For our OER project Jamie, Lindsay, Megan, Pascaline, and myself were tasked with investigating mobile educational gaming. So we give you Ed-Apped !!
We started off with the idea of creating something akin to Yelp, but for mobile educational gaming, rather than restaurants and bars. But as we worked our way through the process, it turned into something bigger than just that.
Our end result is a resource that can be continually drawn upon when educators are looking for new games to include in their instruction. Or for educators who wish to start engaging their students with app based learning software and who aren’t sure where to begin. And even for those brave enough to take on the challenge of creating their own educational game from scratch.
Have a peek around – we hope you’ll find something of value!
Working in HR and dealing with PD, gamification is more an after thought for the organization and in the world of HR, it’s a more serious affair. Your OER definitely provided food for thought for upcoming performance and goals management that takes place annually at work. In enjoying your website and looking at examples, I realized upon some interesting ideas on how to incorporate games into some of the PD sessions we do deliver via our instructors.
Find the “Why” to gamify -The concept of gamifying comes out of marketing techniques that encourage engagement with a particular product or service through the use of game design elements and principles. Since It’s a popular technique in the classroom to help nudge students into participating in class activities, perhaps adults should be allowed in on the fun too. In this case, I’m not promoting to add games to “conflict management session 101” but for those that require some participatory involvement, use games to break open the comfort zone.
Building choice and competition into PD
Offering staff a variety of activities that they can complete in an open time frame allows them to focus on what interests them. Meanwhile, competition can drive participation: Building out a leader board, hosted online or in a physical location, goes a long way toward getting the competitive juices flowing among participants. I have actively done this 2 years ago called the 10’000 steps challenge. The first year we had around 200 participants and following year, it ballooned to 700+ and we had to outsource the logistics of it. It did become competitive and personalities surfaced among staff. This unintentional experiment proves that team building and competitiveness allowed for boosting morale and in this case health! since it was a walking challenge using fit bits and other trackers.
In the end, gamification should be incorporated in all aspects of learning and not restricted to just schools.
Thanks mobile games team,
I really like you avatars – they’re neat!
I really love all games and am so happy to see them used for education morre. Personally I am so motivated to doing ‘boring’ things in video games and I don’t know why.
The two quiz games you made were fun and I plan to use those resources in the future!
Points: 245
Time: 11
Thanks for the avatars comment! We actually made sure to all use the same interface so there’d be consistency in the presentation. It’s the little things that count. And if you want to make your own, they’re just Bitmoji! There’s even an extension for Chrome that lets you insert them easily into your Gmail emails.
Hi Ed-Apped Team;
Thank you for your OER! I posted some of these thoughts on your website as well, but I thought I’d include them here too.
I read a chapter by Phoebe Chan, a Hong Kong based Applied Theatre researcher about Embodied Experiences entitled ‘Fluorescent Raincoat into Yellow Umbrella: Social Responsibility Through Embodied Experience’ in which she speaks about how an embodied experience can allow us to engage with ideas and material in a much deeper way. Linda, your comment reminded me of this. In a way, I suppose encountering new information whilst playing a game, and needing to apply it right away could really allow learners to absorb and understand that information more clearly. Although Chan refers to an ’embodied experience’ as being one that takes place in the body, I’m curious if playing a mobile game could be seen as an extension of this notion, just as our avatars are an extension of ourselves. In this way, perhaps the knowledge or information could be made more relevant for everyday use. For example, I do remember challenging my high school math teacher about when I might use conics in my future life, and he might have liked to reply by showing me the Varients Limits calculus game in order to show me how to creatively apply math concepts to everyday life.
I found your choice to include post-style content on your landing page interesting. I looked at your OER on my laptop, so I was able to easily navigate through it, but I think the click-ability of the posts as they appear as ‘other posts’ at the bottom of the page will make it easy to navigate on my phone as well.
I especially enjoyed having a look at Book Wigits, and want to experiment with using it to create fun games for Bell Work when the students first come in to the room. It allows you to show a QR code that goes to your game which I think is great! I made a matching game about basic vocal technique if anyone is interested in trying your luck…. https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/t:Qly5PoD9hyb1zxN_TpHbgy6D6JvfPgGHNwaHKycl9NpYOThNWFA=
I’m looking forward to experimenting with making more custom games for my Drama students.
BTW, I scored 281 on the Multiple Choice Educandy game. 🙂
Suzzie
Thank you, team Ed-Apped! You have curated mobile educational apps to create a very practical OER that helps educators sift through the mountain of apps to find ones to use in their classroom, however the focus was heavy on younger learners and I would have liked to see more games for older learners as well as more dedication to non-educational games that can be used in the classroom. I liked the opportunity to try the games and think critically about whether or not I would use them in a classroom, and I got sucked into NewsFeed Defenders – I think after 30+ minutes of play, I realized I needed to get back to work, but I was trying to all of the objectives maxed out – I could only get one to 100%! Your design was very symmetrical and pleasing, and I liked the “cards” that presented the apps. The landing page design does need some reconsideration – important information you’d expect to see on a landing page was buried in the blog posts that should have lived outside of them.
Good notes about the landing page – certainly something to be aware of for future iterations. And we totally agree about the focus on younger students; things for the older crowd would certainly help a lot of us out, so again, thanks for the advice! And we really appreciate what you said about sifting “through the mountain of apps to find ones to use”. That was the original goal we had when we set out on the project. So we’re super glad that that bit resonated!
Tyler and Team;
I agree with the comment about being focused a bit on the younger grades, and I assume that’s where the majority of your group sits in terms of context. You do get round this a bit with your padlets in terms of asking us to suggest games that we know of as well. I really enjoyed reading those posts and found myself trying out several of the games that our classmates suggested. That was very useful.
Suzzie
259 and feeling fine!
Thanks for putting together a well constructed OER. I particularly appreciated the parts where you focused on mobile games as an opportunity for collaboration- that’s definitely how I’ve used apps like Kahoot! in my work environment. It was fun to check out all the app suggestions you had- a few of them I had used before but most were new to me.
Kahoot is for sure great. I first heard about it during BEd and I’ve been using it in my classroom ever since. Collaboration is great for it too – I’ve had students come up with their own quizzes and then we play them with the class. That’s always a good time. Plus is makes them realize that question writing isn’t so easy.
And it’s awesome that you found some new games to explore – that’s the great thing about this program, and this course specifically!
So I suppose the best thing I can say about your project is that I’ve bookmarked it!
