Who doesn't like to learn with games? Here's one of my favorites. However, I warn you that if you and your students try it, you may become addicted right away! One benefit of play the game is that for every right answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to feed hungry people!
Go to http://freerice.com/. Once a word is selected, students can choose the level of difficulty of words (along the bottom) and the subjects that they want to cover. Words are pronounced and wrong answers repeated until the right one is entered.
What games do you and your students like to play? Leecy
Comments
Just looking for clarification on whether you are looking for digital or non digital games? There is a vast array available in each area
Hi, Ed. Either. I would hope that this community would like to have resources on how the enhance literacy, reading, and writing skills using games, any kind of games.
I love online games because they are interactive, and often, multilevel. And BTW, we know from research that we learn by interacting with people and resources, not from resources themselves. I can quote research into eternity. Do games work? Well... if interaction is there, yes! Thanks for responding. Tell us more. Leecy
Hi, there, members! How would you respond to Ed's question? Let's hear from you! Leecy
Last year, almost to the day, I started opening up the local library to introduce socially interactive Table Top games. We have had a regular group of about 10 people with as many as 18 showing up for any of our weekly game sessions throughout the year. I have started creating a webpage to help introduce the games we have been playing. Once I get caught up with that page, I hope to add educational notes, thought provoking questions to be asked during game play, and in game challenges that push gamers/learners to extend their learning and thinking experiences within each game. Super powerful stuff here!
I started tracking attendance and frequency of each game played about half way through the year. I am in the process of working with that data to determine what insights it may share, but there are anecdotal stories I can share from families that have regularly attended. I asked all of our players if they had any reflections on their exploration of games this last year. Three parents shared that their youth (middle school aged, 3 males 2 females) all have had increased success in school once they started attending the game sessions. Two adults share that these game experiences changed their thinking in that they felt better able to change direction of thought, and felt more mentally "flexible". A mother that is learning English as a second language shared that her vocabulary and pronunciation has increased through game play and she joked that my Spanish is improving as well. I have not felt as much improvement as she has exhibited though.
OK so I shared a link to the page I am building for the Social Tabletop games I use. As far as digital games, I like to stick to free or games that may have a one time fee only. There are so many I have bookmarked on Diigo, it would be impractical to share them all here. I can pick some of my favorites or some of my favorite categories here.
Cost games:
Civilization VI (scroll down through the many videos to see how many elements a player needs to consider!) The civilization game allows for multiple students to all be playing in the same world in a turn based experience. Each student gets a turn, where they can stop their academic work, go to the one system that has the game running, take their turn, then return to their academic work as the next player takes their game break. If you can get students doing a game journal after every turn, there can be much more gained. The depth of these games allow for collaborations, confrontations, and over half a dozen ways to "win" the game. Politics, Geography, Military, Social Reform, Technology Growth, Economy and even the Happiness of your people are all vital to finding success.
RimWorld: 3 space colonist crash land on a hostile world and you are charged to help them survive. You do not directly control the people in your colony; rather, you simply help each person focus on priorities and you set short and long term goals for your colony. Meanwhile there are so many environmental challenges, threats from other computer controlled colonies in the area, and even your own colonists mentally breaking down offers you so many opportunities to create a wonderful experience. The stories players can generate as well as the many variables the player can passively influence make this a valuable learning experience.
Guild Wars 2: Some of you may have heard of World of Warcraft or other Massively Multi Player Role Playing Games (MMORPG). Most of these games require a monthly fee to play. Guild Wars 2 (GW2) offers thousands of hours of immersive game play (both solo and social) for the one initial cost (around $50). There is a main story line in this game that includes full voice acting by top actors as well as a rich world history that players become a part of. The choices a player makes dictates experiences as well as possible outcomes. The massive geography of these worlds and the many biomes offer challenges to players as well. In addition to story mode, the game offers massive player vs player confrontations in the World vs World mode. The entire server combats against two other servers in a massive game of capture the flag. Add in an in depth crafting system, series of collections and an incredible list of achievements students can strive for and there is no shortage of experiences once can get immersed in. Game journals are vital to helping students track how decisions over time change and allows for much reflection on what was learned in their game experience.
