game – Page 3 – iLearn Technology

Branches of Power

July 19, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2830 views

What it is: Looking for another super awesome learning game for your classroom? Filament Games does it again with Branches of Power. In it, students can play all three branches of government, all working cooperatively toward the goal of building new laws. As President, students will choose issues they think are important and rally people around them. As Legislator, they will create bills around the values of the constituents. As Justice, they will uphold the law or take out legislation that is unconstitutional. The only way to navigate the game successfully is to cooperatively construct laws around the issues of the country. (Our government probably has something to learn about the cooperatively part.) Students will find issues that the citizens care about. By using the three branches of government, they can grow the issues into laws which appear as towers. They win if they build all ten issues into towers before time runs out. Students get the opportunity to play as all three branches, they have to stay on top of it, if they don’t, the branch may start making decisions on its own!

How to integrate Branches of Power into the classroom: Branches of Power is a fantastic interactive game that puts students right in the thick of the government. I love that the game doesn’t ask students to choose a branch of government to play, but expects them to learn, and play, all three roles. There is nothing like experience to teach students about the different roles, struggles, and methodologies of each branch of government. Branches of Power is an excellent game for the computer lab environment where each student has access to a computer and can play individually. After play, discuss what worked well and what didn’t. Were students able to complete all 10 towers? Who got the furthest and what was the strategy that took them to that point? If you don’t have access to a computer lab, the game can be navigated as a class using a projector-connected computer or an interactive whiteboard. Discuss strategy during game play and give each student a chance to take part in the game. This is an outstanding way to learn about the branches of government, what better way to learn than by doing?

Tips: Below the game play screen, check out the Teacher Tools tab. There are some great teacher files including a Powerpoint presentation that reinforces game concepts and a teacher’s guide to using the game in class.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Branches of Power in your classroom.

Landform Detectives

July 19, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4747 views

What it is: Today I was searching for websites and games that would enhance and enrich the Treasures curriculum. MacMillan Mcgraw Hill’s reading curriculum is lacking (in my opinion) in the activities that it uses to help students learn grammar, vocabulary, spelling, etc. Most of the suggested activities are not those that require any deep thinking (or in some cases any thinking at all) and usually involve some sort of copying out of the dictionary or filling out a worksheet type undertaking. These don’t impress me at all. So, last year I went through all of the Treasures curriculum, pulled out all of the essential learning and skills that needed to be gained. I have since been on the hunt for engaging activities and games that will help students learn, practice, and create with the essential learning at the core. Therein lies the rub. As I scour the Internet for games and activities what I usually come up with is more worksheets. The problem is, they aren’t labeled worksheet. They are labeled “game” or “interactive”. They aren’t really games or interactive (any child would tell you that!), they are multiple choice online worksheets. I refuse to subject students to them. Today I made the following comment on Twitter: “Dear educational game makers, an online multiple choice quiz is not a game, it is a worksheet. Please stop pretending it’s a game. Thank you.” I was delighted to get the following message back from Filament Games: “Dear @ktenkely. We know, and in fact couldn’t agree more. And thank YOU.”

I had to explore just who this Filament Games was. From their Twitter bio: “Filament Games is a game production studio dedicated to creating next generation learning games that combine best practices in commercial game development.” I am delighted to say, they make incredible educational games that in no way resemble a worksheet! Bravo!
Landform Detectives is just one of the offerings from Filament Games (I’ll explore the others in separate posts). In Landform Detectives, “a violent volcanic explosion immediately and forever alters the landscape. Elsewhere, raindrops gradually pick patterns out of the rock over the course of thousands of years. Can you recreate some of Earth’s most amazing geological features by uncovering the natural processes that shaped them?” Now that is what I am talking about! An engaging game that asks students to use what they know about natural disasters, weather, and the creation of landforms to discover and recreate how they were formed.

How to integrate Landform Detectives into the classroom: Your students will travel the world to unlock the secrets of the Earth’s strangest and most awe-inspiring landforms as they play Landform Detectives. Students will gain a new appreciation for mountains, valleys, and rivers as they solve the mystery of how they got to be that way and think about how long it takes for those processes to happen. Your students will transform into geologists as they discover the suspects like ice, water, wind, and sand in the story of our Earth. As your students travel the globe, they will encounter animated simulations, virtual scientist (Dr. Bob) who can give them more information, and an opportunity to recreate the formation of the landform. This is an incredible way for students to “see” first hand just how landforms are created. The site would be best in a computer lab 1 to 1 setting where each student can explore and discover at their own pace. If you don’t have access to a computer lab, you could also use a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard to travel the globe together. If this is the case, allow students to take turns leading and guiding the exploration. Hypothesize together about how the landforms came to be and how you might recreate them. Then put those hypotheses to the test and try them out. Discuss the outcome, did it look like the students expected? Why or why not?

