Allison Dixon
For the rest of this month and December, we'd like to focus our discussion on what Clayton has dubbed the "fun factor." How do we keep education fun?
Educational games are a great way for students to apply their learning in an engaging and active way. Video games, board games, and active kinesthetic games can be wonderfully interactive and valid educational tools.
Today, I'd like to focus on educational video games. I find myself at times skeptical about the educational value of video games... and then I remember Oregon Trail. That games was incredibly popular when I was in elementary school -- many students played it in their free time, and learned a lot about the history of the Oregon Trail in the process. (Sidenote: you can still play the original Oregon Trail online by following this link.)
Video games can also be used to educate people about important social and global issues. "Serious games" are video games which aim to educate as well as entertain. One such example is Ayiti: The Cost of Life, a game in which the user attempts to guide a poverty-stricken family of five through four years of life in rural Haiti. By taking on the perspective of this family, the user gets an interactive experience of what life might be like for a farming family living in rural Haiti.
For English teachers, the ereading games website has a couple of interesting, older-style video games. There's Super Grammar Ninja, a game for reviewing parts of speech and sentence structure, as well as Orpheus the Lyrical, a figurative language game. Both of these games are great for reviewing content already taught, and can be a great way of convincing reluctant students to review in their spare time at home as well.
For more examples of quality educational video games, there's a list of 50 websites for serious and educational games over at OnlineColleges.net.