Back in February, I was excited that Brian Mayer had tied the New York state curriculum standards to board games and that the School Library System of Genesee Valley BOCES had invested in a board game collection for use by its member libraries. Since then, however, Brian, Chris Harris, and their colleagues have stepped it up a notch and made the link between gaming and education more applicable beyond New York by aligning the use of these games with the American Association of School Librarians’ Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.

AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

“The new AASL standards are very supportive of the ideas and skills that make up gaming as can be seen in the gaming alignment below. This, document, created by the member libraries of the School Library System of Genesee Valley BOCES provides support for the use of games as a learning resource in school libraries.”

The 3MB PDF is available here.

If you’re interested in this subject, you’ll definitely want to follow their new Gaming blog, which includes a separate post explaining that gaming also strongly corresponds to many of the Common Beliefs laid out by the AASL. Major thanks to the BOCES crew for doing this work and leading the way in this area.