Remember when your parents told you it was a waste of time to spend your days playing video games? Imagine what they would say if they knew video games were being used in university classrooms to engage students in complex learning. Yes, video games are becoming the object of study for scholarly teachers in all disciplines. So why not celebrate this Friday by learning from some video games?

• Friend of the show…errr…friend of the blog @LitAtLeddy is always finding quirky literature resources. This is by far the quirkiest: Quirk Books’ list of “Five Bookish iPhone Games You Should Be Playing Right Now.” This may provide that push you needed to finally read Jane Austen. However, we don’t want to discriminate against the non-iPhone crowd, so here’s a link to a game we can all enjoy: pong.
• But why should the literature junkies get all the fun? They shouldn’t, and that’s why playinghistory.org exists, collecting history games covering just about every topic imaginable. Imagine what your Canadian history elective would have been like if you could have learned about the West Coast shipping trade from a game like “Navigate the Hazards“.
• Admittedly, science is the least fun of all the disciplines. The website sciencegamecenter.org is trying to change that. Now instead of watching reruns of medical dramas like ER to learn about medicine, you can play games like Cell HD: Emergence.

Happy Friday!