I’ve heard of and used a few of these games, but you have really compiled a useful list which I may even use in the next week in my summer school classes. Gimkit and Factile jumped out at me as alternatives to Kahoot that would be easy to have students set up to teach the rest of the class something, too. I spent a couple hours looking at the various options and writing a few reviews and I know I’ll be back.
Thanks for sharing this.
Also, it sounds like many of us have used Prodigy. I can’t believe it’s free and I’ve used it as well, but I found it clunky to assign topics and get specific things out of it. It sounds like many of you have been successful with that so perhaps I should give it another look.
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for you response.We are glad that you found our OER useful. By providing different resources for making your own games, we hoped that educators would be motivated to integrate game-based learning in their teaching practices. Students usually react positively to them and these games provide insightful feedback to the teachers about the students’ performance on a specific topic.
Hi Jonathan,
Prodigy is definitely a bit clunky on the teacher end in terms of assigning specific topics and is not my favourite to use for that reason, but I persevere through it because my students love it! I had students in class for the month of June and when they had free time in the afternoon I’d say half of them chose to play Prodigy over doing anything else. One of my students, who would complete 1/10th of her Math work when working independently, completed the most questions on Prodigy of all the students in my class and showed mastery over a number of new concepts.
Hello, Ed-App team. So many mobile games, wow! The writing of “why you’re here” is concise and engaging. The argument is full of great thoughts such as “anything that the participants will let us get away with calling a game (Klopfer, 2008)”. In the past few decades, many studies have evident that gaming has a close connection to learning and education. The dichotomy between fun and learning, game and education needs to be replaced by an ecological view of seeing how gaming facilitates the practice of high-order thinking, problem-solving and meaning-making in a situated condition. In other words, the educational quality of gaming is not only about gaining knowledge, but also encouraging the practice of the knowledge in specific situations.
Oh, I forgot to post my score. I got 210 from multiple choice. I also enjoy the matching as well. Excellent ideas to make a review of the presentation!
Hi Yi,
Thanks for your comment. Anecdotally, I definitely agree with the “anything participants will let us get away with calling a game” being useful. There are some activities I do with my class that I don’t consider to be a “game” but that students do, and they love them (for example, waterfall review activities).
Thanks again for your feedback!
Thanks Jamie, Lindsay, Megan, Pascaline, and Tyler for putting together an inspiring OER.
As a student and occasional gamer, I could relate to André Thomas’ TEDxTalk, when he ponders how is it possible that kids can easily recall all kinds of Pokemon, yet the periodic table of elements is out of reach. Where was this amazing Variant: Limits game when I was learning calculus in high school?! I’m definitely adding the 1979 Revolution: Black Friday game about the Iranian Revolution to my list.
I tried the Educandy tests – and was surprised by the visually appealing and variety of games you can quickly create, with a free account.
– Multiple choice: 249 points, 58 seconds
– Matching: 29 seconds
I previously used Twine for a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ game, but found it relied heavily on its proprietary code. I previously thought that you could only create either low-fidelity/rudimentary games on your own, or a full-fledged product that required an extensive team of developers/designers. It was refreshing to find there were options available in the middle – your OER changed my assumptions!
Hi Aiann,
Thanks so much for your feedback, I’m glad you found some useful options in our OER!
I agree Aiann!
I am so thankful that we are living in the days of whizzy app and game makers. I remember teaching HTML code for a web design class when I was doing my teacher training because the school I was student teaching at wouldn’t pay the licensing fee for Dreamweaver. Now, there are so many platforms that allow us to create really aesthetically interesting and functional games that are fun! I haven’t been incorporating many digital games into my day to day teaching, but I think I’m going to start experimenting and seeing what I can come up with for this next academic year!
Howdy team!
That was so much fun and informative! I brought my 10 year old son outside with me and we sat and downloaded different apps on our devices and gave them a try. You could really tell which ones engaged him and ones where he was going through the motions to make his Dad happy… and in the end he kept a couple on his Ipod (I call that a win!). I really liked the intro video and how it speaks to how games can really be integrated right into a class. I also LOVED his analogy of percentages vs. mastery! I want to show just that snippet at a staff meeting and see how many lights turn on over teachers’ heads. Great OER!! Owen gives it a double thumbs up!
Owen and my scores were too good to put down… we don’t want to brag but we CRUSHED it!!
Hi Greg,
Thanks so much for your feedback, it’s always useful to have another student’s point of view! Out of curiosity, which ones did he find most engaging?
Such a great collection of useful games and game making programs. I’ll definitely have the students make games this year as well to share with their peers so they can be part of the game making process as well as the playing! A colleague of mine has created online escape room type games using Google Forms which were great for critical and creative thinking. I’m curious to see your take on seeing coding apps/programs (code.org, scratch) as games?
It was fun to play around this week 🙂
Score: 274
Score: 11 sec
Hi Julia,
It’s a wonderful idea to have your students create their own games. I’m sure they will be super excited to do so.This is a clever way to get them engage with the content of a specific topic without making it boring or tedious.
What a fun OER to navigate through! Having the video as a background in the Rating Mobile Games page was a really cool touch! I liked that many of the games you’ve listed may be commonly used but you were able to put an educational context to it.
For the Non-app Mobile Games, I tried out a few of the ones on the PBS Kids site like Bubble Pop with Curious George. It is definitely geared towards a younger audience but I like how PBS uses well-known characters from its shows to help engage students in their games.
I scored 247 on the Multiple Choice Knowledge Test and 16 seconds for the Match-up. I will be using Educandy next year with my class after using it for the two tests!
Thanks for a great OER!
Hi Juliano,
Thanks for your comment. Mobile games can be amazing assets as they easily attract students’ attention and provide a rich and stimulating environment for learning. We are glad that you found a useful educational tool for next academic year.
Thank you Ed-Apped team for putting together such an wide array of examples of mobile games, it is a good resource for educators, particularly for young learners. I appreciated the TED talk setting the stage, and have bookmarked that for further thought as I loved the introduction of the idea of mastery and how games support that. You listed many different games I had not experienced before, and those lists are a resource I will return to. The knowledge tests were a cute example of a tool for review although I did feel it was a bit too clear what the “right” answers were and think we would benefit from more discussion of why those are the “right” answers. It was a good way to integrate an example of a game into the OER. It was great that you incorporated space for social and collaborative sharing throughout the OER which gave it a real sense of it being a living resource.
