What I am saying is that we live a world of three contextual states the Environmental, the Instructional, and the Internal. The Environmental provides the content of the Instructional, i.e. what is the environment trying to tell us? The internal state contains our belief system our focus, and our commend sense schema, etc. and is a huge influence on how we perceive and more important How We Translate our Environment and Instructional cues.

What I suggesting is that use of games as a medium for your instructional quiver. It is not true that 30 seconds is the average time of a commercial. In fact they are often 1 mi 30 seconds or two minutes 20 seconds.

Taking the careful application of gaming methodologies to your content has the power to change your classroom for your relationship with your students.

Professors: Professors are afraid because they see kids today are favoring a visual stimulus that is interactive and evolving. Professors are largely unable to cope with this because of their own inadequacy at producing an evolving, stimulating learning environment.

Librarians (basically anyone who doesn’t favor visual stimulus): Largely people who do not favor visual stimulus. Do not understand or enjoy videogames because they cannot understand the interactivity of the environments and the non-linear storylines based in videogames today. Librarians and book-lovers prefer the simple, linear storylines fused to blank, boring pieces of paper to the vivid, exciting and fulfilling storylines that you interactively participate in inside videogames.

Generation Old: They were used to getting beated by leather belts by the “greatest generation”. They have to be submissive and “take it like a man”. Now, the younger generation has taken the place of the “greatest generation” in being dominant. The younger ones have it their way. The older generation tries to instill fear in the hearts of the younger generation because they have plenty of stories about “what your grandfather would have done in a situation like this”. Well, grandpa is dead, and that old expression will never work again. (Now relating this back to videogames)
Generation old will try and pick away at the younger generation (Generation Xbox) and stand against things that represent the younger generation… What would that be? Xbox! They figure if they can take away what represents us that they can dominate us like their parents did to them. Well, they’ll try to their grave.

Seriously, people want more than one experience in their day and to take something they do for relaxation and say “we’ll imitate this in class because that’s what they want” ignores the fact that people don’t want to do the same thing all day long. Except maybe a handful of addicted gamers (or alcoholics). And you know, some students come to school to learn. I really think we’re characterizing them all as babies. Sure, games may be fun (for some) but why assume that’s all they want? Or treat it as some kind of stealth marketing campaign. Fool them into using the library by giving ‘em what they want (even though maybe the only want whatever that is some of the time).

Sorry – must be a cranky Monday Morning thing…..

I do think we could heed the advice a student once gave me in a class evaluation: “Don’t be so boring.” Okay, I’ll try that next time. And I like the idea of exploring the social networking idea. Any thoughts, Gen Y, on how that could apply to libraries (as opposed to, say, courses, where it’s a natural fit as you create a small but like-minded community)?

I fail to see how gaming has infiltrated college campuses. In my college experience (1999-2004), I saw only a niche group interested in gaming (computer, video, or whatever mode), and an even smaller number devote hours and hours to this experience. Personally, I tried games, on several platforms, and couldn’t get interested (“a” + “b” buttons plus “over” … who can remember that stuff?). Maybe I’m biased because of my own disinterest in the activity, however….

As for the 30-second “hook” time, I am not convinced that this has anything to do with games. After all, 30-seconds has been the standard length of commercials for a long time. I guess what I’m trying to say is: we never had more than 30-seconds to hook a student, regardless of whether his/her leisure activities involves playing games, reading books, or dancing around like a chicken.

If we want to identify the trend in generation Y/ Xbox/ whatever, I think we need to look at social networking on the Web. Try out facebook.com, and you’re bound to see a large portion of your students using and networking on this read/ write web. Even if you don’t use it yourself, you’re bound to see it appearing on the screens in your computer lab. In my mind, this is the technology that libraries need to pay attention to if we want to reach the current generation of learners.