Mouse Party

Mouse Party

This is a very successful e-learning lesson on the effects of various drugs on the body, in this case, experimental mice.

Colorful, attractive, and humorous animation provides an effective  attention-getting device. The cool music track evokes the sense of being at a drug party, not that I would know that personally.

The user immediately engages with the material by being invited to pick up one of many variously stoned mice hanging out in a lab cage. You can point to see which drug each mouse is imbibing, and then pick it up with your rubber gloves and drop the wriggling culprit in a chair. From there the user is introduced to the learning content, systematically presented using diagrams, animation, and audio.

Instructions were clear, including text, arrows, and voice-over narration, so I had a clear idea of what I needed to do next. My confidence was further increased by clear navigational controls.

This site would be highly relevant to high school health students studying the effects of drugs, and I shall recommend to our school's health teacher.

Learn to Read with Starfall

I was just searching for educational games that might help my 2 1/2 year old son Orion recognize letters and their sounds a little more consistently. I stumbled upon Starfall and started playing some of the A, B, C games and I now realize that I know some elementary teachers that use it. Although it is somewhat excruciating and dull for me to play the games, I think that they would be engaging to a beginning reader.

In the alphabet game, the letters of the alphabet appear on ordered blocks. The child can click on the letter they would like to learn about and then are presented with both the uppercase and lowercase letter while experiencing a word that starts with that letter. For example, the letter 'H' is introduced with the sound and image of a horn. Once a letter has been presented, the sound it makes is made and then animated words that start with that letter and sound are shown. The words are said aloud by either adult or child voices. After several words are sounded out with the initial letter, the child is given a game to play. The progression through a letter activity seems appropriate and engaging.

There are a number of more advanced games where children can practice phonics as they read a story. My husband and I will definitely be using this site with our son.

Heidi Thibodeau AKA Heidi Beezley

Addicting games as Learning games?!

One of my eighth grade students showed me this website. I checked it out and found some very fascinating learning opportunities. There are some violent games there and some games that seemed to be of an adult theme. Most of the games however, seemed safe enough. I played this game called 'Revenge of the Stick'. I see several learning applications there. First of all, it's fun to play as it is a rpg format. The player has to track resources, money and rewards to efficiently achieve a high score. Another cool aspect of the game is that you can post your high score and compete against other players. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. You can find it at http://www.ugoplayer.com/games/revengeofthestick.html and other games at http://www.addictinggames.com/ Tried to get some screen shots but couldn't figure it out, sorry.

Have fun!