Your site was well laid out, and fairly easy to navigate from a laptop computer, however I must admit I had significant challenges working through the resources on a mobile device. I was using an iPhone and tried Safari, Chrome and Brave browsers but the header on the page does not appear to be responsive and ended up covering half of the screen and slowly fading you scroll down, this makes it very difficulty to effectively scroll back up on the page and ultimately made it impossible for me to use the padlets on my phone because the header kept blocking important parts of the page. The use of posts on the home page look great on the computer and it’s easy to see the flow, but since each post opens into a new tab it was a bit challenging to navigate back and forth on a mobile device and I was left wondering a bit whether I had missed something. As I started on a mobile device, I did not have a clear sense for what to expect from that page and whether I had missed things. The rating and app pages worked great on mobile and I appreciated you had direct links to install the apps. Rating and participating in the knowledge tests was easy on mobile. My times and scores were 30 seconds and 288 points on the first and 17 seconds on the second. I liked that it made me pause and try to understand the matching one, that was a fun puzzle to solve.
I was left wondering if you had any thoughts/references on common pitfalls to watch for when integrating/using games as educational tools as well as any suggestions for how we might assess a game’s educational value, particularly whether it is meeting our learning goals?
Thanks,
Matt
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your feedback. I have a few links for you. I hope they will help you find some answers.
3 Ways to Use Game-Based Learning : https://www.edutopia.org/article/3-ways-use-game-based-learning-matthew-farber
How to Teach with Games: https://d1e2bohyu2u2w9.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/tlr-asset/document-howtoteachwithgamesebook.pdf
A Comprehensive Evaluation Rubric for Assessing Instructional Apps: http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol14/JITEV14ResearchP021-053Yuan0700.pdf
Hi Ed-Apped Team,
I enjoyed exploring your OER this week. I’m looking forward to using some of the educational games that you’ve linked on the site in September. I absolutely love incorporating educational games into the classroom. In my experience, introduction of a new game changes the whole dynamic of the classroom. When I tell my students that we will be playing a game, I can feel the energy of the room rise instantly. The excitement that I see on their faces and the chatter that I hear says it all. Children enjoy playing games because they find them fun and engaging. In my experience, games add a lot of value to the learning process because they create an immersive learning environment. That being said, it’s important for educators to ensure students are able to separate the virtual world from the real world when introducing games into the classroom. Gaming is a good way to practice both life skills and academic skills. I often incorporate games into my lessons throughout the week, particularly in math. I find that my students are easily bored practicing newly acquired numeracy skills. I’m interested in trying out Moose Math, Prodigy, and Math Kids next year. I’d like to add them more often across other curricular areas. I think that it’s important for educators to experiment with a game before assigning it to students to ensure that it is easy to navigate and would pique their interests.
You are absolutely right. Teachers should always try the game they want to incorporate on their lesson. It’s important to double check that the game is age appropriate, lends itself nicely to the lesson’s objectives and correspond to the students’ level.
Hey team,
Thank you for a really informative week. When people ask why I chose MET, I always say because I feel like there is so much practical knowledge that I can bring back to the classroom. Opportunities like this OER are really part of that rational. You guys have provided some theory, but mostly practical things that we can use in the classroom. Kudos.
I am really becoming more interested in the concept of mastery as a opposed to traditional grade based assessment. So much of education is putting things into boxes that can satisfy ministry requirements. For example, students start in September, end in June and are assigned a grade or percentage. As we heard in the TED talk that you guys included: This is NOT how the real world works. Its something that gaming has got right: in the real world we master concepts. Mastery shouldnt begin in September and end in June, but it should be a lifelong journey.
If I can be honest, I am not a gamer. It was just never something that I got into as a kid because I spent a lot of time outside with friends. However, I understand why gaming is so popular. There is a clear set of expectations and feedback on progress made is timely. When you finish a level, you can go back and improve. This is growth! While the educational world is working at moving past this idea of learn>quiz>learn>test, it is still in our DNA. We need to look at learning as an opportunity to MASTER a skill and we need to start removing the boxes that we put students in year after year.
Thank you so much for a fantastic resource.
PS:
Score- 245
Time- 25 seconds
Hi Benjamin,
Thanks so much for your response. I think we all agree that the current form of assessment is difficult to apply to all facets of learning and it can cause so much anxiety and stress with students. The way the TED talk introduces the concept of mastery is such a great way of thinking about learning a skill before moving forward. Also, in a game mechanism the feedback is often instanteaneous so the student can make corrections and reflect almost imediately while learning. Thanks for your positive comments, I hope you can introduce some fun games into the classroom!
Lindsay
Hi Ed-apped team!
I really liked the more interactive approach to your website. I think it was a good approach, and certainly showcased a good library of games that are available.
I do with there was more guiding information on how to use games well a classroom though, as simply throwing games into a curriculum is probably not the most effective use of these educational technologies. There are also interesting questions that would have been interesting to touch on, including what Anne brought up about non-educational games being used for educational purposes. In my opinion, that may be a much more effective integration of games into education. So a non-educational games with educational value section may be a nice further addition 🙂
Most students now days will have played video games that are 1000x more interactive and interesting than educational games, which means that these games may actually REDUCE interaction and enjoyment in classrooms for children over the age of 6 or 7. Educational games may be seen as boring, and their effectiveness may be lost. Methods of assuring engagement with learning and concentration with students is also important, as is different student learning styles. Do you think all students would enjoy learning through games equally? Or should games be one of the ways that information is brought into a classroom during activities (e.g. there is a task and you can read it/play a game about it/do a group activity for it depending on your preference). Also, are you thinking of games more as part of classrooms, or part of homework curriculums, or part of independent learning programs? Do you have any feelings about where these would be best suited?
Thanks for the interesting content though!
J
Hi Jamie,
Thanks for the questions. From my experience in the classroom I have found some students (like all things) engage well with technological games while others are much more textile and need movement to learn a concept. I also think the amount of screen time developed at home can increase/decrease a students ability to engage with mobile games. (as you stated, some students have been exposed to highly interactive games that may not compare to the interactivity of mobile educational games).
It would be great to have the option of learning tasks in different ways as you’ve said (you can read it/play a game about it/do a group activity)n so learning is student centred and following a constructivist approach. I do think there are moments where mobile gaming can be the focus of the lesson where all students are engaged in the same game but may be at different levels and also have less/more time on the game.
I think games are a fantastic homework resource especially when they have detailed assessments recorded and given to the teacher (this seemed to be a theme for many teachers during remote learning). I also think they can have a space in the classroom and with independent learning programs. I feel with the right level of management and resources available they can be used in all ways. My personal preference currently for mobile gaming is to use it as an extension task or as a way of fully mastering a skill once it has been taught and practiced in many different ways (ie-addition through manipulative, games, worksheets, group projects, word problems).
