Educational, Simulation and Adventure Games

Educational, Simulation and Adventure Games

Workshop #6 - Tuesday 4th December

In this week's workshop, we explored the ever-increasing popularity of educational games in primary schools. We noticed the flexible and versatile nature of educational games, and how they can be adapted across the curriculum. We also examined the positive response these can have on pupil's, who generally react enthusiastically to the use of educational, simulation and adventure games in school.

The first game we investigated was called Kodu Game Lab. This game allowed children to instruct a 'kodu' character to conduct various different activities, on a wide range of levels and 'worlds'. The two particular worlds which I explored were 'Shooting Fish', whereby you add a kodu and program him to shoot fish in order to score points, and 'Mars Rover: Discovery', which involved a mission to search out sedimentary rocks and drill them to score big points. You were able to choose the route for the kodu, had to avoid hazards and explore the terrain. The challenge involved attempting to gain the highest score within a time limit of 90 seconds. 

Screen shots of these two games are provided below:

The next game we explored was the 'Dance to Advance' programme. The activity allowed individuals to copy dance moves on the screen to a dance mat or keyboard. Animal sounds were available to add to specific games/tasks. In addition, educational aspects were provided to allow you to come up with specific questions and provide answers, both in the form of pictures or words, on certain subjects. Below are two examples that I came up with:

The second one I created made a cross-curricula link to RE, whereby I posed the question 'Which religion is associated to each of the keywords/symbols?' The challenge was to provide the correct answer to each question which came up by matching and associating the words with descriptions. The questions and answers were as follows:

• The Star of David - Judaism
• The Five Ks - Sikhism
• The Moon and Star - Islam
• Diwali (Festival of Light) - Hinduism
• Nirvana - Buddhism
• The Lion - Rastafarianism
• Non-Believers - Atheism

We then explored the adventure-quest game called 'Myst'. We watch a video on Youtube displaying and allowing children to describe different scenaries. We then played the 'Machinarium' game. This was extremely useful as it made several different links to transferable skills:

• Rollercoaster game - teaches children about forces
• Problem solving
• Use of imagination
• Persistence
• Communication
• Reasoning
• Logical thinking
• Collaborative work
• Enquiry