Video Games and Literacy

Justin HoenkeTeen Librarian

@justinlibrarian

justinthelibrarian.com

What is the true value of the video game as a storytelling device?

Image via http://www.toy-tma.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Final-Fantasy-7-Aeris-Death.jpg

Question: Do you worry that video games are eroding people’s ability to read novels?

...But there is a bit of the book which also suggests that the problem may be that this way of inhabiting the imagination may do something harmful to our relationship to story, to the way in which human beings have always needed and responded to the art of the story and

that is something to be worried about, because I think that there is something about storytelling that is very intrinsic to who we are as human beings.

-Salman RushdieRecorded November 12, 2010

Interviewed by Max MillerDirected / Produced by Jonathan Fowler

http://bigthink.com/ideas/25129

ENCOURAGE STORYTELLING

FINAL FANTASY III FOR THE SUPER

NINTENDO WAS THE FIRST "BOOK" THAT

I READ.

SIDEWAYS STORYTELLING

He doesn’t... in fact, doesn’t really have to follow the main narrative line of the game at all for long periods of time. There is all kinds of excursions and digressions that you can choose to go on and find many stories to participate in instead of the big story, the macro story. I think that really interests me as a storyteller because I've always thought that one of the things that the Internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell the story from beginning to end—to tell stories sideways, to give alternative possibilities that the reader can, in a way, choose between.

-Salman RushdieRecorded November 12, 2010Interviewed by Max Miller

Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler

http://bigthink.com/ideas/25129

What kind of digital literacy does a video game offer?

IMAGES VIA:http://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/5356149140/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/3324822540/sizes/m/in/photostream/

The Transliteracies Research Project defines online reading as:

the experience of “text-plus” media by individuals and groups in digital, networked information environments. The “plus” indicates the zone of negotiation—of mutation, adaptation, cooptation, hybridization, etc.—by which the older dialogue among print, writing, orality, and audiovisual media commonly called “text” enters into new relations with digital media and with networked communication technologies.

From Libraries and Transliteracy

http://librariesandtransliteracy.wordpress.com/beginner%E2%80%99s-guide-to-transliteracy/

TRANSLITERACY

MINECRAFT

What do we do once we have the video gamers in the library?

IT'S EASY

VIDEO GAME+STRATEGY GUIDE

IMAGE FROM: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cantonpubliclibrary/2502060472/sizes/m/in/photostream/

GAME ON!

CREATING YOUR OWN VIDEO GAME

GAMERS TELL STORIES

● Fan fiction● MMORPG (Warcraft, Everquest, Wizard 101)

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