Games are fun.  Learning is supposed to be fun at least some of the time. (If not all of the time…but that’s another blog post)  For me the combination of games and learning is a natural one; they are the perfect complement for each other and a ‘tool’ educators need to exploit more often.

Last year I used a lot of games to attract students to my library.  The plan was a huge hit (which also increased reading and borrowing) and I learned which games worked and which ones didn’t.  We had board games as well as online games which were accessible via our moodle site. Throughout my PLJ (Personal Learning Journey) I have also made a point of bookmarking games I thought might be of use and it occurred to me that others might find my list useful.  The most successful and popular games are listed below

Highlights

Bloxorz is a strategy game that involves manoeuvring a block through a hole with increasing degrees of difficulty.  It proved a huge hit with the boys in my library who spent many lunchtimes working together to solve the problem.  Of course, they were just having fun and unaware that they were also working collaboratively and developing communication and problem-solving skills.

A similar type of game is planarity.  I only just discovered planarity via a recent plurk but I believe it would sit nicely next to bloxorz and prove a similar hit…perhaps I will add it to the list when I return to work!

After the success of bloxorz Students began researching and suggesting other games they considered ‘worthy’ of our library moodle page and I added those I thought suitable:

Jelly Blocks involves similar thinking skills and was the next game adopted after students had mastered bloxorz.

3D Logic was another student recommendation.  It begins with something that looks a lot like a rubik’s cube and also involves strategy and problem-solving skills.

Mansion Impossible is quite different from the puzzle-type games that proved popular with students.  It requires participants to buy and sell houses to earn enough money to build a 10 million pound mansion.  The students loved it but seemed to find it too easy.

I also added a few keyboarding games such as  The Keyboard Game and Key Master.

Educational Games

The obvious ‘educational’ games proved less popular with students when they had ‘free time’ but were, nevertheless, useful additions to our list of games and would attract occasional interest.  Of course, students would love to be allowed to play these games during class time but they wanted a different type of challenge during their ‘free time’ in the library.

Questionaut One of the BBCs bitesize games An excellent model for educational games.  This one is designed for revision.

Purpose Games A wide selection of trivia and quiz games with purpose.

Gut Instinct Another BBC game.  Great for revision.

Puzzle Choice A good selection of puzzles including mazes, word games etc and some excellent links to other online games including Wordsense which is one of our family’s favourites.  My 16 year old son loves this one and he usually goes out of his way to avoid anything educational.

The Magic Factory attracted a lot of attention from the younger students, as did the games available via The Stacks at Scholastic.

My ‘Library Legends’ (aka library monitors) loved playing Immune Attack on my laptop, a great game that  “introduces basic concepts of human immunology”  However,  I believe the ‘shoot ’em up’ aspects of this game were the real attraction.

A group of games from the Nobel Prize organisation is also worth a look.  These games include are designed to teach us about the Nobel Prize award and include simulations and games based around the Nobel Prize in Physics, Literature, Chemistry, Peace, Medicine and Economics.

I hope you enjoy exploring these games.

Games are Learning Gems