When I first heard the term "serious gaming", I thought of men sitting in their pajamas, without a job, playing video games all day with other online players. I had no idea that it was geared toward educational settings. I have incorporated many online games into my classroom. This is definitely a way to engage students. I was blessed to be at a school that purchased Study Island for the past two years. The students loved playing the games and the teacher was able to assign the games according to the skills the students were currently working on. The teacher had access to all the data and reports of how the students were doing and how much time they were spending on these games. I found a lot of value in this program.
This coming year, my new district has not purchased Study Island. I am going to have to find alternate ways to obtain the data and discover educational games that work with the skill set my students are working on. I think I have found a good alternative in this website. It is called
Arcademic Skill Builders.
I can select games by skill, subject, grade level and I am able to set up students accounts all for free. Students will be able to play these games from school or home.
This is a blessing because Study Island can be cost prohibitive for teachers or districts. For a single classroom, Study Island is $308 and for a building it can run over $2000. This is a heavy cost for many districts that are striving to stay ahead with all of the changing technology.
I believe serious gaming is an easy way to engage students in something educational and fun that most students do everyday - play video games. I think when we see students that excel in this area, we should introduce them to other sites where the student can create their own games. Keeping students engaged is essential to learning and today's generation of students is geared toward technology. They grew up with Wii, Xbox, iPads, and computers all around them. It makes sense to teach them with these tools.
I love the Arcademic Skillbuilder website! I used it for the first time last year as part of my Action Research project. My students loved using the website to play games against their friends. I love all of the tracking data that the website gives teachers. I knew exactly what each student was doing and what progress they were making. I plan to use it all year during both our math and reading center rotations.
ReplyDeleteI had the same thought when I first thought about serious gaming. I just kept thinking students who go home, sit on the computer or at their TV and play video games all night. After researching though, there is so much out there educationally. I love using the iPad for math games. I have also found tons of math games online for students to practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts.
ReplyDeleteYour point about keeping students engaged is vital to their learning, is so true. Gaming is a great tool to use to bridge the technology gap for our students. The resources available to use are endless and most are free, which offers an economical learning tool for student learning. I have and use Study Island quite a bit in my teaching and the students seem to enjoy the opportunity to get on the computer to practice their skills. Although I have Study Island, I plan to explore more options and use a greater variety of gaming resources as learning tools.
ReplyDeleteI too, was thrown off by the word "serious" gaming. I had never heard educational online games referred to as "serious."
ReplyDeleteI haven't had the opportunity to experience Study Island, but between the two classes this summer many people have had great things to say about it. I will have to try and get my hands on a way to explore Study Island. I think the teacher having access to data and reports on skills practiced within the games is great information for the teacher!
OK, some trivia on the Arademic Skill Builder site ... several of those games (Meteor Multiplication, Alien Addition, among others) have been around for 30 years. I first encountered them as games for the Apple IIe. I think I probably have couple of the 5.25" floppies stashed away somewhere. Imagine my surprise to run across this website and find those games were still alive, albeit in a different context. I think those kind of drill and practice type games make a great supplement to other types of practice that are focused on building the "how" skills rather than the "why" understanding. Very appropriate especially in primary grades.
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