In the age of smart phones, tablets, and handhelds, it’s easy to look around and wonder if books have gone the way of the dinosaur. Have no fear, fellow fossils! Just as comics and graphic novels can be an exciting gateway to literacy, video games have the power to plug students of all ages into reading.
Listen to Trapped in a Video Game author Dustin Brady talk about how action-packed writing can push all the right buttons for gaming fans and reluctant readers alike.
Teaching Tools
From WIRED: “Minecraft is the hot new video game among teachers and parents. It’s considered genuinely educational: Like an infinite set of programmable Lego blocks, it’s a way to instill spatial reasoning, math, and logic—the skills beloved by science and technology educators. But from what I’ve seen, it also teaches something else: good old-fashioned reading and writing.”
From Gamification: “Like TV, the video game has been turned into an enemy of the traditionally more academic medium: the book. But these stereotypes are being broken more and more each day. Video games are showing capability of teaching the necessary literacy skills kids need to survive both in their studies and in the workplace later in life.”
From School Library Journal: “It’s a strategy to get kids in the door who may also become regular visitors to other teen programs. Librarians say that Fortnite events they’ve hosted have drawn more kids to their libraries’ programs than ever before. ”
From Edutopia: “All games tell stories. Unlike other media (books, television, film), the interactivity puts the player in the role of protagonist. Writing games can be quite complex and involve more than characters and dialogue.”
Plug into a good book!