I hope this helps!
Do you think all students would enjoy learning through games equally? Or should games be one of the ways that information is brought into a classroom during activities (e.g. there is a task and you can read it/play a game about it/do a group activity for it depending on your preference). Also, are you thinking of games more as part of classrooms, or part of homework curriculums, or part of independent learning programs? Do you have any feelings about where these would be best suited?
Hi Jamie and Lindsay,
Very interesting discussions here! I don’t think all students enjoy learning through games equally. Based on my own experience, some students prefer to learn new information through reading since they believe it is the fastest or most efficient way; some students prefer to learn through hand-on experience or a group activity since it is easier for them to understand … We always have different types of learners. I personally love the idea of having students learn through playing. I believe games can be used in all the three areas you mentioned: classrooms, homework and independent learning, but with different purposes and focus, as Lindsay suggests. It is true that simply throwing games into a curriculum is not the most effective use of these educational technologies. How can an educator better harness the power of games? What are the implications of games for designing learning tasks? Dr. Judy Willis, a neurologist who became a teacher after practicing neurology for 15 years, applies the video game model to her instruction. Below are some of her suggestions:
– Activate the dopamine-reward network
– Set individualized achievable challenge
– Provide timely corrective and progress-acknowledging feedback
– Bring in incremental progress recognition
Full article can be accessed at https://www.edutopia.org/blog/neurologist-makes-case-video-game-model-learning-tool
Thoughts?
I have a question for everyone: What skills or knowledge have you personally learned from mobile games? If you haven’t learned anything from mobile gaming, why not?
Hi Anne,
One great aspect I’ve learned as educator during mobile gaming is screen recording as a way of assessment and in general using more picture/video based assessment tasks.
Hi Anne, great question!
Personally, when I became a teacher I used Math games to improve my recall of my basic math facts. I didn’t have my multiplication facts memorized and when teaching multiplication, long division, etc it was a problem so I turned to games in order to improve my knowledge in that area.
Oh cool, What made you turn to games to learn those skills and not some more traditional method of self-directed learning?
I have used computational math games with students to build their confidence and fluidity with numbers. I find that they get “stuck” on one way of completing the questions, and you realize that they are not thinking about it, but just following a series of steps. So by showing them different ways of completing the questions, they can see the visual patterns that can be made by grouping and breaking down the numbers. It is a low-risk opportunity for them to explore numbers.
Hi Ed-Apped team! In your research, did you come across any examples of educators repurposing NON-educational games for learning activities or assessments? For example, using something like Angry Birds to teach physics and trajectories? Using a word game to get inspiration for writing assignments?
I haven’t tried this myself in any of my courses but it seems like there’s a lot of potential to create an innovative learning experience by repurposing a game that students may already be playing.
Hey Anne,
I definitely thought about this while going through the ED Apped OER. For example: there are opportunities to use a story based game like Mario to inspire creative writing. However, the part of the value of using specific games to learn skills is that there is MASTERY involved. You must learn the skill to move to the next level. I think using NON educational games could be good for prompting, or possibly solidifying knowledge that is already learned. However, I think mastery is such an important part of this weeks OER, and it is why students engage so well with Ed Apps.
Hi Ann and Ben,
I can recommend the textbook used in ETEC 565D, Beavis, Catherine, Dezuanni, Michael, & O’Mara, Joanne (2017). Serious play: Literacy, learning and digital games. New York: Routledge. Available at: https://bit.ly/2OAnexd The book contains examples of how Minecraft, Spacecraft, Twine and other games have been use to “promote deep learning in the discipline areas, teach critical reflective competence with new literacies and promote imagination and creativity, through production, analysis and use.” It should be noted, though, that all the examples are for desktop and laptop games.
From the preface, “the book is unique because it provides an account of classroom practice across time, which allowed the research team to observe how teachers’ and students’ approaches to using games in the classroom changed and evolved in different locations. The book draws on data from multiple schools and age groups within a singular project, providing generally unavailable insights into the specifics of situated practice and learning with digital games.”
Here are chapter titles from the book.
2 ‘A Game Isn’t a Game Without Interaction’: Students’ Thoughts About the Use of Digital Games in School
3 Impassioned Learning and Minecraft
4 Negotiating Pedagogical Transformation and Identity Performance Through Gameplay in Statecraft X
5 Curating the Curriculum With Digital Games
6 The Non-Gamer Teacher, the Quiz and Pop Teacher and the Kinect Teacher
7 Narratives Come to Life Through Coding: Digital Game Making as Language and Literacy Curriculum
8 Mining the Cli-Fi World: Renegotiating the Curriculum Using Minecraft
9 Games as Text and Games as Action: English, Literacy and Digital Games
10 Material and Discursive Learning With Minecraft and Lego
11 Serious Outcomes From Serious Play: Teachers’ Beliefs About Assessment of Games-Based Learning in Schools
12 Playing, Making and Analysing Games: Cases of Assessment and Serious Play
13 Quests, Achievements and Experience Points: Opportunities to Level Up Through School-Based Serious Play
Thanks for the recommendation, Jamie. I’m actually taking the digital games summer institute (starting tomorrow!) and the Serious Play textbook is in there for an optional reading.
Anne, I especially found some of the chapters in Serious Play to be relevant in guiding my thoughts for the course and how I view GBL and serious games in the classroom. I do think one of the mandatory IPs in ETEC565D focuses on reading a few chapters from Serious Play and summarizing them. The chapters I used for my IP deal with student attitudes about games used in the classroom, and the study finds that, generally, the more educational a game is or the more teachers try to make a non-educational game educational, the less interested children are in playing it, as Jamie (and perhaps others) have mentioned in their comments. What stuck out to me, though, is how Minecraft in the classroom is a remarkable use case of how a non-educational game was embraced by students, as they were already hooked on it outside the classroom, and the idea of participatory cultures. My IP is a short summary and analysis, and you might be interested to narrow down your reading if you are to read Serious Play: https://mddrake.wixsite.com/portfolio/post/seriousplay
Benjamin;
Your comment about how games that target specific skills promote mastery had me nodding my head. My first instinct is that there are not a lot of educational games made specifically for Drama, but to be honest, I’m not sure that’s true. I did a quick search, and most of the apps I found were for things like line memorisation, or annotating scripts, but I’m sure if I looked harder I could find some. Or perhaps I should make some! I wrote in my post about using simulation and story-based games for theatre, but I think I’d like to find more specifically targeted games that would promote mastery as you’ve suggested. For example, what if there was an app where you had to mimic the voice you were hearing; this would force the player to make effective use of their vocal technique. The app could score you on how close you got. It’s a thought.
