Cooperative Play - Race the Game!

My teen students had such fun playing my Zombie Apocalypse game; I have mostly used it for review - with the students producing question banks - but sometimes they just play it for the sake of seeing if they can overcome the game. Seeing them work together so enthusiastically convinced me I just had to expand the cooperative model to another game. One aspect I wanted to work on was the fact that Zombie Apocalypse takes at least 30 minutes to play, and sometimes longer depending on the many variables at play in the game (and so is best suited to one sitting). This time I wanted a game that could fill any time from 5-10 minutes upwards.

I'm happy to say I achieved my aim with Race the Game. In fact, I went one step further and created 4 different versions of the title so we can mix it up a bit as the semester continues.

Overview
The game is simplicity itself, but with that essential element of tension to keep players engaged. It is essentially another review game where - in 3 of the 4 versions - teams get to move forward one space on their track for every correct answer. For every incorrect response, the game gets to proceed along its much shorter track. The goal is to reach the finish line before the game does.
All that's needed are 2 counters (which could be coins, erasers or even bits of paper) and a set of review questions. I prefer to have students produce these as part of their revision, but sometimes I use it to review our word wall terms. If you are looking for stems or examples for your own game, here are some resources to get you started:

• Questions for All Grades from Help Teaching (Choose your level from the left-side menu.)
• Prompts for 'Bloom' Questions
• Quizzes by Category from SoftSchools
• Grammar Quizzes from Activities for ESL Students
• Questions from FunTrivia
• Freebies from TeachersPayTeachers

Cooperative Gaming - Playing Together v Playing Against

A while back, I came across the concept of cooperative gaming through the popular boardgame Pandemic. I thought the idea of having players cooperative rather than compete was brilliant, and getting students to work together toward a common goal much more conducive to positive relationships than traditional boardgames where players are pitched against each other.

Playing is how we learn to behave in life. Practising skills like listening, suggesting, discussing and so on allow us to develop positive relationship skills that have a direct connection to collaboration and teamwork.

Furthermore, when we play cooperatively, we don't just reach a goal but we do so together and this brings its own joy.

So much in school seems to be about competition as students compare scores and grades, go up against each other in sports and strive to be the 'most' in whatever arena they find themselves in. There is an over-preoccupation with 'getting ahead' of others in today's world (IMHO), and cooperative games are a great antidote to this.

A wider aspect of cooperative gaming is the link to sustainability. We have seriously worrying problems to solve at the local, national and global levels and is likely that cooperation - if anything - is the solution: we can achieve much more together than alone.

An interesting fact is that Elinor Ostrom - 2009 Nobel Prize winner - showed through her work that in many cultures across the globe, people work together to preserve the resources necessary for living. This happens without any policies, laws or authorities - it's just makes sense to protect the ecosystem of which you are a part.

While we may be lead to believe that competition is natural, many biologists disagree.  For example, Peter Kropotkin says: “competition . . . is limited in animals to exceptional periods . . . Better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual support.” You may also be surprised to learn that the phrase “survival of the fittest” was not coined by Charles Darwin but by Industrialist Herbert Spencer!

All in all, the benefits of cooperative gaming are so numerous that I was sold on promoting them with my students. To this end, I created a game to go with our 'brain' (metacognitive study) unit and used the theme of zombies to
stoke their interest. The first encounter with the concept of the game confused many of my students, but after working out the gameplay, they were off! They now ask regularly if they can play it and we've worked it in as a way to review content toward the end of our units.

UPDATE: Another game I created with my mythology-mad teen son is based on Greek Mythology. I've had my secondary students play it, and they love it. One of them commented that they wished they could buy it and play at home, so I decided to list it for sale. Here's a preview. You can also click on the image below for a bigger image.

If you think you might like to try out cooperative gaming, I really encourage you to do so. While creating your own game definitely takes time and effort, you will undoubtedly find it a most rewarding process enhanced by the delight of your students as they play and realise that truly, 'Together everyone achieves more!'

