Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Gaming in the library

Games online can be either pure entertainment, or somewhat educational. The ones that are more towards the educational, parentally-approved ones probably tend to be less entertaining, but not necessarily. And even the nominally purely entertaining games teach something. The question is, what? In a library setting, gaming can be a draw for those who wouldn't otherwise be interested in stepping foot in a library, whether it be for a formal gaming program put on by the teen librarian, or just to use the computers to play online, such as what we tried in this week's assignment. On the other hand, it can cause other patrons to get huffy when all of the computers are in use, when they have more "important" things to do on the computer than gaming. I even once read a magazine article to the effect that the reason students these days do so poorly on tests of geographic knowledge is that libraries are putting on fluff gaming programs. Of course, that argument supposes not only that games aren't educational at all, but that the poor, unsuspecting gamers would be in the library studying geography if it weren't for those pesky librarians' gaming programs.

One time I asked my son why he likes his video games so much, and he said that it's better than reading because in a game, he is an integral part of the story. If he wants to putz around in a particular area, he can, and if he wants to drive the story forward and have adventures, he can do that, too.

Then again, libraries have this faith that once we get someone in the door, we can interest them in reading. It would be very nice to see some empirical, even strong anecdotal evidence to that effect, and I haven't yet.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Google Earth vs Google maps

This week I explored Google Earth. I downloaded the (free) program, and used it to see Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Tegucigalpa, Honduras (the Honduran capital), my parent's house in Colorado, and find directions to Neah Bay, WA from my house. Then I compared doing those same activities in the standard Google Maps available from the main Google page, both in the map view and in the satellite view. Both have their advantages and disadvantages:
  • Google Earth gives a smooth "flying movie" look to traveling to a particular spot. It also offers a way to change the point of view. Google Maps is much jerkier, like a series of photographs.
  • Google Earth gives great, building-level detail for Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and links to actual street-level photographs. Cool! Google Maps doesn't give nearly that level of detail and blanks out at a certain point. Neither one gave any detail for Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
  • Both gave good directions from my house to Neah Bay, including the ferry ride, but Google Maps was easier to read by far than Google Earth.
  • Both gave identical satellite photos of my house, late in the day in spring.
  • Google Earth gives users a neat way of labeling personally important locations and sending them to or sharing them with other users.