Suzzie
It was quite interesting looking at the different resources that you offered, as I looked at them not just from the perspective of a teacher, but also as a parent and I found games that would be great for my grade 8s, but also for my own children who are 7 and 10. I would also suggest that anyone who is teaching the elements of a story to try and connect them to the different story modes that are out there. For instance, I used the story mode of FIFA and Madden (not mobile, but Xbox) to teach plot, conflict and character development and the students were much more engaged than when I used a short story.
MC-278 42 seconds
Matching-19 seconds
Great to hear you found it useful. Thats a good idea to use the story mode to teach elements of a story. I did something similar with a Minecraft plot and it amazed me how engaged students were!
Hello Ed-Apped Team,
Thanks for sharing this resource. I like how the website taught me a few new things about Wix that I haven’t seen before. That is one of the things I love about the MET program, the exposure to new tools and ways of creating from colleagues in the program. I like the platform you built and what it stands for. I enjoyed reading over other game reviews from educators who tried it for themselves, this will encourage me to share your website with my colleagues and try out the games for myself when they are applicable.
I also liked how you embedded aspects of educational gaming into the website with educandy (MC score was 253 in 57 seconds and matching game was 15 seconds ;P) It goes to show how a small game can engage students, even with only bragging rights on the line.
What I struggle with the most when it comes to mobile games for high school science is the ability to find games that match the learning objectives that are well developed. Games such as Variant look amazing(!!!!!) and come at the high price to use them. I understand that games take years to develop at such high standards but it does make it difficult to access. It appears that Variant covers multiple learning objectives which may justify the $30 fee per download but if there was something similar for Biology that I could use unfortunately the price would just be too high. When I do find games that I can use for Biology I often find myself accepting that I have to let go of one of the criteria (i.e. Easy to navigate, Visually attractive, Ability to save progress, Timely feedback, Learning Objectives). When games are designed in collaboration with educators I also find that they tend to not match my learning objectives because it is more in line with their province/state.
With that being said, I do love educational games in the classroom and it is the best when you find something that can work and is great for kids! I am looking forward to what the future has to offer high school science courses, especially when I see games like Variant being developed.
Thanks for your creation, great job!
And thanks to you for engaging with us!
That rubric you laid out is definitely a tough one to tick all the boxes on. And you’re totally right – sometimes we have to compromise and not get to all of them. Such is the reality in most things though. It almost makes it all worth it when you get the little rush in finding the PERFECT resource. That’s a great feeling.
It’s great that you found our work useful – such was our hope!
Hi, Ed-Apped Group!
Thank you for curating such a thorough list of apps to try for your OER. This is an absolutely invaluable resource for any educator that wants to include more educational games into their repertoire.
My scores were:
M/C 1:07 seconds and score of 227
Match up: 18 seconds
I liked that you included non-app mobile games as well. These are all open learning experiences and definitely relevant for this course. I was interested in Learning 4 Good as the description says it is for teens and adults. I was sad to find how dated the games were, and I realize that app-based games are where the innovation is. I tried Chemikul, and I glazed over the wordy instructions, and then I had no idea what to do when I got to the game board. I could not instinctively figure it out. So I moved on to the great attic escape. This was a flash-based program that did not work. I found this to be a great learning experience for me because I feel that I am on app-download overload; however, it is a necessary evil to find the most creative and innovative games.
I really enjoyed your layout and design of the website. You were very clear in your intention to provide us with a great background on Edu-games as well as a detailed list organized into our different specialties. Great work, team!
Hi Kristin,
You make many great points that we also found. One point I’d like to highlight is how quickly video games get dated and how there is a video game purgatory that many educational games fall into and how abandoned video game projects likely hurt the industry more than help.
In our search for great mobile games we could recommend to the class we set out to find that perfect mobile game that captured that ideal balance between game play and educational value. Rather abruptly my own search criteria reverted to five basic requirements of, 1) does it still work? 2) is it mobile device compatible?, 3) does it have a learning objective?, 4) is it engaging? and 5) is it visually appealing. I primarily searched for alternatives to the mobile game apps that are subject to the approval of the two big platforms and I was amazed at the number of abandoned games that litter the education sites. Even among the great public education sites like Nat Geo or BBC Kids there were many games that are no longer working or ran on “depreciated platforms” like Flash. For parents and teachers attempting to avoid expensive app subscriptions the google scavenger hunt for game sites often leads to frustration and disappointment. In desperation some parents and teachers may settle for quickly thrown together pet project games, indi game experiments or low budget content fillers from the massive game websites like Sheppard Software – and this can hurt the both the perception of mobile educational games and the prospects for future mobile educational game development. Here is a good article on the challenges of incentivizing educational game development. I think these realities are even further exasperated in the mobile educational game market as push back continues on screen time and mobile devices in the classrooms. https://venturebeat.com/2015/06/24/making-educational-games-is-tough-especially-if-you-want-to-make-money/
Thanks for that article. It was a good reference to consider the challenges educational games bring. In consideration of the 5 basic requirements for finding a mobile edu-game, I believe there is one more to add to the list. What about looking at games with educational content that is balanced with the core competencies that are highlighted in the BC curriculum. So the game itself is looking to develop digital citizenship in either Personal Awareness, Communication, critical and reflective thinking and or personal and social competencies.
Hi Kristin, I felt the same way when I noticed that most (if not all?) of the games on Learning for Good were Flash based, which has been out of date for a few years now and is actually going to be officially “killed” by Adobe this year. I think the cost of maintenance and upkeep is something that both educators and game developers may not anticipate when developing games, which leads to a kind of “video game purgatory,” as Jamie said in his comment.
How long do you think a game should be current and usable for it to be worth the effort to develop? Say, if it took you a year to make a game and it was doing to become obsolete in 3-5 years… is it worth making it?
That’s an excellent question, Anne. I was thinking about this over the weekend as we are starting to look at the summer institute’s mobile games. If it does take a year to develop an educational game, I will hope that it could be used in the current curriculum for 5 years. But is there a way to decrease the amount of time in the development stage? Perhaps the game development could be expedited to allow for a little bit of leeway for schools to use a game for only two years. But here in reveals another issue and it is the same that many people have with most educational technologies and that it becomes dated too quickly. How do we allow for the buy-in if you are asking teachers to continue to learn new games?
