Learning from Researchers

In July I was visited by a team of researchers investigating the Ready to Learn programs in which one of my libraries is participating.  As a graduate student, I learned to do "big girl research," so their methods and questions did not come as any surprise to me.  What was a surprise, though, was how much food for thought their questions left for me. 

As we were talking about the PBS Kids Lab games, I mentioned that based on my observations of children in my library, the Kids Lab games are every bit as engaging as games that aren't educational.  Of course, they followed up with, "Can you give us an example of some games that aren't educational?" Now I'm not new to gaming.  In fact, games based on books were a research interest of mine not too, too many years ago, so I've done a fair bit of reading, playing, and writing about games--video games, board games, card games...you name it.  But asked that question, I was hard-pressed to think of games that aren't educational, except maybe shooting games, to which one of the researchers replied that maybe they teach hand-eye coordination, but that might be a stretch. 

James Gee, noted scholar of video games, writes about video games as perfect literacy environments that require complex problem-solving (What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, 2nd ed., 2007), perhaps even the shooting games I had in mind.  But what I was trying to express goes to the intent of a game--in my observation, games with an obvious educational purpose often feel more like lessons than play.  And I'm not implying that lessons can't be fun--I'm just saying that most of the intentionally-educational games I've played and seen have a different sort of feel to them, and to some children, those overtly educational games are not appealing. There are some children I couldn't pay to play such games.  So I have been pleased to see that there are children and families who visit our library on gaming days specifically for the Kids Lab.  Above all, the Kids Lab games are fun...they just also happen to be designed with math objectives.  And I'm not getting paid to say any of this, by the way.

So getting back to that food for thought...designing storytimes that have specific math objectives driving them have proven to be difficult for me to plan while preserving that spirit of play that we think our storytimes have, so although I have them drafted, I'm hoping for a burst of creative inspiration before September so that the number one thought in the minds of our storytime friends is, "That was fun!"