I found this article about the soft skills gaming refines, as well two TED Talks around the topic very interesting. But recently, I have delved back into the topic, as part of my research for my parenting book, “Raising Digital Leaders” which is scheduled to be published in the Spring by DBC. I have written about gaming before and my shift of thinking around gaming and literacy both here and in Social LEADia.

“I am playing chess on my phone, what’s the difference?”Īnd then, I started to reflect on the research. “Playing is a way I relax…I don’t have to think about it–it’s just muscle memory.” “The Library is brighter and way more comfortable” Why don’t you play one of our board games? (I have a great collection of games and a giant chess board made by our students in Tech that is used every single minute of the day).When you play video games, aren’t you taxing your brain? Why do you come to the Library to play games?.As a student voice advocate, this felt more like me. The next day, I decided to talk to kids and listen to what they had to say. That first day, I gave kids playing games a hard time. My first response was, I am being too lax. They are on screens enough, they should not be using devices to play games. I think the responses might be typical? Many of my peers said they do not allow kids to play video games in their space.

I ignored it mostly because I was swamped with a million other things (I thought October would be a little less busy!!), but also because I was curious to see how everyone else would respond before I offered my own sentiments. “Do you allow kids to play video games in your Library Learning Commons?” A question came up among my colleagues this week which I kind of ignored.

Courageous conversations tedtalk