iPhone app: 3 Degrees of Wikipedia (social game)

[This was initially posted at an experimental group blog, "Gamers Blog", which we've decided to close.]

Found this post at CreativeApplications.Net. About an iPhone app that's essentially a "connect-the-dots" game out of Wikipedia entries.

Here's the social learning/ gaming element: You can play a 'game' created by others, and also create a game yourself. Players can then rate the game level of difficulty/ usefulness.

Watch this self-explanatory video:

3 Degrees of Wikipedia Demo from 3 Wiki on Vimeo.

Basically as a player, you try to make the connection between three Wikipedia articles. E.g. "What's the connection between "iPhone" and "China"?" The answer, as shown in the video, is a Wikipedia entry on "Compass".

I thought the app was quite cool.

And I instantly thought about it as a library application (OK, librarians have to get rid of their hang-ups about Wikipedia though! LOL)

If framed properly in the context of library gaming, the app could be about information literacy, information-seeking (to some extent), information and knowledge discovery, and social learning.

But what might be more challenging is for the hyperlinks links to be stripped out from the Wikipedia. 'Cos after a while, the player may end up just looking for hyperlinks in the text, rather than think about the question/ contextual connection.