Gaming seems to be the new buzz word in Educational Technology so I thought I would talk about two types of games that I think might fit into the educational setting.
The first is farming. I started with Farm Town on FaceBook. An innocent but addictive game for those who like to win. What I found educational about Farm Town is that if I calculated the money I had to spend on how much a plant cost vs. how long it took to grown and how much I would profit from it I could move up quicker in levels. So I actually created a Farm Town Hints to help others do the same thing. The next thing I created was a chart of how long the crops grew in real time: ie: Growing day = 20 hours. 1 day crop = 20 hours; so 10% = 2 hours; 1% = 12 minutes (potato, strawberry).
I love math and bringing math into a way to use it was exciting for me and I think it would be for kids. The funny thing is that I hated word problems as a student yet, having visuals like this game would make it fun to unravel word problems that went with it.
The second is a memory type games - there are many different ones and typically we think of them for our younger children, but I have found one for adults! On FaceBook there is a game called Gardens of Time. The object is to make a garden of pieces from history, the pieces are buildings, artifacts and/or decorations. There are also challenges you have to finish and then you get awarded "Wonders of the World". To be able to purchase the garden pieces one must earn money by going to different pictures and finding 6, 12 or more hidden objects. The objects stay in the same place in a picture, but what you have to find changes each time, sometimes you have new objects to look for and sometimes it is a combination of ones you found before and new objects.
Images are screen captures from my games on FaceBook.
I love math and bringing math into a way to use it was exciting for me and I think it would be for kids. The funny thing is that I hated word problems as a student yet, having visuals like this game would make it fun to unravel word problems that went with it.
The second is a memory type games - there are many different ones and typically we think of them for our younger children, but I have found one for adults! On FaceBook there is a game called Gardens of Time. The object is to make a garden of pieces from history, the pieces are buildings, artifacts and/or decorations. There are also challenges you have to finish and then you get awarded "Wonders of the World". To be able to purchase the garden pieces one must earn money by going to different pictures and finding 6, 12 or more hidden objects. The objects stay in the same place in a picture, but what you have to find changes each time, sometimes you have new objects to look for and sometimes it is a combination of ones you found before and new objects.Images are screen captures from my games on FaceBook.
Interesting posting about these games. I have watched you plays Farmville for hours upon hours but haven't heard of Gardens in Time before. Guess I will have to track that down begin my journey.
ReplyDelete=-)
Leigh Zeitz