Hello all!
We just added a few more game sites that you recommended to our OER. Check out VTOKids and MIT Game Labs for even more variety. There are even Math games for teens and college students! “Liveable Cities” for Android is one of my favorites.
I really enjoyed exploring through your Ed-Apped OER. It was easy to navigate around, laid out clearly and visually appealing.
There are many mobile games that can be used to support learning in the classroom beyond just as an add-on or a time filler. I have often tried to find that balance between choosing an effective game that can be used for learning and not something just for fun. You have provided lots of information on mobile games and I will be exploring some of your suggestions further on how I can implement them into my own teaching practice.
My results:
Multiple Choice (Time: 00:62 Score: 249) Match-up Time: 15 sec
Hello all!
We just added a few more game sites that you recommended to our OER. Check out VTOKids and MIT Game Labs for even more variety. There are even Math games for teens and college students! “Liveable Cities” for Android is one of my favorites.
Thank you, Jaime! Do you by chance have the link for VTO kids, as it wasn’t coming up…?
Thanks!
Than you Kat I will connect that again.
I have updated the link on our Non-App Mobile Game Page. (https://j-tooze.wixsite.com/ed-u-game-app-review/copy-of-games) 😉
Hello Ed-Apped Group!
I really enjoyed your OER. Gaming is an important aspect to include in education. The list of apps and games you provided is very useful. My son has used Khan academy kids and I find that it is well-paced and provides opportunities for exploration of the learning goals. I like how you provided apps for different age groups as well.
Educandy is a good resource you provided to create games for the students, the games were engaging and had that competitive aspect students enjoy. I have created a list from all the resources you provided to use with my students, especially the ones to create my own games, such as Factile, and BookWidgets.
For the non-app mobile games, I would also recommend TVO kids, as it is Canadian-based. It has a lot of games that include many learning goals. They have games for coding, math and many STEM subjects.
https://www.tvokids.com/school-age/games
My results:
Multiple Choice
Time: 00:54
Score: 267
Match-Up Time: 00:18
Thank you for the OER.
Adriana
Thank you Adriana! I will add TVO Kids to the list! This an especially useful resource for that middle range of students in the later years of elementary school. So much variety too. Great find! I have added it to our Non-App page.
Please keep those suggestions coming!
Hi Guys
I loved the OER and especially the TED talk, I’ve already forwarded the link to several colleagues and will be checking out the calculus game mentioned during that talk. I got a score of 273 for the MCQ (I forgot to note the time, I hope I don’t get penalized?) and did the match up in 15 seconds. One thing that I was pondering though as I was going through the website and all the game options was whether we think it’s important to understand the underlying game principles present in each of the mobile games we hope to use in our classrooms. What I mean by that is whether it’s important to distinguish for example whether the game we want to introduce has an underlying foundation of gamification or game-based learning and what the implications of those differences might be when we incorporate a game into our classes. Each has their own affordances that make them successful and I wonder if that is something we want educators to know about before embarking on using a game. Some educators might very excitedly employ games in their classes and then come across a situation where they decide to simply abandon a game because it’s deemed ineffective whereas it might just be that it hasn’t been effectively implemented in a particular context based on the design principles of the game itself.
You bring up a great point, Carla. I’d say that for educators in those circumstances it kind of is up to the professional’s professional discretion. There are limitless possibilities for how games can be employed to any number of target demographics and I’m of the mind that it would be effectively impossible to try to catalogue each possible purpose and how best to implement it for your specific demographic. There are just too many holes to patch up. I think that a living community of users of games or of professionals in one’s field would be invaluable in using educational games to their full potential.
Hi Carla, this is a great question! Games are undeniably an excellent platform for learning, but having the pedagogical know-how to match the right game to your learning outcomes is critical with game-based learning. As educators, how can we train ourselves in this? Or should there be an evaluation tool that helps educators easily pair games with learning outcomes?
Hi Anne, that is a wonderful idea for a future OER- a platform perhaps where educators could come together and match games to specific learning outcomes? A community of practice could be a wonderful way to bring more awareness on the underlying differences in design that could affect learning outcomes.
Hi Team EdApped mobile games! I enjoyed your OER. It is a fun OER. I have used Kahoot! many times in the classroom and the students love it. I like that you can make your own quiz or use the ones already available. When you are using Kahoot! for the first time I think it is great that there are quizzes already available. My experience is that the novelty wears off if Kahoot! is used too many times in a short period of time.
Multiple choice: my time: 1:05 Score of 257
Match Up time: 0:41
Interestingly, for Match Up it took me a couple of seconds to figure out what I was supposed to do because I was looking for instructions on the page the game was on. I imagine that would be confusing for little children. I would put instructions or the name “Match Up” or “Match Them Up” on this page. I realize that the previous page said “Match Up”.
I like your OER, it is lots of fun. Good job.
Hey Ram. Thanks for engaging! I’ve used Kahoot! in class a ton too. It’s such a great tool. And the kids love it. I use it as a time fill sometimes at the end of a class, or as a way to recap previous chapters when we’re reading a story.
As to your comment on the match up game, I did the exact same thing the first time I tried it out. I was a touch confused too. A little instruction to highlight the point would certainly make that smoother. Good call!
Big fan of Kahoot as well — I think the competition element is great for encouraging students to be even more engaged. Bragging rights, as this week’s group said…
Thank you for a great OER this week! I am definitely convinced that games have a place in education. I really enjoyed the resources you provided including the apps and the tools to make your own games! Echoing some of the other comments, it does look like most of the examples provided are for lower age groups. While the interface might not be as flashy as the games for kids, I do think older students also have fun learning with a gamified approach.
Another comment I’d like to make is about informal learning from non-educational focused games. Many students play games online such as Minecraft, Call of Duty, League of Legends, etc that don’t aim to teach. However, I personally think that they provide some informal learning opportunities for students to gain some social skills, creative problem solving skills, spatial awareness, express their creativity, and practice teamwork and organization skills through playing these games. Of course, there are many concerns about screen time, privacy, content, cyber criminals, etc, but do you think that there is some informal educational value in time spent playing these non-education focused games as well? Or are they more harm than good?
