Gamify Your Library With Michelle Simms

Michelle Simms speaking at Kerikeri High School

We were very lucky to get Michelle Simms from Te Totara Primary School to present to SLANZA Te Tai Tokerau members last Saturday at Kerikeri High School.  Librarians and teachers arrived from far and wide to attend.

The first session was on Gamify your Library which Michelle presented to the SLANZA conference in 2013.  This is not using games in your Library but rather building on the appeal of games to create an engaging and dynamic Library.  Michelle had lots of ideas of promotions which could be adapted for your Library.  Here are just some of them:

·         A Genre quiz
·         Blind date with a book
·         A customised Monopoly game
·         A novel murder
·         Reading Bingo
·         A reading quest

After a yummy morning tea with Di Eastwood’s date scones, we convened for the second session of Virtual Librarian with some ideas for online tools and apps for your Library.  Whilst I was familiar with blogs, Facebook, Pinterest (a visual discovery tool that you can use to find ideas), Symbaloo (Access your bookmarks anywhere), Livebinders (Organise your resources in an online binder), Weebly (a web hosting service that gives you an easy way to create a website), I hadn’t heard about Pond http://www.n4l.co.nz/pond/,the network for Leaning portal which is just being rolled out but this sounds like a place which we will all become familiar.

The last session was on the pros and cons and process of Genrification.  Whilst this could be organising your entire Library into genres, in most schools this has been organising your Fiction section into Genres rather than by the authors’ surname.  I think this is an interesting idea and I am keeping an open mind on it. 

We concluded with lunch of home-made soup and freshly baked bread and a raffle for some donated books.  I think we all walked away happy with our choice.

Thanks are due to Michelle Simms, Te Totara Primary School, Jeannie Skinner, National Library and Julia Smith from Kerikeri High School for an interesting and informative morning.

Dee Brooker

For more detail on these sessions, here is the link to Michelle’s presentations http://www.slideshare.net/spaceace40