Don’t judge me. This is not my pile.
One of the hardest things about being a video game fanatic is that there is never enough money to buy all the games you want to play. Wouldn’t it be nice to open your game drawer one day and see a pile of new games sitting there, knowing they cost you nothing?
This “Play and Learn” site is pretty much the next best thing if you’re an instructor looking for educational games. The concept isn’t particularly unique; plenty of other sites out there collect links to educational games. It’s also by no means exhaustive. How could it be when new games and simulations are coming out of the woodwork all the time?
What the site really has going for it that some others lack is organization and variety. Think of a class subject and chances are you’ll find it covered here. The site lists games for 25 subjects, everything from physics to humanities, listed in an easy to navigate “mind map”. This means you don’t have to wade through page after page in an online catalog to find a new way to engage your learners. The quality of the games is clearly geared toward more advanced learners: no Barbie dress-up clutter here. As for game variety, this is where the site really shines with different mechanics and modalities. You can find everything from full-fledge software downloads to Flash-based games to PDFs that you can download for a “low-tech” game.
Just having these games lined up can save instructors a great deal of time otherwise spent searching. It can also afford adult learners the opportunity to create their own learning experiences. Perhaps learners could break into groups, and then those groups could choose their game. At the conclusion, learners could debrief with the class as a whole to share their experiences, why they chose the game, and how the game reflects back on their material. This wouldn’t be appropriate in all settings and it could be difficult to align with your objectives, but it could engage learners by putting them in a familiar “game night” atmosphere where they get to choose how to have fun.
The site is by no means perfect; some of the links appear to be outdated, and some of the games flat out won’t align with your overall course objectives. It would be nice if someone could code a search engine to interpret your learning objectives and align them with the right game. You’ll also want to dry-run the games and be cognizant that some of them rely on Flash; bad news for iOS devices like iPhones or iPads. Still, even if you don’t find the right game here, you’ll almost certainly find the pieces of one you could create on your own (another gamer dream).
ADDIE, Cuss, Flinch 