How do you stay ahead of the game when it comes to coding and gamification in your library? Have you tried activities with online gaming and coding tools with your students? I can assure you there are gamers in your library no matter what grade levels you serve. If you give them a chance to create their own games, just think of the awesome collaboration and coding opportunities your students will get to explore. Here are some fun gaming/programming digital tools for you and your students to discover.

App Inventor: http://www.appinventor.org/
Looking for a fun, easy way to create apps for your Android-based devices? App Inventor makes the process of designing Android apps easy and fun. With App Inventor's Course-in-a-Box, video tutorials, and detailed instructions, librarians, students, and peer educators have everything they need to start a coding course or club. Users, regardless of experience level, can learn to build and publish apps within hours. App Inventor has a visual, block coding structure that will engage and empower students to see what they can create. It can be used to create mapping games through the library or to imagine fictional worlds in literature. App Inventor also has speech-to-text capabilities and can read questions out loud to users—very useful for accessibility purposes. An iOS platform will be coming soon.

Bloxels: http://home.bloxelsbuilder.com/
When it comes to gaming and hand-held devices Bloxels is amazing. This platform allows kids to build, collaborate, and tell stories through video game creation. With Bloxels, users don't need to understand or know code. Students take a Bloxels Gameboard, some blocks, a mobile device, and build their own video game. It works like this: design the board, design a character, take a picture, and play the game. Bloxels is free, but although the Bloxels Gameboard is not free, it is also not required. Students can create games on the Bloxels app without a board. However, some advanced features do require the Bloxels Video Game Builder Starter Kit, which is available at the Bloxels website or at major retailers. This is a wonderful game creation tool elementary and middle school students will love.

Metaverse: https://gometa.io/
Augmented reality (AR) is very popular with cost-effective options like Google Cardboard widely available and technologies such as Oculus Rift becoming more affordable. Metaverse is a free platform that offers users the opportunity to create an augmented reality app. This platform is based on the idea of creating a storyboard to outline the actions the user wants the app to perform. Each frame of the storyboard is then connected with action commands chosen from a menu. The more scenes added to the storyboard, the more options included to the app. Overall, creating an app through Metaverse is a similar process to navigating a choose-your-own-adventure story. Just think about how cool Metaverse could be for a book trailer or a library escape room!

Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/
It's been around for a while, but Scratch needs to be included here. Scratch makes it easy for students, teachers, and peer librarians to create their own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art. It is a free programming tool designed for students between the ages of eight and sixteen, but younger and older students can certainly enjoy Scratch as well. As students, educators, and librarians create and share Scratch projects, they also learn and engage with mathematical and computational skills, think creatively, and work collaboratively. Scratch is a great tool for creating games in math or science and users can create individual or multi-player games. Students can create gaming activities for library scavenger hunts or book shelf exercises. The possibilities are wide open with this gaming tool.

Digital gaming and game-based apps don't have to be difficult or time consuming. Activities are easy to tie into library, computer science, and core course curricula, and students will enjoy the time spent creating and sharing games with their peers. Hopefully one of these tools will be handy for your practice in your school library setting.