Title: Angry Birds Space

Cost: $0.99

Platform: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (s), iPod touch, iPad, and Android. Requires i0S 4.0 or later.

The pigs are back to try to outsmart the birds, but this time they meet their fate in…space! Rovio Mobile, the same company that developed all of the previous Angry Birds games, has just unveiled the newest addition to the Angry Birds game family, Angry Birds Space. This game has all of the same excellent and addictive features as its predecessors, plus more. Since launching just last week, the app has already been downloaded over 10 million times! What makes it so cool? Well, the battles between the pigs and the birds take place in space where there are gravitational force fields and the game has new varieties of birds with special abilities, such as the bird who can freeze things by casting an ice shield when launched. This game is really fun and a must for teens who already enjoy the original Angry Birds games. (more…)

Title: Michael Jackson The Experience

Cost:  $4.99
Platform: iPad: requires iOS 4.2 or later

When Michael Jackson The Experience came out for Xbox Kinect every teen in my library wanted to give it a whirl, but some were too shy to shake it in front of their peers. This excellent iPad app is a great alternative for teens who just aren’t comfortable doing their best rendition of “Thriller” in front of an audience. In this format, they can let their fingers do the dancing and save themselves some humiliation, all while taking part jamming out to MJ’s classic hits like “Beat It,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Blood on the Dance Floor, “and much more. Don’t see your favorite song included in the game? No worries, you can download other songs through the in-app purchase function.

The game functions by using your fingers to make a series of swipes across the screen, following the prompts for each impending dance move. When this happens, the Michael Jackson avatar comes to life and performs real Michael Jackson signature moves. Thankfully, the game is not sensitive to how large you make the signs or where on the screen you make them; just as long as you perform the correct “swipe motion,” your move will be properly executed. The animation and game graphics are amazing and will not let you down. (more…)

I’m back with another month’s worth of interesting research and writing on scholarly and popular topics related to teen culture, literacy, and library services. I’ve decided to expand from just summarizing research to also linking you to fascinating articles, blog posts, or other more easily-accessed tidbits that might spark meaningful conversation, programming, or reference/advisory transactions. As always, if you have a topic you’d like to know about, or if there’s a journal you miss having access to, comment here and I’ll do some digging for you.

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National Gaming Day is November 12 – a week from Saturday. It’s “an initiative of the American Library Association to reconnect communities through their libraries around the educational, recreational, and social value of all types of games.” [source]

Even if the idea of gaming makes you a little nervous, there’s so much you can do with your teens to celebrate NGD. School librarians may choose to hold an even prior to the day (Saturdays aren’t so great for us), while public librarians whose libraries are open on Saturdays can celebrate on the day itself. whether low- or high-tech, you’ll be able to pull something fun together with these ideas:

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I’m cheating a little because I haven’t actually played Minecraft with teens on the brand new multiplayer server space I just rented.  But I do play a lot of Minecraft with my friends, I have talked a lot about it with teens, and I am going to offer the game as a regular teen program starting next week.  Here’s what I’m doing to bring Minecraft to the library, and links to some interesting ideas about things you might do with it.

But first, what is Minecraft?

Minecraft is a game where you roam a landscape full of different sorts of blocks that you can move around to build anything you want.  You can dig deep to find different resources, and explore to find a variety of environments.  At night, zombies and other monsters come out, so you need to protect yourself.  The game was created by Swedish programmer Markus Persson, and is being developed by his company Mojang.  It’s still in beta,  so there are new updates all the time.  Minecraft is getting prettier and more involved with each new permutation.

I love this game because it demands creativity.  You have a world, and you can do anything.  It’s even more fun with friends, where in building your world you find yourselves cooperating by sharing resources,  planning building projects,  helping each other and showing off for each other.  I can’t wait to see what happens when I turn my group of teens loose in their new world.

Here’s a video for you to take a look at Minecraft.

Click through for more.
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Do you think Powerpoint is just for presentations? Meetings? Display? Think again. Powerpoint can also be used to create cool trivia and strategy games.

Creating trivia games is easy. Simply write down your multiple choice  trivia questions and answers. Then, create a Powerpoint presentation with one question or answer on each slide. You can add animations, graphics, or sounds too.  Then, hook up your computer to a projector or large monitor so everyone can see your presentation. Have your teens or teams create answer cards on labeled A-D on scrap paper. Then, when playing, they can hold them up before you display the answer.