Thank you again for a fun and engaging OER! Here are my scores from your fun activity:
Multiple Choice: Time – 0:50, Score – 247
Matchup: 12 seconds
Hi Linda,
Thanks for the response! I agree it was a bit easier to find educational games for younger students, but with some hunting we were able to find a range that suit all ages or are aimed specifically at older ages. I also have students that play the games you listed above, and I have the same wonderings. I don’t know the specifics of each game but
here is some information I found about Minecraft. The blog here: https://www.idtech.com/blog/educational-benefits-minecraft talks about Minecraft connections to Reading, Writing, Math, History, Creativity and Collaboration to name a few. I sense the games you mentioned may have similar connections which is fantastic.
In regards to screen time, I think we are all concerned about this connection and how it may affect younger generations in the future. I think the challenge is now finding game based approaches based upon these game templates that would be highly engage students!
Great work Ed -Apped Team!
I thoroughly enjoyed navigating through a very well organized and interactive site. You provided so much useful information and resources and made it fun to look through. I enjoyed how you gave us resources to try and download. I have booked marked them to try with my students next year especially if we are beginning the Fall with remote learning.
I liked the Knowledge Test and how you used EduCandy directly as an example for testing our own learning from your site! I think Educandy is a great way to summarize ideas in a game-based test modality and for students to have fun while revising their learning (as you did for us).
Some points that made me reflect more about games were: logins and having students usernames and account set up. Some times students need an email account to sign up so it would be dependent on that for accessibility. Another point is parent involvement: ensuring that I would keep a good balance of games on devices and non-device learning at school. I would mostly use the games as supplementary material, as revision and to close the day with some extra extra fun!
Thank you so much for your efforts and all the great resources! Amazing!
I forgot to add my Results from those fun games:
Multiple Choice-
Time: 00:56
Score: 266
Match-Up Time: 00:19
Hello!
I really enjoyed your OER. It was engaging!
I scored 269 in the multiple choice and did the match up in 20 seconds.
I tried out Learn 4 Good. It was a bit hard to navigate and the flash made the games feel dated. I tried playing Dinner at Romeo’s because it sounded fun. It’s a restaurant game. You have to seat people, take their order and bring them their food in a timely manner. Of course, people are constantly coming in and orders pile up. If you take too long people leave and you lose points/money. I failed miserably because I couldn’t remember anyone’s order! It’s one of those games though that if you kept playing it, you could get really good at it.
I had fun and now have a resource to come back to in the future. Thank you!
Natalie
HI Natalie!
Thanks for trying out some of our games. I felt the same way during Dinner at Romeo’s! It is a great problem solving solution for students. We are so glad to hear you will be back to visit in the future!
Hi Team,
I like how you divide up the information to shorter posts and it helps to keep your readers (at least it works really well for me) engaged. I had 18 seconds for match-up and for multiple choice game, I scored 242 in 50 seconds. Previously I had used H5P to create games but I didn’t find it to be very user friendly. I really like the visual appeal of Educandy so I will give it a try the next time I design any game.
Mobile educational games is a great concept to invite students to learn and like your team mentioned, mobile games also encourage collaboration and motivate students to learn. I wonder are most of the mobile educational games available on the market now are also accessible for all students? In the classroom, the different needs might be more salient and hence, better fulfilled. However, I wonder if the same could be done for mobile games? Having said that, I think educational apps finally are moving to the right path when both fun and educational components play equally, compared to even just a few years ago when educational apps were just plain boring…
Great work, team!
Pei
Hi Pei,
Thanks for your feedback. This was my first experience with Educandy and I definitely see myself using it with my class in the future. It is so easy to use that I can see myself creating more than one game in order to scaffold learning for students.
I agree that educational apps seem to be more fun/interesting now, I think there is a lot of competition out there now so makers are designing them to be more fun and engaging.
Hi Team!
Your OER looks fun and is very resourceful. I have often used Kahoot! with my classes and also tried Socrative and Quizlet. Following up on Silvia’s comment – while my students enjoy the game-based aspect of Kahoot!, last year I noticed that not all of them were willing to play. I only teach seniors, and I think it somehow felt high risk to them, even though we were just reviewing before a test. I realized that they did not like seeing/not seeing their names up on the leaderboard, or losing out on a higher score if they took longer to pick a response. I took away scoring and quickly skipped the leaderboard to go the next question the next time we played, and I found more engagement, more participation, the kids were louder, and while some of them complained about not getting points, each one could see their own ranking or streak and were okay with it! Don’t get me wrong – I love games and play them everyday myself, try to find some for my students as well, but I was wondering if in your research you found any such limitations to gaming in the classroom? Or any age-based differences in the benefits?
My results:
Multiple Choice
Time: 00:50
Score: 261
Match-Up Time: 00:15
I tried Chemikul from the Learn4Good games, and did not enjoy it much. The instructions are too wordy yet not clear enough, and the fact that the atoms can be changed feels like cheating! Will definitely check out more throughout the week. Nicely done overall!
Hi Binal,
The major limitation might be the increased amount of screen time for students. They are already spending hours on their phones at home and outside the classroom. Some parents might feel that encouraging students to learn through games could exacerbate their children’s dependency on mobile devices. I admit that nomophobia and game addiction are real concerns. However these issues can’t be addressed only by excluding mobile games in the classroom. It will require parents and educators to work together to mitigate these issues. Parents also have a role to play in managing their children’s screen time. Plus I highly doubt that a teacher would allow students to hop on their mobile phone right at the beginning of the class and play a game for the entire lesson. Usually when a serious games is integrated in the lesson, it is done either as a practice and drill activity or to convey critical points that are difficult to convey through text or pictures.
Hi Binal, I use Kahoot! quizzes quite often too and I often let students pair up either by themselves or I form groups among them. This has helped solved the problem you mention of some seeing it as high risk if points are associated with the questions and it also gives them more confidence when they can talk through a question with team mates when it comes to selecting an answer. The other great advantage is that not all students need to use a mobile phone to play along and it means that if some students don’t have a phone or enough mobile data, then there should be at least one or two others in the group that would have the capacity. The downside of that setup of course is that some are so eager they don’t give everyone in their team a chance to speak and just want to select the correct answer as fast as possible so I tend to pause after each question and we have a class discussion. The deal is that if anyone in a particular team isn’t sure of the reason that team selected a specific answer even if it was right, they would lose the points for that question.
