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February 13, 2008

You probably thought this would be about video games, what with my being such a geek and all. When we started a game library recently, though, we made a concious decision to start with board games. Call it accoustic gaming, or gaming unplugged...or just call it a more cost-effecient way to start a new idea. Board games don't need separate hardware and don't provoke AUP challenges.

So how do you find information on games that might work in your library? I reviewed some of our initital selections on here recently. More recently, one of the team I am lucky enough to work with has started a blog on gaming in libraries. On his Library Gamer blog, Brian Mayer reviews games and talks about how they can work in schools. We also get quite a bit of our information from Board Game Geeks, a site for people who love board games.

These games go way beyond Chutes and Ladders. One of the games we are getting out into schools right now is 1960: The Making of a President. This game is a serious simulation that almost approaches the level of complexity you might think would require a computer! In other words, yes this blog post does come back around to technology, but as a reminder that technology means a tool that facilitates an action that we might not otherwise be able to complete. The game mechanics of 1960 are a wonderful technology.

Posted by Chris Harris on February 13, 2008 | Comments (0)