TIP: It’s important to keep your script and to keep track of which teens or teams answered correctly before displaying the answer to avoid confusion.

Next, there are strategy games. These are similar to “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” novels. They can be used to tease plots of book discussion books, or teens can create their own to share with the group. For these, you’ll be creating links to slides within the presentation. To do this with Powerpoint 2007:

1) Select the text that you wish to use to create the link. This will be part of your choice. For example, if you have the choice “fight the dragon” or “run away” you are going to create a link to a different slide for each choice.

2) With your mouse, right click on your selected text. A drop-down menu will appear. Select “Hyperlink” from this menu.

3) This will bring up another menu. On the left, you will notice tabs with places to link to. Select the tab labeled “Place in this document”. After doing this, you will see a list of the slides you have created on the right. Select the title of the slide that you wish to link to.

TIP: Be sure to map out your game so that you will know how many slides that you need for each decision. Also, keep your slide titles relevant to save time and aggravation when creating links.

You can create as many decisions, choices, questions, and answers as you want, but remember that each item you add will increase the file size which may create a problem when transferring it to another computer.

We play games on Friday afternoons. My library has a Wii and a Playstation 2, which we set up in our community room.  Teens and tweens are welcome, and many come back week after week to play Rock Band, Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, Wii Sports, Dance Dance Revolution and whatever other  games that teens or I have brought in that week. They take turns based on whoever wants to play.  Some enjoy just hanging out and watching.  It’s a relaxed environment that promotes socializing, conversation, and cooperation.

In the spirit of my relaxed gaming programs, I will share a few things that I love about connecting with teens over video games.
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Librarians looking for evidence that gaming programs are worthwhile may want to check out the new book by game designer Jane McGonigal.  McGonigal appeared on the Colbert Report tonight to promote Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.

In her interview with Colbert, McGonigal pointed out that 10 years of scientific research show that playing games is one of the most productive things people can do.  The emotions gamers feel while playing can also spill over into the real world, so that they feel more confident and do better at tests, for instance.

McGonigal has been preaching the merits of massive, multiplayer games for years, as she did in this February 2010 interview on Wired.com.  Besides making people happy, she says, games can help young people learn how to work together to solve real-world problems.

Playing the game World Without Oil, for instance, spurred gamers to change their daily habits, and to encourage friends and family to do the same.  Last year she designed the game Evoke for young people in Africa.  It’s a crash course in starting a business and tackling problems like poverty at a local level.  Last August, 57,000 gamers  were credited as co-authors of a paper for the journal Nature for playing a game (FoldIt) where the goal is to fold virtual proteins in new ways.

McGonigal wants gamers to realize that, just like their powerful avatars, they can be heroic and resilient when it comes to tackling the world’s problems. Right now, there are people playing games that could help them to cure cancer, end poverty and stop climate change.  McGonigal’s goal is get 3 billion people around the globe to play games like these for an hour a day.

Title: Epic Win
Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
(Requires iOS 3.0 or later)
Cost: $2.99

Let it first be said that I am a list maker. Before my iPhone, I loved using my daily calender to keep my lists of things I needed TO DO. And with my iPhone, I’ve tried various TO DO programs to keep myself organized, but usually end up back with real sticky notes.  I  keep sticky notes by my desk at both work and home so I can add more things to my lists. Trouble is, my little sheets often unstick themselves, disappear, or end up deep under the pile of other notes on stickies.  So I am always on the hunt for a better TO DO app. One that really fits my way of trying to keep organized.

So you can’t imagine how happy I was when I learned about Epic Win when a friend showed me this Pre-Release Trailer. Finally an app that lets users turn their own life into the epic quest it really is.  This app is a To Do List / RPG mash up, and it’s kept me on task for months now. (more…)

Last week, we posted about YALSA’s Thinking Big About Advocacy Contest, an opportunity for you to share your advocacy successes, inspire your fellow librarians, and win $500.00 for your efforts. Today, we are highlighting one of the biggest advocacy movements championed by librarians in the past five years: Gaming in Libraries.

In reality, gaming in libraries is not a new idea: chess has been played in libraries for nearly 150 years, and during the Great Depression, toys and games were often circulated in public libraries. What has changed over the years are the games themselves. While board games are still in the mix, the presence of gaming consoles (Xbox, Wii) in libraries has been on the rise since 2006. (more…)