Hey Ed-Apped Team,
Thanks for putting this week’s OER together. Before I get to my feedback, I’ll get the matter of the knowledge tests out of the way:
45 seconds for the multiple choice (score of 276)
28 seconds for the matching (my brain had a senior moment)
Alright, on to the feedback. First, I found navigating through the OER a bit confusing, with the initial four posts needing to be selected individually and not being included in the navigation arrows at the bottom of the page. I think standardizing the way that the information was presented (either all in blog posts or all as separate pages) would have made it a bit less confusing. In lieu of that sort of standardization, maybe just prefacing things a bit more (explaining the flow) could have cleared up the confusion. This comes into play with the “Non-App Mobile Games” section as well, as the information that explains the page pops up on the first viewing, but isn’t visible for subsequent visits to the page. I liked the idea of the introduction to the page appearing in that form, but not that I have no way of going back and reading it a second time (aside from clearing my cookies). My other issue was that the games you included were almost exclusively for a younger demographic. As a secondary math teacher, I was curious to see what options you might have for me, but it didn’t really feel like there was much there for my subset of students. It was interesting to see how games like Prodigy incorporated math questions into the gameplay, but I looked at it from more of an interest standpoint rather than as a potential tool to use with my students due to lack of relevancy to their grade level. For elementary school teachers, I’m sure there are several games among those you included that will be used in their classrooms moving forward.
Anyways,I hope I haven’t come off as too critical here. I know that part of the assignment instructions is to use our feedback to refine your OER, so I’m hoping you can look at my comments as helping to pinpoint some things to consider adjusting (like ensuring the “Non-App Mobile Games” intro consistently appears, or adding some games for older students).
Hi James,
No! we are grateful for your feedback and welcome all comments. You weren’t too critical at all. We are all here to learn and what I personally love about the MET program is the expertise and varied backgrounds of our classmates. Our OER was a work in progress right until launch as we observed what worked for the other groups and experimented with new ideas in an attempt to bring some some variety to the OERs. I think we would all agree that, in spite of the popularity of mobile games, the academic literature specifically addressing mobile educational games is still a wide open field for anyone that’s interested.
But once again thank you for your insights and your support. We won’t change much now but we will definitely take your advice when we make our revisions after the course wraps up.
Cheer Jamie T
Hi James,
Two more mobile games for math have been added. I think you might find them more appropriate and relevant to your students. Thanks for your feedback. We added games targeting older students in all categories.
Just tried Math Riddles, I like this one better than the other math app. I am not a Math teacher but I tutor math, this is definitely something that I would use with my kids. It has a lot of levels, but it seems that you cannot jump through levels, need to go through all of them.
Hello Ed-Apped Team. Thank you for the fun and interesting presentation.
For the multiple-choice I got:
Time: 1:06
Score: 254
The matching one: 0:40 (a little bit slow until I figure it out.)
Games are definitely I would use in my classes for youngsters, I guess. I tried to use Kahoot with one of my higher ed groups and they did not enjoy it. I think because it was timed and they got all nervous. When they were not able to get the right answers, they were upset. For this group that I have, I think that they are more old school and want to stick to the traditional way of learning.
My other group actually really enjoyed games being used in class and asked me to have more of these types of activities in class. So I guess it really depends on how well the students receive these Ed-Apped.
As I looked through the apps, do you think that mobile education games are more suitable for certain group ages? Or should I say more effective for certain group ages?
Mobile education games are great for students, especially during this time that we cannot be in the classroom having fun. I believe that these games somehow “make up” for the social distance that we are going through right now.
Hi Silvia,
That’s an interesting question. I personally don’t think that mobile games are more effective for certain group ages. It depends on the relevance of the game and should be tailored-made for a specific audience. Serious mobile games can appeal to all age groups as long as they prove useful and relevant to their course. You can easily find research papers that illustrate the positive impact of educational mobile games on both children and young adults’ level of engagement and performance.
Hi SIlvia, I tend to agree with Pascaline. I teach in Higher Ed. too and my students are in love with Kahoots! I think it’s about finding the right type of game for your audience though. Maybe your audience is a little bit more traditional (very used to the sage on the stage method of teaching and they were taken aback by an approach in teaching that involved their engagement). Maybe a little more time is needed for them to become familiar with the platform? A non-timed quiz could help in this regard? Or a low stakes quiz to start (something on general knowledge for example). My advice is just to not give up on games in education!
Thank you for your suggestions. I continue using game apps in my classes, but it has been challenging for this “group” of mine. I am in search of a new app for this group. Hopefully, I will find one.
One little additional comment: I got the impression that most of the games you suggested were more suitable for younger students. Maybe you could consider apps that are also adequate for high-school or adult learners. As you said, the key is finding a one that is suitable for them. I appreciate the information on the site because it gives me information on what I need to consider when looking for a better app for my classes.
Hi team! I really enjoyed your OER. It was very visually pleasing. I struggled with Science Apps this year and this really helped me. I liked all the information and app suggestions, thanks! I didn’t time myself on the games or remember the score, I think 220? The games were fun and it made me write them down so I could build some for September as I am sure we will be online at some point again.
Thanks,
Tyler
Hey that’s awesome, Tyler! Mission accomplished! Thanks for the feedback – we’re so glad you got something from it.
Hello Ed-Apped Group!
What a fun topic you guys have. I am super interested in checking out all the games you have provided for different parts of the curriculum. I am also looking for good games to share with my class for stations, early finishers, and to send links home to play in the evenings. This is also the first time I have been introduced to Educandy. Will definitely be using it next year! Thanks for sharing.
As far as the games go…
Multiple Choice:
Time – 1:18
Score – 229
Match-up: 25 seconds.
Thanks Kylie! I like your idea of using games with your early finishers – this is a great use of time that will engage students and (possibly) motivate students to finish tasks in a timely manner!
Multiple choice:
Time – 01:54
Score – 207
Match-up: 21 seconds
I enjoyed the interactivity, which introduces some initial thoughts on gaming & apps in education. I’m excited about diving in your OER this week!
Hi Ceci,
Thanks for being the first one to post about our OER. Please jot down a few lines once you had the chance to explore our website.
Hi Ed-Apped Team,
Like many of our classmates said, this is a very resourceful OER! The design and layout of the website make me start to like Wix. Agree with Katlyn, it taught me a few new things about Wix that I haven’t seen before. Thank you! If I were to give a suggestion, I would like to move the Knowledge Test tab before the Rating Mobile Games tab, right after the Home tab.
I also like it that you organized the theoretical elements into 4 different posts on the homepage where the commenting function was enabled for interactivity. I found the Making Custom Educational Games page particularly useful to me. I use Quizlet and Kahoot often, heard of Socrative but never used it myself. Gimkit, Factile, BookWidgets and Educandy are new to me. I’m very excited to bookmark them all and use them with my students in the fall.
Thanks again for putting this together. Great job!