Free Games:
Path of Exile: There was a very popular type of game called Diablo that introduced the concept of having a character run through a set story line that included procedural generated worlds. The type of player you pick helps to determine the type of feel one has going through the story line. Add in hundreds of treasures that all change your character's abilities and players love these types of games. Path of Exile is one flavor of these games that I find very effective. In many of these types of games, the hunt for in game gold is always a focus. Path of Exile does not have a monetary system and works on more of a barter system which is interesting. Most importantly, the game allows for specialization of your character in a way that no other game does. Take a look at this map of skills. Every "level" a character gains in game, they get to choose another option on the path they wish to pick. Incredible room for exploration, experimentation, conjectures, and adjustments based on experiences! On the link I provided (it may take a few moments to load) you can scroll around and scroll in to click on different skills to see the many options.
Marvel Heroes: This is another fee to play Diablo type game. While other games have a limited set of character types you can play with, Marvel Heroes uses a massive collection of heroes to choose from with new heroes added every other month or so. Again, the different experiences each player offers while players work through a set story line creates a wonderful game laboratory for student learning. This game boast the best free to play financial model I have seen as well. Getting students into the discussion around "Is anything really free in life?" has lead to wonderful insights into real world and digital worlds from students.
League of Legends or Smite or Dota : These are all free games classified as MOBA (Mobile Online Battle Arena) games. Players get a rotating collection of heroes that are freely available every month and they can earn in game credits that allow them to permanently buy one of the many type so heroes available in each game. These games REQUIRE teamwork between 5 players as they work to push back another 5 player team until one team ultimately destroys the opponents main fort. These games get so competitive at higher levels that there are international competitions in which winning teams take home millions of dollars a year! This type of game created a professional digital "sport" called Esports and learners have so much they can learn through this game play.
Another type of game that has many variations available is the collectible card game genera. Students start off with basic cards that all have different game mechanics. Through game play, players get new cards and can build new decks with hundreds of strategies. The vocabulary building as well as mathematical thinking make these games very powerful! In fact, the old card game called Pokemon was originally contracted to be a game to teach vocabulary to youth. Another collectible game called Magic the Gathering is one of the longest running competitive collectible card game was designed by a PHD mathematician. Online free examples include: The Eternal Card Game, Magic Duels, The Elements.
These are just a few that come quickly to the top of my mind. I have hundreds that are bookmarked that I have tried with different types of learners. There are games that really focus on resource management (stocks, investing, material trading ...), there are games that are very good simulations (historical, scientific, cultural ...) and there are many types of logical games.
Thanks for this excellent "intro to gaming" :)
Ditto on Susan's comment, Ed. I tweeted this discussion hoping to broaden the dialogue since your resources and comments are very helpful. I will not only try each one but share the info among programs. Leecy
I welcome discussion on any of the games shared or other games people wish to talk about. I think it would be awesome to focus on one game with an in depth discussion with questions we might ask learners, maybe forms or data collection tools we might have students use, project extensions or in game lab ideas and basically all the different ways we might use a particular resource. Given any one of the games I shared, I feel there is much discussion available and so many ways the tool can be implemented with different foci
If you share my list of games, please encourage anyone that tries any of the games to come back and start discussing the game. Even hearing what the game was like from a player's perspective can be a great conversation starter for our community. Maybe a particular game really needs an introduction guide for learners or some set of activities to get the learner prepared to fully engage? So many rich development materials we could collaborate on. Maybe we do a game of the month and start up a google doc that stores all the results of our discussions on a specific game?
I have always felt that much of our academic goals can be achieved within game environments or the creation of games. I welcome all discussion and collaboration on taking any given game and working on how that game can be used educationally.
Right on, Ed. Indeed, I am sharing this discussion as a way to spread the "good word," and asking folks to join LINCS and get active among us.
As I and others review what you shared, let's all talk about how we can learn and promote literacy, reading, writing and more through games! What do other readers here think? Leecy