2 Games for fun and education

In my opinion the best educational games aren't those that actually set out to educate. So many 'educational' games are simply rote learning tools dressed up and although rote learning has its place, it is only fun for a while. Added to that is the fact that if you know a game is supposed to be educational, then that sucks the fun from it before you begin.

A couple of years ago I came across Bridgebuilder

 by Chronic Logic. It was created in 2000

 and gives you the opportunity to create 2D

 bridges to span a given gap, and then run a train across it to see if it is structurally sound. It starts off easy and then the levels increase in difficulty

 to become fiendishly tricky. The creator of Bridgebuilder has since left Chronic Logic and you can get an updated version from his new site. The total size of the game is only 239Kb so it is quick and easy to download and setup.

I have used Bridgebuilder with a senior science class to look at simple engineering principles such as trusses, arches and the importance of triangles. The physics engine in the game allows you to examine where the stress is distributed in your bridge and is great for illustrating the effects of compression and tension forces.

 I have also used it with a year 4/5 computer club as a problem solving exercise. It would be a great game for early finishers in a primary classroom.

Chronic Logic have since released sequels, Pontifex, Bridge Construction set (A.K.A Pontifex II) and Bridge it (essentially a remake of Bridge Construction set with glitzier graphics). All three are available to buy from their site, or you can download a demo. They will do educational pricing if you email them with your needs. The gameplay for these later versions is similar but the bridges are three dimensional and there are new materials to play with including suspension cables and hydraulics for the creation of draw-bridges so that you can make a greater variety of designs. They are brilliant and offer a more involved challenge but it is hard to beat free.

The second game that I feel compelled to recommend is Fantastic Contraption which is similarly themed in that there are levels of increasing difficulty, it is a physics based game, and triangles are king when it comes to stability.

The aim of the game is to move a box or ball from a starting area to a goal area. You have at your disposal two types of rod, self-powered wheels and unpowered wheels with which to move

 the box or ball. You can fling it with a catapult, build it into a car, send it on a conveyor ride, or pick it up with a crane. There are usually many ways to succeed in the task, and many more ways to fail.

The principles of gravity, pulleys, levers, force, friction and Newton's Laws can all be explored.

Again this is an excellent problem-solving exercise for all age groups. It is browser based so no need to install anything. For an extra US$10 you get access to a gazillion levels designed by the community. You can rate them for difficulty and quality. There is a companion site made by fans that helps to keep track of all of the extra levels. It has been bought by the Fantastic Contraption owners so should become integrated with the main site soon. It also has a wiki that has a page about the physics of the game so you could have your students explore the gravity constant in the FC 'universe'.

I spent waaaaay too much time playing this in during my recent holidays, give it a go.

Mixedink: Write democratically

By now, many people will have used wikis, blogs, Google Docs, Zoho or something similar to get their students collaborating on a task. They all enable multiple editors to work on a piece of writing, be it a poem, a practical report, a letter, a procedure or an essay.

Mixedink also allows people to collaborate but it differs in the execution and is aimed towards getting larger groups to work together.

Anyone can start a piece of work for any purpose. As with other services, invites are sent to potential collaborators. If for example you write a letter to the government of Japan complaining about whaling, collaborators can read and rate your work. They also have the option of writing their own version and while they do, paste in and modify the best bits from your letter. When they are happy with it they publish their version and then other collaborators can repeat the process until there are many versions, each rated by their peers. At the end of a period set by the organiser of the letter/article etc the version with the highest rating is the 'winner'. Below is a demo video:

MixedInk from MixedInk on Vimeo.

Implications for teaching:

Collaboration in all forms is an essential skill and this service could be a great way to inspire and direct students to think about a given topic. The rating system encourages analysis of existing ideas and the drafting process encourages synthesis. One problem that many students have is in drawing on a number of secondary sources to create their own work. We have all had to mark a zillion cut-and-paste horrors. Plagiarism is something that can't be overcome without explicit teaching of how best to stitch together concepts and ideas. This tool has the potential to assist teachers and students to examine the process of writing a good piece that uses other's work ethically.

As with all work involving collaboration online, care would haveto be taken to set guidelines for students re: language, personal attacks etc. but this should be standard for all classrooms anyway. 

The rating system does have the potential to favour popular students and we don't necessarily want the physically attractive yet illiterate students to have their work rated highly. I would advocate having the students set up anonymous accounts that only the teacher knows the true name for. It is a shame that Mixedink hasn't prepared for educational users by allowing educators  to create class sets of numbered IDs like a couple of other web 2.0 services do. Maybe later.

Likewise there might be some hurt feelings for students whose work is rated lowly. This is something that students should be prepared to deal with and it is an opportunity for some real self-examination ie "did I work hard enough?", "how can I improve my writing?", "Why did Jenny's get rated so highly?"

 

Some ideas for use:

Interclass debates: Imagine if the main arguments for and against were assigned to whole classes or even year levels. An interesting way to see what arguments would hold the most weight with a large number of people

Writing an 'issue' letter: Write to government or a company to voice your discontent or otherwise about an issue.