Zondle: A Truly 'WOW!' Game Engine

Over the years I've come across some great game generators but as time has gone on, they have either changed to subscription-based models or disappeared. Enter Zondle which promises to always be free. This site allows you to enter questions with over 20 different formats to choose from. Once the questions have been typed in, the site automatically generates 50+ different games to review the knowledge.
After a rapid-fire round of emails with the very helpful Dougi of Zondle Support, I had my class usernames and passwords set up in less than half an hour last night. Today my learners logged on and...well, I've never heard them beg for more learning. After 20 minutes of playing games which tested their 'knowledge' of Shakespeare - we have not yet launched the topic and they have had no direct instruction - they were individually able to give me newly-learned facts simply from their gaming. When I asked if this was really a useful tool for learning, there was a resounding 'Yes!' vote.
What I love about Zondle is that it generates so many engaging activities from so little input. It is a very simple-to-use interface that requires only basic ICT skills and learners as well as teachers can author the activities.
What I have yet to try is the 'Team Play' mode which I've only previewed so far, but it is so slick and professional-looking that it's sure to be great for whole class involvement.
Did I mention that you can use 3rd-party devices for teams to enter their own answers? Or that you can integrate it with your teaching materials? There are so many great features that if the video below doesn't convince you, a visit to the site certainly will. Click here.

Festisite: Unleash the Creativity - Mother's Day Cards?

Festisite is an interesting platform for producing some great teaching resources, as well as getting your learners to be creative with texts. You can sign-up using an existing account such as Facebook, so no need to create a separate profile.

Integration:

• Use the money generator to produce customised cash for use in the classroom - maths?
• Personalise cards with pictures for classroom games.
• Create shape texts - how about one like this letter (below) for Mother's Day?

Sumdog: Games for Math Practice

Sumdog offers a wide range of games to practice math in a fun way. There are rewards, competitions and multi-player games to keep even the most reluctant learners engaged. There are portals for teachers, students and parents so it can be used at home too. Teachers can organise students into classes and set specific activities for them to complete.

Integration:

• The ability to create free logins for all your students, without providing e-mail addresses is a bonus for schools not yet using a school-wide email system
• As teachers can choose which skills learners practise, activities can personalise activities and  complement classroom activities 
• Let's face it - what teen would rather do exercises out of a traditional textbook than play interactive games online? It's a winner for motivation and engagement at all levels.

Word Dynamo: Have Fun Improving Vocabulary!

Word Dynamo is the latest offering from Dictionary.com that allows you to test and expand your vocabulary through a range of fun games. Registering allows you to track your progress and it's also possible to create your own word lists for games and submit them to the public library.

Integration:

• Create word lists for your own topics that learners can access in their own time for revision or learning before tackling a new topic.
• Guide learners toward creating their own word lists for topics so they can have fully personalised games to improve their vocabulary.
• Set up word lists and have a chart displayed in your room to track progress; a visual check may encourage learners to keep up with those ahead.

Switcheroo Zoo

Switcheroo Zoo is bound to be a hit with your young learners, but I'm already thinking up ways to use it with my teens. The site contains lots of activities related to animals and their habitats. It's a mine of useful information, but the fun starts in the 'Switch Zoo' where it's possible to create new animals from the composite parts of existing ones. Here's a picture of my 3-minute creation: Bengal Gizard!

• Learners can mix up their own animals and then use the animal facts to write profiles for their creations - let their imaginations soar as they practise their writing skills
• Build a habitat most suitable for the animals met on the site
• Let learners take a guided tour to find out more about the animal kingdom
• Use as part of a larger project where learners create a world using Terragen and then visit this site to populate their planets

FAS Immune Attack

A free game to download and install, sadly only available for PC users at the moment. Immune Attack takes the concept of infection and teaches it in a highly engaging way. It's a bit tricky to navigate the nanobot but users will learn a lot about the immune system as they master the controls.


"You must navigate a nanobot through a 3D environment of blood vessels and connective tissue in an attempt to save an ailing patient by retraining her non-functional immune cells.  Along the way, you will learn about the biological processes that enable macrophages and neutrophils – white blood cells – to detect and fight infections."

Boggle's World / Lantern Fish ESL

"Jobs, Worksheets, and Flashcards for the ESL and TEFL Teacher. The new home for bogglesworld.com"

This site is packed with outstandingly good resources, many of them cross-curricular. While sometimes it can be difficult to locate the best of what's on offer, taking 10 minutes to wander through and discover what's available definitely turns up some gems. If you've got EAL/ESL learners in your classes and you're struggling for materials, there is plenty on here to help you.

