EduGames+Online

[|Line Rider 2]. This is “hot off the presses” and is the sequel to the popular Line Rider game. It can be used very effectively to teach physics and other topics. Students can also have a lot of fun creating and saving their creations.

[|Class Tools]. Teachers and students can create lots of learning activities using formats from popular 1980’s arcade games.

[|Philologus] It’s very similar to Class Tools. However, it uses more recent television games shows as templates for teacher and student created exercises.

[It’s a series of timed puzzles from the BBC, and they’re a lot harder than you think.[[http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks1bitesize/|Bite Size Literacy and Math] It’s a new BBC portal filled with fun activities for Beginning English Language Learners and native-English speakers to develop literacy and math skills.

[|Free Rice]It’s great that they donate rice to the United Nations food program for every correct answer. It’s here because it’s a neat vocabulary-building exercise for anyone. It stands-out becauses it only increases its difficulty level based on how well you’re doing in the game.

The [|Twenty Questions Game]. You think of something, and the computer asks you questions in an attempt to guess what you’re thinking of.

[|Qtoro] It’s a fun game covering countless subjects. Students can also create their own games and compete against each other.

[|Launchball] from the British Science Musuem. Students can create a sort of video game (and learn scientific concepts in the process), title it, and post the url.

[|Stock News Game]. In it, you’re given a very short piece of information about a company, and then have to predict if its stock goes down, stays the same, or goes up by the end of the day that news came out. It would certainly be better than the convoluted and dry explanations I’ve seen in our high school economics textbooks! [|Planet Green Game.] It’s basically a role-playing game where players have to minimize their carbon emissions. And it’s combined with learning environmental facts. I was especially impressed that there’s audio support for a fair amount of the text. [|What 2 Learn]. It has a variety of templates, and a fairly easy process, that teachers and students can use to create and play learning games. [|Word Connect]. It’s a great Tetris-like game with various difficulty levels accessible to English Language Learners. Players get to pick the categories of words for their particular game, and the words themselves are shown on the side. It’s an excellent vocabulary-reinforcing activity. [|ROAR: The Game!] Players have to create their own zoo, including picking habitats, the animals, their food, and their feeding routines. There is audio support for some text, and the English is simple. It’s a fun way to to learn about animals and practice language skills. One feature that I particularly like is that you can email a link of your creation to a teacher or friend for posting on a website or blog. Then, as an extension activity, students could write a little describing their zoo, as well as use it as an opportunity for oral practice. Players do have to register for the game, but it’s free and easy to do so. [|Spywatch], another neat game from the BBC. In it, the player has to discover who is the spy working in Great Britain during World War II. There’s a fair amount of reading involved, though it’s simple language and laid-out well. [|Electrocity], an award-winning game where players can create their own cities and see the environmental consequences of their design decisions. [|Sea Monster Game], again from the BBC. It takes you to ancient seas to meet predators from the past. It’s a little complicated, but Intermediate English Language Learners should be able to have some fun and learn while playing it. [|Sim Sweatshop], where the player simulates being a worker in an overseas sweatshop producing sneakers for the American consumer. This game, as some others I’ve posted about, fall into the category of “simulations.” These are basically role-playing games. It’s a good language-development activity and also an excellent tool to help teach about economics and justice. [|Questionaut], an online video game from the BBC where players have to answer questions related to English, Science and Math. As you answer the questions correctly, a little “questionaut” in a balloon gets to continue on his journey. [|Time Pirates], an extraordinarily ambitious interactive game-site designed to help students learn about the history of London from 2,000 years ago to now. [|iCue]. It’s a collaboration between NBC and MIT. There’s //a lot// to the site. It’s basically an extremely interactive way to learn about the news (and has a new U.S. History component), but that’s an understatement. It’s designed for students thirteen years-old and above. You can play games, watch videos (which all have very easy and simultaneous access to its transcript at the same time — great for English Language Learners and, in my experience, unusual on the web), save student work, and a ton of other activities. You have to register, but it’s free and easy to do so. [|Life or Death Game], which comes from the Discovery Channel. In it, your helicopter has crashed into the jungle, and you experience lots of danger. At each crisis point, you have to choose between two or more options. It’s sort of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” game. [|Free Poverty], an online geography game. It’s similar to the popular [|Free Rice]vocabulary game that donates money to purchase rice for distribution by the United Nations. In Free Poverty, though, money to distribute water is supposedly distributed to Third World countries for every correct answer. I say supposedly just because I haven’t seen any third party corroboration that monies are actually distributed. But I still like the game itself, which is similar to the very well-done and popular [|Travelpod geography games]. [|Tutpup], a new site where students can compete in math or spelling games against other students from around the world anonymously — either with a made-up name or no name at all.There are a number of sites where users can compete in learning games like these. The problem I’ve had with them is that there is no way to “level the playing the field.” However, the key difference between Tutpup and these other sites is that Tutpup has multiple levels of play to choose from going from extremely easy to extremely hard. This ability to choose your level helps a lot.Plus, there’s some sort of teacher’s option that allows students to sign-up in a class. <span style="COLOR: rgb(23,31,54)">[|Explore A Pyramid] a National Geographic interactive exercise where the “player” operates a robot to remotely <span style="COLOR: rgb(23,31,54)">[|Explore A Pyramid]. My students, and grandchildren, love it. <span style="COLOR: rgb(23,31,54)">[|Gut Instinct]. It has questions divided into three categories — English, Math and Science. But the exciting feature of the game is that students can super-easily create their own virtual “rooms” for between two-and-thirty people where they can compete with their peers. All they have to do is all type in the name of their room (or “league”), choose their avatar and nickname, and the game begins. <span style="COLOR: rgb(23,31,54)">[|Photo Munchr]. It’s a Pac-Man-type word game. It shows a word and a bunch of different photos. If you “munch” on the seven photos that correctly illustrate the word, you advance to the next level. It’s a fun way for English Language Learners to build and reinforce vocabulary. <span style="COLOR: rgb(23,31,54)">[|Spelling City]. You can use <span style="COLOR: rgb(23,31,54)">[|sample lists] on the site, or you can develop your own lists of words to learn. The site will convert the lists into different stages — learn, play, test. It provides audio support as well as text. One of the exceptional features of the site is that it teaches the words in the context of an audio sentence instead of in isolation. I’m continually amazed at technology — the site came up with appropriate sentences for all the words on the list I came up with. <span style="COLOR: rgb(23,31,54)">[|Play The News]. It’s a new, and continually updated, series of role-playing games about current events. Each game highlights a different news event — the Olympics, elections, etc. A short accessible video is shown with background information. Players then decide, of the different key roles involved in the event, which one they want to be. After they choose, they pick from various options which action they think //should// be taken. They then see how many other players chose that and the other options. They then you choose which action they think will actually take place, and see the overall results there, too (it’s not as complicated as it sounds). In order to play, you have to register (for free), and an overall leaderboard keeps track of what percentage of the time your predictions were correct. It’s an excellent, and accessible, way for students to engage in current events.

Souce:http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/07/09/the-best-online-learning-games-2008/ Larry Ferlazzo