Story writing: Set the class a character, problem, setting etc and let them create.

School newsletter: Crowdsource an article on any topic

Student council: Prepare submissions to the school executive about an issue of concern to students.

You get the idea!

What I'd like to see for educators:

1) The ability to create bulk logins for students.

2) As mentioned above, the rating system could become a popularity contest. I would like an alternative rating system that rates work according to an algorithm involving number of visitors, average time spent reading the article divided by length of article, number and amount of paragraphs copied etc.... but then, I am a maths teacher. 

Typealyzer - Spooky insights into the mind of a blogger

Long time, no post. I guess that is what you get when you teach and have a family. Some things just have to come third.

I recently came across Typealyzer. It is a simple concept. Paste the URL of a blog into the box that appears and it gives you an analysis of the personality type or the author and a chart of what sort of brain activity was going on e.g. logical/mathematical, intuitive etc

Apparently it references some sort of database and applies an algorithm to spit out these results and for the couple I tried it seemed to be on the money. I don't know how much store I put into a lot of these left brain/ right brain things but it could be a great way to engage your students in metacognition and motivate their writing. What a great discussion point if someone who seems to be all hard-nosed and logical seems to be writing an emotional blog.

The creators point out that it is not necessarily profiling the personality of the writer, but of the voice that they are using in their blog. You could well have multiple blogs that each have a different assessment. I have included my brain chart for this blog... hmmm... do you think it matches a science / maths teacher?

Sproutbuilder - Grow your Own Widgets

Sproutbuilder is a platform that enables you to make your own flash widgets without knowing a scrap of code. It has an easy-to-use interface that enables you to drag, drop, resize, copy and paste elements on to your project, which can be any size from a micro button to a full webpage. These elements include buttons, text, shapes, images, audio, video (including Youtube clips), RSS feeds, Google forms, Polldaddy polls and more. Whats more, you can embed the sprouts just about anywhere: wikis, blogs (of course) Moodles, Facebook, Myspace, Netvibes etc. or just email them.

When it launched earlier this year I had a play around with it but didn't really have much of a purpose in mind when making my own sprouts. However, I started incorporating them into my wikis: Countdowns and slideshows mainly and when my school launched its Moodle recently I started to see the applications.

A standard Moodle looks pretty boring. 'Nineties in its outlook you might say. So I started using Sproutbuilder to add a little bling, some RSS feeds, slideshows and useful links at the top of every subject. Of late I have started using Sproutbuilder to make little interactive modules for the students. You can see these at a new blog that I have started called Edusprouts where I hope to be able to aggregate not just my sprouts, but the sprouts of other teaching professionals. Not all sprouts will be suitable, forms and countdowns will probably have little use outside the confines of the course that you build the sprouts for, but for general sprouts like the one I have included below, any (science) teacher could find a use. 

Down for everyone or just me?

With our ever-increasing reliance on internet based resources like wikis and blogs it becomes frustrating when the page just wont load. Is it a problem with the school's systems? My computer connection? Is the site down for some reason?

The easiest way to check is to use Downforeveryoneorjustme just type or paste in the address of your online resource and get independent confirmation like in the screenshot below:

The Whiteboard Challenge

Get over to the Whiteboard Challenge wiki and try your hand at one of the challenges being set for users of interactive whiteboards by teaching professionals.

Every two weeks a new challenge is being posted and participants are encouraged to blog about their exploits. What a great way to encourage both innovation and reflection in our practice.

There is a button that you can grab from my sidebar for your own blog or wiki in order to promote the event.

Handy classroom organisation tools

I was reading a post on Classroom 2.o the other day and came across a reference to two delightfully simple tools for classroom organisation.

Termites for creating seating plans and
Monkey, for creating productive groups

I have always wanted some tools for this purpose and had toyed around with Excel and just couldn't seem to get it right.

Termites allows you to input 'relationship' scores for your students. That is, if you think that they work well together you give them a score up to +10 and if you'd rather that they didn't sit together you'd give them a score as low as -10. The generator takes these values into account when allocating seats. If you have a student who has poor eyesight you can specify that they are placed at the front of the room. If you have a real firecracker you can even 'glue' them to the seat closest to you so that you can keep a wary eye on them and everyone else will be shuffled around them.

Creating the table layout is also blindingly simple. You are presented with a grid of whatever size you like. You then click on a box to make it a table and click on it again to clear it. Very easy to set up rows or pods.

Monkey works on the same principle of entering relationship values but also gives you the opportunity to input an 'ability' score from 0 to 100. You then have the opportunity to group according to ability as well as taking into account the relationships. Group size and number is customised in the same way as for Termites and so is 'glueing' a student into a group.

Try them out, they are as educational software should be. Easy, simple, created by an educator, useful and free!

It takes the hassle out of making new seating plans and you could choose to have a different plan ever week if you so desired with a press of the button.