The Reading Agency is an independent charity, with a mission to inspire more people to read more in the belief that reading can have a profound effect on people’s life chances. They have recently carried out a study into gaming and reading, looking at whether the gaming medium can be used to encourage more adults to read. During the session they will explore how reading and meaning are situated within the social and cultural practices of gaming and technology and set the challenge of creating a game to entice adult readers with low literacy skills.
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The Reading Agency challenge: harnessing the global power of games to win new readers
1. The Reading Agency challenge: Harnessing the global power of games to win new readers Michelle Treagust Lancaster Literacy Research Centre International Summer School in Digital Literacies, 1 July 2010
9. A game or a book? Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw
10. A book or a game? Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnBrDDlgNRk
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Notas do Editor
Aims of the session: *Introduce to work of The Reading Agency – what we do as a charity *Discuss our report: Gaming for reading: a feasibility study on the use of video games to engage adults with low literacy in reading for pleasure . Put the report into context of gaming industry & society Experiential learning – explore technologies yourselves, think about them from a literacy perspective The Six Book Challenge – making the analogue digital Get involved
Introduction: About me: Project manager, Adults team, The Reading Agency Skills for Life practitioner – literacy, numeracy and ICT Media producer – BBC Learning online production, BBC Skillswise Bit of a geek, gamer, love exploring new technology
Idea: to demonstrate how embedded gaming is in our society How many have you read some text in the last week? How many have you played a game in the last week? Get your mobile phones out – turn them on but on silent. How many of you can find games on your mobile phone? You ALL have the potential to be gamers.
Invitation to read six books and record the reading in a diary. Library support for choosing books. Incentives and a certificate for those who read six books. Proven way of engaging and motivating adults to improve their literacy skills and develop a new reading and library habit. Almost 10 000 participants in 2010.
FarmVille – on Facebook – surprised gaming industry, people play at being a farmer. Developers are targeting a wider demographic – introduction of the Wii, called so to show people playing together – intuitiveness of interaction. Video games moved from (predominantly) guys playing in their bedroom into the family room – RockBand The Beatles whole new audience bought consoles and the game because it was The Beatles.
Video for a book on the new iPad. Discuss – is this a book or a game? Games are structured with narrative and characters, as are books.
Flips on the DS. Read Artemis Fowl series, observations: I couldn’t tell how big the book was, no barriers – went to local library to view. Could read a small section at a time. SFX of moving pages. Adults – 100 classic books for DS, can download books from DS store.