This really is an incredible way to learn about the Earth sciences. There is just no way that a static text-book can compare to the rich game and media experience that Landform Detectives offers.

Tips: Students can watch a briefing from scientists who share their understanding of weathering and erosion to monitor changes in soils that are used to grow plants for food and fuel.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Landform Detectives in your classroom.

Eco Kids: Build a Food Chain

June 9, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments23808 views

What it is: Eco Kids is a website with a great collection of ecologically focused games and activities. Students can complete interactives on wildlife, climate change, energy, the North, water, waste, land use, and more. I was hunting down a good interactive for students to learn and practice the food chain. Build a Food Chain has students order the elements of a food chain. Along the way, students learn why each animal within a food chain is so important. In addition to learning the basics of a food chain, students will learn about bioaccumulation.

How to integrate Eco Kids: Build a Food Chain into the classroom: Build a Food Chain is a fun way for students to learn about and practice building a food chain in an interactive environment. First students are led through the process of a food chain. The interactive helps students to understand the job of each animal or element in the chain. Students can then put their understanding to the test by putting together a food chain of their own and testing it. Students receive immediate feedback on the chain. If the food chain is broken or won’t work, students are given an additional clue and opportunity to try again. Build a Food Chain could be used as a whole class with a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Choose students to be guides at the board as they navigate through the parts of a food chain. Then, call up a student to put the first element or animal of the food chain in place and pass on play to another student until a working food chain has been constructed. Build a Food Chain can also be used as an independent learning activity on classroom computers as a center or in a lab setting. Because the site provides students with feedback as they construct the food chain, students can navigate the activity easily on their own.

Tips: Before you begin the game, you will notice a box labeled “More About This Topic”, here you will find additional resources, printables, and games that are related to food chains.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Eco Kids: Build a Food Chain in your classroom.

Chess Kid

May 17, 2010May 17, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3287 views

What it is: Chess Kid is a fantastic way for kids to learn to play the game of chess and then practice their game against kids from around the world. The Chess Kid environment is safe and secure for kids, students have no contact with strangers. A parent or a teacher manages all access and friendships online and can easily monitor all activity. On Chess Kid students learn the rules and strategies of chess and work to improve their game, memorization skills, patience, and sportsmanship. Students can train with tactic puzzles and exercises, view video lessons, practice tactic against the computer, or read chess articles. Chess games can be played online against other kids from around the world, in online tournaments, blitz chess, or against the computer.

How to integrate Chess Kid into the classroom: Chess is a great game that is packed full of skills that help students in other disciplines such as math. Students must use problem solving, decision making, critical thinking, deductive and inductive reasoning, and the ability to make accurate judgments and estimates as they play. Chess makes for a great mental workout and develops skills necessary for solving other problems. Chess Kid is a place where students can learn how to play the game of chess, and then practice through play with kids from around the world or the computer. Chess Kid can be used with the whole class for lessons and learning the how-to aspect of chess on a projector or interactive whiteboard. Students can then play on classroom computers, as a math center, or individually in a computer lab setting.

Tips: The American Chess Foundation published that chess can improve a child’s visual memory, attention span, spatial reasoning skills, capacity to predict and anticipate consequences, and the ability to use criteria to drive decision making and evaluate alternatives.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Chess Kid in your classroom.

The Adjective Detective

April 16, 2010Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment4499 views

What it is: The Adjective Detective is a fun way for your students to learn more about adjectives, superlative adjectives, and comparative adjectives. This interactive learning module, game, and quiz comes from the Children’s University of Manchester site (I have written about it before here). Last week I was searching high and low for some good adjective interactives for my students and was pleasantly surprised to rediscover this one. I knew if the activity had fallen off of my radar, chances were that others had forgotten it, too. The Adjective Detecive offers students a in-depth, interactive mini lesson on adjectives, superlative adjectives, and comparative adjectives. After students work their way through the lessons, they can play an adjective game as a detective. They must hunt down adjectives in the sentence by clicking on it with their magnifying glass. Students recieve immediate feedback on their answer. When they are finished playing the game, students can answer multiple choice questions about adjectives in an online quiz.

