"Scott Rice and Amy Harris from the University of North Carolina Greensboro have graciously made their Information Literacy game available to other libraries for download and adaptation under the Creative Commons licence.

http://library.uncg.edu/game/mygame.asp" [Bibliographic Gaming]

The BG bloggers don't post often, but it's quality stuff when they do. Earlier this month, they linked to a video of "Revolution," a mod for a game called Neverwinter Nights (NWN). It was developed by MIT and the University of Wisconsin - Madison (as those familiar with the field would expect) as a historical simulation of colonial Williamsburg for classroom use.

I've heard Henry Jenkins tell two great stories about use of this simulation and how it resonated with students in an educational way (as opposed to simply a recreational one). Both stories help illustrate the power of simulation in education, and I highly recommend that you read both stories on pages 28-29 from Jenkins' report about participatory culture for the MacArthur Foundation (PDF) if you haven't already read the whole thing, which you should do immediately anyway.

My point in highlighting this story (besides the obvious, here's-a-good-example-of-what-we've-been-talking-about angle) is that the Bibliographic Gaming blog recently found and linked to a video of Revolution. Pick your size to watch at http://gaming.mit.edu/revolution/, more in general at http://wwww.projectnml.org/revolution. It's not the history class you took in middle school, is it? Unfortunately, the group ran out of funding and have since discontinued work on the game, which is a real shame.

And while there is a definite appeal to modding this game to help jumpstart library-related efforts, Dr. Jenkins noted an issue that sadly would cause no end of controversy in our world. Apparently the initial NWN screen displays an image related to witchcraft, so you can imagine the noise from the let's ban Harry Potter pocket of folks.

Bonus image from the Game On: Games in Libraries blog (Thanks, Jami!) -