Integration:

• The ESL Science section contains a few resources including common language patterns for discussing and writing about scientific exploration
• Learners can find out about oceans and continents with these flashcards, wordsearches and worksheets
• The Writer's Workshop will be of use to teachers from a range of subjects and year groups
• Reported Speech Soccer will help even native speakers perfect their skill of changing direct speech into reported speech
• A Business section is more geared toward preparing learners for business transactions than theory but very useful for role-play and communicative practice in general
• And if none of the above floats your boat, the extensive menu of boardgames can be used 'off the peg' or downloaded and customised for your needs

Teaching Research Skills

A recent post on the TES forum asked about how best to teach research skills, so I em...researched online and found the following:

Teach-nology provides this page on which resources are best for researching particular topics. It could easily be adapted to be more relevant to your learners' cultural situation.

The All about Explorers site contains fictional biographies with differentiated lesson plans to lead learners to an appreciation of why being discerning about Internet resources is so important.

Bibliobouts is an online game that teachers can customise for assignments.

Students are rewarded for their research skills and their ability to differentiate between good and bad material. To play, they find sources, which are judged by their peers for relevance and credibility, and then measure the worth of sources their classmates find. They gain more points the more sources they assess accurately and the better their own sources are judged.

-The Chronicle of Higher Education

Bibliobouts works with Zotero which is a free tool for collecting and citing sources. It works from your browser and is an interesting alternative to other bibliography tools.

The British Library has a section dedicated to creative research with guidance for learner, teachers and a great set of links to even more helpful websites.

The 50-word assignment idea from Charles L Cohen of Wisconsin University is designed to improve writing, as well as research, skills. Following the links to the examples and explanations clarifies how it works and can be adapted for high-school groups.




Update (03.02.11): The Learning Network has just published a lesson plan on the reliability of sources which may also be of interest. Click here.

As always, feel free to add your own resources and reviews in the comments box below.

FAS Immune Attack

A free game to download and install, sadly only available for PC users at the moment. Immune Attack takes the concept of infection and teaches it in a highly engaging way. It's a bit tricky to navigate the nanobot but users will learn a lot about the immune system as they master the controls.


"You must navigate a nanobot through a 3D environment of blood vessels and connective tissue in an attempt to save an ailing patient by retraining her non-functional immune cells.  Along the way, you will learn about the biological processes that enable macrophages and neutrophils – white blood cells – to detect and fight infections."

QuizBreak

QuizBreak is a product from Clear (Centre for Language Education and Research) and it offers a Jeopardy! style template for creating quizzes online. Questions can be entered and winning amounts set in any currency. It supports any character set and is therefore particularly useful to language teachers who struggle to find resources or authoring tools. The example below (for Frankenstein) has only one column but you can have up to 7.



Integration:

• Use for revision of any topic with more difficult questions winning more money
• Learners can create their own versions to test each other and support their learning

Purpose Games

This doesn't offer much variety in the way of games; in fact, there is a grand total of two you can create BUT one of those games is a labelling activity which I haven't found anywhere else. Upload an image (or use an existing background) and add dots where you want your students to label. When they access the game a word will appear and they are prompted to click on the relevant dot. Unfortunately, the games are not embeddable, but worth linking to when it's labelling that needs to be done.

Integration:

• In the Science lab, check that your groups are following your instructions when you use particular terms related to equipment
• The pre-loaded backgrounds contain maps to test learners' knowledge of countries around the world
• Upload your own image to use as a background and extend the possibilities e.g. labelling parts of a stage (The Globe?), labelling vocabulary items for language (items in a classroom?)

Brain Nook

"BrainNook is a new online game that helps kids develop Math and English skills while exploring the Earth and playing safely with others.

BrainNook contains over a hundred educational games based on fundamental concepts in Math and English Grammar. The games cover Math concepts ranging from single-digit addition to 3D spatial visualization, and English concepts ranging from building simple sentences to counting syllables. These games are embedded within colorful virtual worlds that children can unlock and explore." BrainNook now has a 'schools' version with additional features useful to educators.

Integration:

• Teachers can create classes of learners, assign tasks and keep track of progress - no more avoiding homework assignments!
• Use the engaging activities for formative assessment in a unit of learning
• Personalised learning - direct learners to work on particular activities according to their individual needs 
• Involve parents by sharing the 'reports' so they can watch as their child progresses

Mingoville English Language Learning

Despite its odd name, Mingoville is a trove of great activities for helping younger learners (and perhaps the young-at-heart) master the English language.
Working their way around Flamingo City, learners will spot engaging activities to help them learn without even realising they're working!
There is a subscription option but with so many free goodies, there really is enough here to keep you busy without handing over a penny.
They say a picture speaks a thousand words so watch the video below to get an overview of what is on offer.