How to integrate Adjective Detective into the classroom: Use the Adjective Detective mini-lessons to teach your whole class about adjectives. Put the site up on your interactive whiteboard or projector and discuss the different kinds of adjectives with your students. The site could also be used for self guided learning (I am personally a big advocate of this!) as a computer center in the classroom or individually in the lab setting. After students complete the mini lessons, encourage them to play the adjective detective game. In my classroom I want students to enter the spirit of play and have a few detective hats, magnifying glasses, and mini notebooks. Students can play “detective”, hunting down adjectives in sentences. On the interactive whiteboard, the student at the board can find an adjective that the rest of the class writes down as an adjective clue in their notebooks. Then we pass the detective job onto the next student, until all of the adjectives in the game have been discovered. You could alternatively send students to the classroom computers as a grammar center where the students become “detectives” and jot down their adjective clues while they are at the center. The multiple choice quiz lends itself nicely to assessing understanding with clickers (student response systems). The quiz can also be taken individually on the classroom computers. I like learning sites, like this, that allow students to work through learning at their own pace and offer immediate feedback so that students can monitor their own understanding.

Tips: Check out the rest of the Children’s University of Manchester website for other good interative lessons.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Adjective Detective in your classroom.

Heifer International: Game for Change

March 22, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2827 views

What it is: Heifer International works with communities to end hunger, poverty, and care for the earth. Heifer International does not give hand-outs, they offer hand ups. Transforming lives of hunger and poverty, into sustained lives of hope. Using gifts of livestock and training, Heifer International helps families improve nutrition and generate sustainable income. I have written about a program that Heifer International has before, called Read to Feed. I highly recommend that you take a look at the Read to Feed program if you haven’t seen it before. Heifer International has partnered with BeaconFire and ForgeFX to create an interactive 3D game that teaches students about hunger and poverty in a virtual world. Through Heifer International: Game for Change, students will learn about real world conditions of poverty and how communities can create sustainable solutions. Through game play, students will learn about sustainable options for help. In the game, students take on the role of a 12 year old Nepalese girl in a village that struggles with poverty and hunger. There are four tasks/missions that students must complete in the current (beta) version of the game. Each task offers an activity that teaches a core principle. One example is a task where students learn about deforestation that makes it more difficult to collect firewood used to cook dinner. The lessons in the game mirror real-life happenings in Nepal with Heifer International’s partners. The game is currently in Beta version and the creators are asking for suggestions here.

How to integrate Heifer International: Game for Change into the classroom: Heifer International: Game for Change is an excellent way to offer your students global education, awareness, and encourage them to action. Students will learn important lessons about issues like poverty and environmental degradation in a real, hands on, manner. Start out with a geography lesson, encouraging students to find Nepal on a map or globe. Use Google Earth or Scribble Maps to put a place marker on Nepal and a place marker where they live. Talk with students about issues of poverty and hunger, exploring the Heifer International site for students where they can watch videos, do experiments, and play games. Next, allow your students to step into the story by taking the role of a Nepalese girl living in an impoverished village. Students should work to complete all 4 tasks in the game and keep a journal (online or off) of their thoughts as they complete the game. Was it hard to find food, wood, water? There are a lot of lessons packed in here, from geography and social studies, to reading and following directions and character education.

As an extension activity, students could create VoiceThreads or Animoto videos about Heifer International. Tie in the Read to Feed program so that your students can get hands on with Heifer International. Use their completed VoiceThreads or Animoto videos as “advertisements” for the Read to Feed program.

If your students are anything like mine, they will have definite opinions about the game. Why not take advantage of that, and have them offer suggestions and praise that can be used by the creators? Have students craft their ideas and send them here.

Tips: If you haven’t signed up for the Read to Feed program, it is an outstanding program. It includes free DVD, leaders guide, poster, storybook (Beatrice’s Goat), brochures, bookmarks, student rewards, and standard based curriculum. Get your students excited about reading and involved in their global community, it is never too early to get your students thinking about others!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Heifer International: Game for Change in your classroom.

iboard: Alien Pairs to 10

December 27, 2009December 27, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3623 views

What it is: Alien Pairs to 10 is a fun warm up game for the primary math classroom. Students are given 60 seconds to find as many pairs of 10 as they can. The numbers students have to choose from are written on Aliens, with the target number (always 10) on the spaceship. Students drag pairs of aliens into the spaceship and check the answer to find out how many pairs that equal 10 they can find.

