Double "WOW" - Gaming is Unbelievable! - Week 10

Week 10: Gaming Demos was what the Learning 2.0 @Mac group was exposed to. It was unbelievable (at least for me). I attended both special drop-in sessions/presentations that Kelly Penfold "hosted"- boy, is she good. You can see she spends an incredible amount of time playing and developing the games so she's very comfortable playing, demonstrating and talking about them. Her computer must also be very powerful to hold all those games and not crash like mine always does. A few weeks ago, I did manage to download the basic Second Life, but have been very unsuccessful playing it (computer crashes constantly). I have also played Dance Dance Revolution (beginner mode) and its great fun and a good workout too. With DDR you need PS2 and a "dance mat" - its all one package. You choose from beginner to difficult, you select the music and then you watch the screen and step on the arrows. The screen tells you if you're marvelous or it boos you.
All these gaming and virtual worlds will be of interest to the library since you can have hundreds, perhaps thousands of users on a single game/virtual world. You may have a reference librarian in the virtual world to answer any inquiries, but you will also have many other participants from other parts of the world who may be able to answer or point the inquiry in another direction or perhaps because other participants have more knowledge or experience in other areas they can respond "better" . No one person has all the answers - if the question is posted to an open audience/participants, the person posing the question can choose what answer best applies to them.