Role of Games in a School Library Media Program

Why not? It's an educational tool that engages students during learning experiences; probably more than any other tool.

I love that there is research about using gaming to teach and that I can use that when I make my budget pitch to my principal and Local School Council. I found the School Libraryland blog and the online toolkit for building gaming @ your library especially enlightening. Genesee Valley BOCES IS a trailblazer in this area. I look forward to sharing this information with my colleagues.

I have many games in my school library such as boggle, scrabble, connect four, Uno, and the like. I also have a chess club, which has grown into a very popular game at my school over the last two years. I've been teaching the faculty too. It's a lot of fun and the students LOVE to play against teachers. I teach reading and math via chess and it's probably been one of the greatest experiences in my career. If you don't have chess at your school, I would recommend starting up an afterschool program...it is amazing how engaged students can be and it doesn't involve anything electronic:) But it can, obviously, we play chess on the computers as well.

I have been using a scavenger hunt to teach students how to use the library and it's probably the lesson that they are most engaged in throughout the year. It's very effective for teaching them where resources are located as well as what info. the resource provides. The competitive aspect is fun because there are always prizes for the first few who complete it. Students also enjoy choosing their partners to work together. I typically don't include the Internet as a resource for this specific activity because we do so many other info. quest type activities with it throughout the year. We do use our computers to access gaming sites.