways to beat school policing software, students showed an exemplary capacity for self-directed learning.

That line was buried all the way in the last paragraph of the article. The sentence that follows it is:

Too bad that capacity didn’t expand in academic directions, too.

This is what is wrong with the education system. When teachers have students who show “an exemplary capacity for self-directed learning”, if they can’t direct that capacity into “academic directions”, we have a system of failing teachers, not failing students.

And this is what Gee talks about in that original link. If the education system doesn’t “reform”, these learning “competitors” will constantly put the education system in deeper and deeper irrelevance.

Since I’ve spent so much time on SoulSilver, I have yet to get around to cracking open Pokemon HeartGold (despite buying it the day it came out). This set of Pokemon games were released with an accessory called a “Pokewalker“, which is like a combination of a pedometer and a Tamagotchi.

The Tamagotchi-like Pokewalker! Looks like Pikachu has taken 367 steps so far :)

It’s a fun device on a few levels. Firstly, in the game, you can take your Pokemon for “walks” and they accompany you in your travels. This is a more literal manifestation of that idea, in that you load a Pokemon into the Pokewalker, and as you literally walk, your steps are counted and your Poke walks with you :)

How to load Pokemon into the Pokewalker!

Second, it’s fun because there are times where you gotta take a bunch of steps before youe Poke can level up. These games came out right before Pax East 2010, and I always knew who was trying to add steps to a Pokewalker, because they’d be frantically running around for no reason. Funny!

Third (and this leads into my “project”), it is a highly visible device, so people can see you are “playing” Pokemon. As the ALA’s resident “King Pokemon Fanboy”, everyone will be SURE that I’m a true Pokefanatic now.

SO I’ve decided to spend some time playing HeartGold before the 2010 American Library Association Annual Conference, and the morning the conference kicks off, I’ll load it up with a Pokemon. I’ll carry the Pokewalker everywhere I go for the entire conference, and by the end, I’ll know how many steps I walked for the entire conference, and hopefully my Pokemon will have leveled up a few times. But I need your help:

[poll id="2"]

Here’s pics of the Pokes, in case you wanna see them:

Growlithe

Mudkip

Pichu

Primeape

Gyarados

Also, don’t forget that this Poke will be dancing with me at the ALA DANCE PARTY!

As part of the Wizard World comicon in Philly, there is a sanctioned gaming– Magic, Pokemon, Dungeons & Dragons. Some are free, some have a cost. These are all games I’m super unfamiliar with personally, but recognize their following! Last year there were also many gaming vendors selling retro systems, games, and there were demo stations for videogaming.

Of course, there are also tons of comic artists, writers, creators, Tshirts, and all geekery! Join me there!
I’m hoping to meet Bruce Campbell!

In-between talks, I also had the pleasure of meeting some of the great folks of Chicago attending the convention, as well as spend lots of time with ALA staffers at the booth.

My superhero alter-ego with some of ALA's staff & friends!

So while I was meeting & greeting, the dude from BULBAPEDIA(!!!!!) introduced himself, which was a real thrill, considering I am by far the biggest Pokemon fanboy in all of libraryland.

For those of you unfamiliar with Pokemon or Bulbapedia, Pokemon is the second-most-successful video game franchise of all time, and Bulbapedia (http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/) is the internet’s largest (and most reliable) resource for information relating to everything-Pokemon, including the video games, movies, anime, card-game, and books.

Bulbapedia is, to me, the best example of why video games have belonged in libraries for a long time. Bulbapedia is a user-lead information community, with over 16,000+ encyclopediaesque articles about Pokemon. Wherever information communities exist, library should be present. This is why video games belong in libraries.

To illustrate my point, I’ll use Bulbapedia’s article on the Pokedex (http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokedex). Pokedex is a portmanteau of the words “Pokemon” and “Index”, and indexing is one of our most basic library skills. The article goes on to use these other library related terms when describing the Pokedex:

• information
• database
• list
• data
• number sequence
• software
• order
• organize
• record

8bitlibrary.com's founder JP with Bulbapedia's Editor-in-Chief TTEchidna.

I can go on about why video game collections are important for library advocacy, why being involved with/around projects like Bulbapedia are important for Information Literacy efforts, etc etc etc, but I won’t ;-P

I encourage you to get familiar with Bulbapedia. The video games-in-libraries ideas will quickly follow.

Here are some youngins at a Pokemon card trade-off at Wilmette Public Library in Wilmette, Illinois.

Some older folks playing Pokemon at St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, Indiana.

Here is an eye catching awesome advertisement flyer for a Pokemon Rumble program at the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

Here we have a fun display of Pokemon manga at the Ridgedale Library in Monnetonka, Minnesota.

Some adults playing Pokemon Monopoly.

Here we have Gaming-in-Libraries guru and author of Gamers…in the Library?! The Why, What, and How of Videogame Tournaments for All Ages, Eli Neiburger, running a Pokemon event. Pulled off the American Library Association Flickr account!

Is your school or library including Pokemon? Let me know! jp@porcaro.info

Have a great weekend from all the 8BitLibrary Crew!

-Justin

Let’s start with the controversy. This controversy transcends Pokemon. The controversy is: “What does Pokemon have to do with reading!?” Or, on that larger scale, “What do video games have to do with literacy?!”. This is the stigma that libraries face not only with video games, but with many forms of media. This is why we have Banned Books Week; this why we are constant advocates for our own roles as librarians. What the controversy almost always entails is a single person (or group of people), without a proper understanding of the specific story’s context of the content they oppose, trying to censor material from all users of a public or school library. The outcome of most of these well-meaning censorship attempts is that the person who tried to censor the material reads it, understands the content in the context of the story, and actually likes the story and withdraws the censorship attempt. This is a very frequent occurrence and I think that Pokemon’s detractors would feel the same way if they spent time within the story, playing the game.

That brings us to content. As a follower of Marshal McCluhan, I always try to hip people to the fact that a distinction must be made between the content of media and the media itself. In this case, the media is “video games” (arguably, “handheld video games”), and the content is “Pokemon” (and more specifically, “The story contained within Pokemon HeartGold”, or whatever Pokemon game you are speaking about). If we understand this distinction between content and the media transmitting the content, we have already raised the legitimacy with which the “gaming-in-schools-and-libraries” discussion takes place.

And as that discussion is raised, it reaches the level that OTHER media has reached in schools and libraries: the literary value of gaming. I don’t need to rehash it completely, but games now have a plot, character development, thematic elements, and interactive narrative devices. This is why the Pokemon franchise can release Pokemon Silver in 2000, and release Pokemon SoulSilver in 2010: SoulSilver is a game with a similar plot and theme, retold using the new character development & narrative devices possible that technology allows for 10 years later. THIS is what Pokemon and gaming-in-general has to do with reading. 8bitlibrary’s Craig Anderson has written more on that subject in LibraryGuyCraig’s review of Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Some library yougins at a "Pokemon Trade-off" I hosted last year

As a little addition to the article (I didn’t know where else to put this), I think the release of HeartGold and SoulSilver is an interesting one. As technology moves forward and more can be “done” with video games, Pokemon as a franchise has taken to “retelling” stories. HeartGold and SoulSilver and RETELLINGS of the stories contained within Pokemon Gold and Silver, which were released for play on the “inferior”-to-DS hardware system Gameboy Color. These new game are not really “remakes” of the old games; these are new games telling the same story. This reflects the true nature of video gaming: a modern storytelling medium. One of the library’s most important roles in the community is “storyteller”. From baby storytime lapsits to book discussion groups for seniors to archiving the local history of the community, libraries are a place to tell story. This is why Pokemon belongs there.