Gaming in the classroom or as a way to teach content experience has been growing in the past few years. I would like to talk about some of those games in the future since I think they have such potential…but I’m still looking for something that is more appropriate for students of our age groups.
While researching different games that can be played in the classroom I came upon several “easy” games that I think I teacher could use here and there and of course place on a website or as a Blackboard link to help students. These games are drill and practice which usually gets a bad rap…but in this case they are skills that can be practiced and enhanced with drill…i.e. mostly math.
If you search online for “educational games” you will find over 46,000,000 pages. Yikes! I’ve found a few that I think have a bit of potential if used in the right way. Many teachers are familiar with Math Mayhem. On this site you log on and practice your math by competing against other online players who are answering the same problems at the same time. Nothing like a bit of competition as incentive.
The other site that you might want to take a look at is Academic Skillbuilders.
Skillbuilders offers both Math and LA games. It looks they are adding games that have more interaction with other players….so instead of always playing against the computer, you are playing against an opponent online.
Obviously we can’t build our curriculum around games like this…but they are a nice supplement. What about making playing one of these a homework assignment? To ensure that the students actually did their work you could ask them to do a screen capture and print of several of their winning screens. All the student would need to do is hit the “print scr” button on their keyboard. The print screen button basically takes a picture of whatever is showing on the screen and places it on the clipboard. All the student would have to do is open a word processor and paste the screen capture in and print it out or better yet older students might be able to go paperless and email the Word document to you using Blackboard.
Can you imagine how excited one of your students would be to tell their parents that for homework they need to get on the computer and play games!
I will try to add more learning games in the future.
http://www.learningplanet.com/act/mayhem/index.asp
http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
That's cool that they can play against each other. I will need to add those to my webpage.
I will also be adding this one to my website! I haven't seen a game that reiforces vowels like one of the word games on Academic Builders. Thanks for another great tip!
-Jen
Post a Comment