How to integrate iboard: Alien Pairs to 10 into the classroom: Alien Pairs to 10 will bring out the inner competition in any student. To use this site with an interactive whiteboard, split your students into teams. Have students face off to find out who can find the most pairs of 10 before their 60 seconds are up. This site was created with interactive whiteboards in mind but, to be honest, I think this site is best suited for classroom computers as a math center activity. Keep a running scoreboard next to your classroom computers where you post the high scores of the week.

Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased. Alien Pairs to 10 is one of their freebie samples.

Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Alien Pairs to 10 in your classroom.

Rhyme Race

October 11, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2222 views

What it is: Rhyme Race is a four player (or four team) interactive rhyming game that helps promote a better understanding of rhyming. Players roll a die to move around the game board. Along the way, students are asked to come up with rhyming words. If the player lands on a spot of the same color as their game piece, they are given an audio rhyming word. A sound recording of a word is played and the player has to come up with a rhyming word. If the player lands on a purple space they are given a picture rhyme clue. A picture of a word is shown and the player must come up with a rhyming word. The first player (or team) to land on an end space wins.

How to integrate Rhyme Race into the classroom: Rhyme Race is an excellent interactive game for an interactive whiteboard. Split students into 4 teams, students in each team will rotate rolling the die and answering with a rhyme. This is also a great way for students to practice rhyming in small groups at a classroom computer as a center activity. If you have students who are struggling with rhyming, they can play this game as a single player.

Tips: Rhyme Race is a Flash game. Make sure that your Flash player is up-to-date before playing with students.

Related Resources: Little Animals Activity Centre, Rhymer

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Rhyme Race in your classroom.

Pac Man Typing with Typing Master

September 15, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment17900 views

What it is: Typing Masters has a great typing game that your students can play for free to increase their typing skills. PacMan Typing gives students the familiar Pac Man game, instead of moving Pac Man with the arrow keys, students have to type letters to make him move. The faster students can type, the higher their score will be.

How to integrate Pac Man Typing into the classroom: Pac Man Typing is a great motivating typing game. Students will want to build up their touch typing skills to master this game. Hold a friendly competition in your class to see who can get high score in Pac Man Typing. This is another site that will build student typing skills through a fun game.

Tips: I learned about Pac Man Typing this morning on Twitter from @SheilaT, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…my PLN is the best!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Pac Man Typing in your classroom.

A LONG 3 Days!

May 19, 2009May 25, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3159 views

iLearn Technology has been down for 3 LONG days. I was so happy to see the problem resolved this morning, I have a lot of new sites to share! The big news over the weekend was that my iPhone app was approved by Apple. It is called Pickn’ Stix here is a review by TUAW:

Fun for kids and adults: Pickin’ Stix

by Steven Sande on May 16th 2009

Pickin’ Stix (click opens iTunes) took me back to my childhood in the early sixties, when I had a little cylinder filled with colorful plastic “Pickup Sticks”. You’d toss ’em in a pile, and then try to pick them up without disturbing the other sticks. Not only was it a great way to stay engrossed for a while, but it was also teaching me and my friends manual dexterity, as well as how to use our depth and relational perception to figure out how to move a stick without moving any others.Now Jonathan Tenkely has come out with his iPhone version, just the thing to pass to the kids when they’re bored and you want to keep them out of trouble. Jonathan’s wife Kelly is an educator who runs the great iLearn Technology blog, so it’s not surprising that his first iPhone app is a combination of fun and learning.With the US$0.99 Pickin’ Stix, you shake the iPhone to “toss” the sticks, then use a finger to “pick them up”. The better you do at tapping on the top sticks, the faster you’ll get done. You lose points for tapping on sticks that are partially under other sticks.The only complaint I have is that Pickin’ Stix, currently in a 1.0 release, has no way to keep your best time or score, or to compare your time to others. I’d also like to see an advanced mode with more sticks to pick up for an additional challenge, and a way to pause a game. And if Tenkely can figure out a way to get a kid to give the iPhone back to you after you’ve let ’em play for a while, he’ll have it made!What other childhood favorites would you like to see on the iPhone and iPod touch? Let us know in the comments.So that is exciting! If you do download Pickn’ Stix, please be sure to leave a review in iTunes.