Jeopardy Flash Template (& other games)

Use this page to create a Jeopardy-like game. It can accommodate up to 10 teams and has the choice of a timer. Very simple to use. Can be customised and played online or downloaded to Window or Mac OS. Go to the homepage of the site for many more templates including Millionaire, Hangman, Speed Match etc. They even have tools to help you work out seating plans and create groups. Lots of useful stuff!

Integration:

• Use it at the end of a topic to review learning.
• Use it at the start of a topic to assess learners' starting points.
• Use it as a tool to direct research; learners work in groups to find out answers to the questions.
• Learners can create their own versions; for example, one group can create a set of questions for another.
• The range of games means different groups can create different ways of testing learning.

Manga High Maths

MangaHigh.com offers a range of flash games for learners aged 10-16 to practise their math skills. What perhaps makes this a bit different is that the games are genuinely challenging. I had a quick trial and did 'OK' but the fun of playing creates a genuine desire to return and improve.

Register for a free basic account and create classes, enabling your learners to gain virtual awards for their progress.

Integration:

• Use the site to set engaging homework tasks
• Keep learners motivated throughout lessons by playing these games
• Set up on your website for independent revision and reinforcement

Easy Notecards

Easy Notecards is a great place to make flashcards on any topic. There is already a substantial library on there, with some based on books of all kinds, and you can edit your own sets easily and for free. I just got an email this morning from the developer to say that you can now embed the flashcards in a blog, website or VLE which is a very useful addition and the one that will finally encourage me to use them regularly.

Integration:

• Create flashcard sets to review learning on any topic - learners can review both sides of the cards to revise, then test themselves by using only one side and trying to recall the accompanying information. Embed on your school website, wiki or VLE for easy access.
• Flashcards provide a disguised method of 'drilling' which some learners really need to retain information. Use Easy Notes to create flashcards on key points or where you notice learners finding difficulty in retaining information after assessments.
• Paraphrase difficult concepts on one side with the original (technical?) explanation on the opposite side and direct learners to test themselves or create their own.
• Use as a competitive game where one team has to write the other side of the flashcard when it is displayed. Encourage collaboration and peer support by insisting on a minimum time for discussion of ideas and final answer.
• Encourage learners to create their own flashcards to review and revise for assessments. They can share and swap these to help each other.
• Use the quiz mode to encourage self-assessment among learners. After completing the quiz, direct learners into groups or pairs for some peer-teaching. After all, they learn best from each other.

If you've any more ideas on how to use Easy Notes, please leave your comments below.

What2Learn

This site is almost too good to be true. Not only can you access loads of great flash games created by other users, but you can custom make your own and it's FREE! Another bonus is the capacity to create accounts so you can monitor learners’ scores.



Integration:

* Create games to introduce vocabulary for a new topic
* Create games to check comprehension
* Use as a fun way to test learning
* Can be embedded into websites, blogs and VLEs for revision / reinforcement purposes
* Games can be played in teams to encourage competition (and thereby motivation in preparation)
* Use as a 'stop-and-check' activity
* Encourage learners to create their own games to test each other

Kerpoof!

A creative site for kids and young teens. In their words, some of the activities:

• Make artwork (even if you aren't good at drawing!)
• Make an animated movie (really! it's easy!)
• Earn Koins which you can trade for fun things in the Kerpoof Store
• Make a printed card, t-shirt, or mug
• Tell a story
• Make a drawing
• Vote on the movies, stories, and drawings that other people have made

As you can see, there are many opportunities. I have to say that I clicked in to have a quick look and was still on there 30 minutes later watching animations, reading an interactive story - very addictive and still educational - that doesn't happen too often!

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Integration:

• Even reluctant readers will enjoy the interactive stories - I tried the 'Dr Von Boringburg' (or something like that) and was chuckling regularly. With the option of being read to, there's no reason for kids not to engage with these tales
• Share creations (stories, artwork, animations etc.) from the site with users worldwide. Comment on and receive comments on learners' work
• Play games to introduce, reinforce and revise the topics on offer