Sunday, January 23, 2011

Games in Education

I have just started the games module with my 2nd year educational studies groups.  It seems to be going really well, although it is fair to say that some are enjoying it more than others!  The first session was spent discussing what games meant to us as adults and how we saw the relevance of games in our lives.  Whether we enjoy video games, what attributes good game should have, what sort of games we play, who we like to play games with.  The students then created a PowerPoint to depict a moral dilemma, with choices throughout to engage and include the audience.  This interactivity was an aspect that the students had identified as an important feature of a game.  Last week the students were asked to play and evaluate, a selection of Channel 4 educational games designed for 14-18 year olds.  The topics the games covered were varied and, in some cases, according to their evaluations, tenuous.  After, what for some became a frustrating, thirty minutes, each students was asked to complete a written evaluation which was added to their groups gaming wiki.  Here is the selection of on-line video games that I chose (with the help of my 15 year old son) for exploration.

  1. http://www.1066game.com
  2. http://www.thecurfewgame.com
  3. http://www.privatesgame.com
  4. http://www.bowstreetrunner.com
  5. http://www.trafalgarorigins.com

1 comment:

kadie said...

sounds like a really interesting project. would have really enjoyed that as a second year.