Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

Given the polarized public opinion on the direction of American government, a game named Argument Wars seems like the perfect classroom activity to learn about the judicial branch of government. In this classroom game from Our Courts, students will argue both sides in several famous Supreme Court cases. According to the Our Courts website:

“In Argument Wars, you debate historical Supreme Court cases by advancing arguments and backing them up with supports. Play New Jersey v. T.L.O., Brown v. Board of Education, or Gideon v. Wainwright today! Coming soon: Texas v. Johnson, Miranda v. Arizona and more!”

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BY BILL FERRIS

ProProfs Brain Games lets you create simple online games for your class without expending much time or effort. The game varieties include crosswords, word finds, jigsaw puzzles, and so on. Not super-complex, but perfect for test reviews and elementary classrooms.

ProProfs does the hard work of configuring the puzzles themselves, meaning you just have to come up with questions and answers. So if you’ve got a bunch of vocabulary words you want your students to learn, consider putting them in a crossword format to make the exercise a little more entertaining. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Are you passionate about gaming as a valid form of education? You’re not alone. The Learning Games Network wants to put you in touch with other like-minded educators through their Teachers Professional Learning Community:

“The PLC will provide a forum for teachers to share experiences and ideas for using existing games in the classroom, as well as discuss ideas and concepts for where games could fill gaps and niches in curricula. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Do you enjoy playing video games, learning geography, and helping those less fortunate, not necessarily in that order? The online game FreePoverty rewards your knowledge of geography by donating 10 cups of water to thirsty people around the world for every city or landmark you can correctly place on a world map.

Similar to FreeRice, FreePoverty lets you have fun and help others at the same time. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

It’s that time of year again when lazy bloggers rehash old material under the guise of “Best of” lists rather than come up with new stuff. Instructify is no exception.

Below are the top 10 Instructify posts of 2009. The rankings were determined via a combination of Google Analytics, retweets, and the capricious and arbitrary whims of the editor.

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BY BILL FERRIS

As schools move away from rote memorization of facts, what happens to those kids who like to rattle off the state capitals or list all the presidents? They can put their knowledge of educational trivia to good use at Sporcle, a site filled with countless list-style quizzes that will exercise kids’ knowledge of…well, just about everything.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Try your hand at balancing a state budget with the Colorado Backseat Budgeter, an online application from the Bighorn Leadership Development Program at Colorado State University. The Backseat Budgeter lets you decide how much to spend on health care, roads, education, social services and so forth, while raising or lowering tax rates to make up for budget shortfalls. In keeping with these hard economic times, the Backseat Budgeter starts you approximately $800 million in the hole.

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BY BILL FERRIS

As further proof that my pop-culture awareness stopped sometime in the mid-90s, this month’s random roundup features Indiana Jones, apparently Instructify’s go-to reference to convey that a history or archaeology tool is exciting or adventurous in some capacity.

Of course, now that they’re making a fifth Indiana Jones movie, I don’t feel quite so dated.

National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid: Archaeology with No Risk of Snakes or Nazis!
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist like Indiana Jones and I dreamed about being on Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sadly, I’m not currently exploring foreign lands for ancient artifacts and getting chased by Nazis, nor did I ever get the chance to be a Blue Barracuda. But with National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid, your students can have the opportunities that I never did, and learn while doing it!

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BY BILL FERRIS

In Escape from the Mummy’s Tomb! your elementary students must recover Egyptian artifacts from inside a pyramid. As the title of the game has no doubt alerted you, you’ll have to wrest these artifacts from an undead mummy’s cold, dead, bandaged fingers.

After your students have finished their archaeological adventure, they’ll find themselves in a museum, where they must put the artifacts in their proper display cases. (more…)

BY REBECCAH HAINES

“Who are you?  Who, who, who who?”  Every Thursday night I wait for that song to come on the TV with the start of one of my favorite shows.  Chances are, many of your students feel the same way.  So, why not engage them in some real science learning by playing CSI: The Experience — Web Adventures, created by Rice University.

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BY BILL FERRIS

The scavenger hunt, the good twin of the wild-goose chase, can be a fun way to exercise students’ creativity and problem-solving skills. This video from Howcast shows you how to put together a scavenger hunt using modern tools like cell phones and multimedia. Using smart phones, the hunters in the video solve riddles via text message, snap pictures of interesting landmarks, and dial a secret number for the next clue by solving a math problem.

While I haven’t done this myself, it looks like a fun way to fuse technology and education. This idea is swollen with educational opportunities — incorporating study questions into the clues, challenging kids to find creative solutions, or promoting collaboration and teamwork — and you can adapt it for just about any subject.

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BY BILL FERRIS

During a recent flu outbreak, I only let 1400 people die. Go me!

I’ve just played The Great Flu, an online game designed to teach people about flu pandemics and how to control them. Your task: try to control a flu pandemic somewhere in the world. At your disposal: an array of tools and tactics such as distributing facemasks, stockpiling “wild guess” vaccines that may or may not help, informing the populace, and extremes such as shutting down airports and isolating victims. Every measure you take costs money, and if you pony up funds for improved health care in China, you’ll have to spend it again if the flu migrates across the border to India.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Before all these fancy-shmancy video games, folk used to play games on slabs of cardboard. “Board games” we called ‘em, and I don’t recall people getting bored playing them.

Now, a few of you creative types as like as not have games you play in your class. You think to yourself, “This is a pretty fun game, and my students actually learn something. I wish I could play this on an actual game board instead of drawing it on the blackboard like a caveman.” Well, you can make your game idea a reality with The Game Crafter.

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BY BILL FERRIS

How far would your students go to save a lost pet? Would they infiltrate a nefarious underground factory that turns cuddly animals into food? Would they disguise themselves as monsters to outsmart gremlins, golems and yetis? Would they still go through all this rigmarole if they knew it was a way to practice their math skills?

Lure of the Labyrinth is an mathematics game from Maryland Public Television designed for middle-school pre-algebra students. The protagonist, a kid who’s just had his beloved pet abducted by Bigfoot and taken to a subterranean food mill, has to solve a series of math-based puzzles to get him back. The puzzles focus on proportions, ratios, fractions, and variables.

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BY BILL FERRIS

When I grew up, playing video games was the opposite of a healthy lifestyle — hours of sitting on my butt, staring at the TV, and not socializing (I did, however, rescue various princesses and punch out Mike Tyson).

Humana Games for Health wants to erase the stereotype of the chubby weakling shoving Cheetos in his mouth while mashing buttons in a dark basement. They’re looking reward you handsomely for your ideas for a healthy video game in their InsertCoin competition.

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