Finding Games for Your Content and Sample Games for Digital Literacy
Web searches using key terms like "learning, games, gamification, [content area]", can lead to some helpful game ideas.
Websites for starting your search and where I found helpful resources:
Edutopia - Articles, links and examples including gaming and gamification.
BrainPop Educators - This site provides lesson plans and units for BrainPop videos and games, and other outside resources.
Common Sense Education - Common Sense Media is a great resource for finding all kind of games for the classroom. Common Sense Media reviews board games, and also gives ideas for games related to a variety of curriculum areas.
Description: This is is an online role playing game from Digital Compass designed to teach a variety of elements of Digital Literacy.
Cost: Free
Use Ideas: The "Helping Students Make Good Digital Decisions with Digital Compass" recorded webinar on this pagehttps://www.commonsense.org/education/webinars is good for teachers to watch before using Digital Compass with students. The webinar is helpful and fits nicely with the game playing readings we've seen here in Week 1. When students play Digital Compass they choose a character and make choices to earn badges. They are encouraged to eventually try all paths. There are additional games for each character. Common Sense media has a curriculum guide and Digital Compass can stand alone or be use in conjunction with their other curriculum. I found you can introduce characters as you teach related specific units, or you could have students explore multiple characters at one time.
Grades: 6-9 (See Resources page on wiki for other Common Sense Media interactives for other grade levels)
Description: This is a crossword I created using the PBS tools that are available to all teachers. This crossword puzzle uses key words and definitions from the Digital Literacy study guide for our pre-post assessment.
Cost: Free
Use Ideas: Provides students familiarity and practice with Digital Literacy term definitions.
Description: In this role playing game, the student takes on a character that has choices as they learn about being a good digital citizen. Some of the choices don’t impact the game but are just fun (e.g. choosing a color).
Cost: Free
Use Ideas: A review or support to learning about digital citizenship and responsibility. I will provide it as extra credit, or optional extra activity
Grades/Skills needed: The interface is a little old style and the player may have to try a few things to get on the right track so some critical thinking is required. PBS says it's geared towards 8 to 10 year olds but I think it works if introduced during the first part of sixth grade.
Websites for starting your search and where I found helpful resources:
Existing Games for Digital Literacy
Other Resources: