Gaming+in+Middle+&+Senior+Years

How are you using Gaming in your Senior Years classroom?
 **[|The History Canada Game]**

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· From their website: //"The History Canada Game lets you relive, replay and even rewrite Canada’s history. Play as the English to expand your empire. Play as the Huron to defend your homeland. Wage wars, make peace and explore new lands...the future of Canadian history is in your hand."// ======  **[|Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City]**

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· From their website: //"During the 2007-2008 school year, Global Kids Youth Leaders at Canarsie High School, Brooklyn selected the topic of Hurricane Katrina and worked with game developers Digital Creations to create Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City. The web-based game recognizes local heroes that emerged during the disaster while educating its players about the essentials of disaster readiness."// ======  ** [|Making History - The Calm and the Storm] **

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o From their website: "//Open-ended strategy game allows students to engage with the challenges of World War II.6 game scenarios, each starting at a decisive moment in WWII history, focus student experiences on critical events. Single player and multi-player options bring flexibility and varied game experiences.// ======

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//**From their Website: What is it?** **Living in Space** is an online game which explores the idea of living in space. What do humans need in order to live in this hostile environment? What do we need to work and thrive in space? By designing a space station, you (the user or the student)] examines a series of problems: How will you breathe?//=====

[|Debt Ski - A Personal Finance Game]
[|Debt Ski] is a fun game (if you enjoyed late 80's - early 90's video games) for learning about personal finance. The object of the game is to accumulate as much savings and as little debt as possible. Players choose one of three lifestyle objectives "thrifty," "average," or "big spender." After choosing an objective players have to, in a Mario Brothers-style, accumulate coins and necessities while avoiding unexpected expenses.

**Applications for Education** [|Debt Ski] is a fun way for students to learn the basics of personal finance. The game is likely to keep students engaged for a long periods of time. I played the game a few times then had to force myself to stop before I really got sucked in to playing for hours. The game was designed by MTV Networks and is appropriate for use in middle school, high school, and college settings.

[|Multimedia Business Simulation]
[|JA Titan] is a marvelous multimedia business simulation that is great for higher level business English students or other business students. It's a kind of variation on the [|Lemonade Stand] game, but with lots more bells and whistles.

You get audio reports from your staff, who you can hire and fire, with tips and advice that you can either take or ignore. You can also listen to news reports and check out report data. Your staff will also help you with some analysis of the data.

[|Cyber Nations] seems to have taken that game one step further and created an online simulation which students can play over a period of time. Actually 'one step further' is a bit of an understatement, as once players have created their nation and started to develop it and decide on the budget, taxes and governmental policies etc. they are then launched into competition with other nations that other players have created. They have the chance to develop alliances, form trade partnerships and even attack or aid other countries.

[|Power up] is an educational computer game based around the concept of helping students to understand the need for clean energy. It takes the[| scenario]of a planet ( set in the future) which needs rescuing. The game looks and feels convincing and has some nice collaborative game play thrown in with some blasting of alien beasts. Students can play it alone or in multi-player mode. They are assigned missions that they have to complete and there is even use of some text to speech.

[|Online Water Conservation Game]
Educational games seem to be getting much better these days and [|Catchment Detox] is a great example of that. It's an online game which you can play in the browser without any software downloads. It has similar gameplay to something like Zoo Tycoon, with students making budgeting decisions and deciding what areas to develop each year for 50 years.

Students have to manage a catchment area, protect the environment, develop the agricultural resources and balance this against conserving water and water quality.

There's a good video demo here showing how it's done: [|How to play]





[|Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG]
[|Wonderland] looks like a great free online role playing game for younger students. The game is based around the story of some travelers who become shipwrecked and have to survive by doing various tasks, quests and challenges. The graphics look like the typical Japanese manga cartoons which are so popular with kids and teens.

What I really like about this is that the 'things to do' type quests and challenges are already there and built in so, unlike virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com you and your students don't have to think up things to do.

I think this is really good motivating game to get students using English to solve problems and work collaboratively. If you can get your students hooked on a game like this they'll do the learning for themselves.

On the negative side, they will need to download the software and that's over 500Mb, so they'll need broadband and a reasonably up to date computer. The game is also quite complex and I can't find any information regarding minimum ages for registration.

That said, if your students are keen gamers and have an intermediate level of English or higher and you want to motivate them to work on their own, this could be a wonderful tool for getting them to do that.



[|Multi Player Vocabulary Revision]
[|Hunam Brain Cloud]is an online multiplayer game I spotted some time back. It's a cross between a word association game and visual thesaurus. Students see a word and type in a word they associate with this word and submit it. They can continue with this for as long as they like, or they can check out the other words that other users have associated with the word.



As they play students help to build up the thesaurus of words too, and there is also a simple search to help them look up words.



[|The StockNews Game]
This is a great game for business students if the level of their English is quite good. The game works in three steps.
 * User reads a business news report on a company
 * User predicts whether the companies stock will go up or down as a result of the news
 * User wins or looses points as a result of their prediction

The reading part is timed so it'll force your students to do some skimming and scanning and make decisions based on that information. The level is quite high though, but for developing business vocab and as a spring board to some discussion this is a definite winner.



You can keep playing for as long as you like and try to win back any losses or build up your fortune. If you register, your efforts are recorded and you can try to make it onto the top scorers board.



[|Eco City Game]
[|ElectroCity] is an interesting online game designed for education. It's based around the SimsCity principle and users have to try to build a financially viable eco city where all the inhabitants can also be happy. As I said the game was designed for education and there's a very handy [|teachers section] with some downloadable worksheets. The producer put the level of the game at 7 - 9 year olds, but if you were using this with non English speakers for language development I think you could use it with any aga range and there would still be a good deal of motivation to try it.

There's also a downloadable version of the game for those with slower connections and wonder of wonders there is both a PC and a MAC version. It's quite a small download too ( 1 - 2 Mb). You can find these in the [|teachers' resources section].

You can also have a look at some of the [|cities other players have created].

If you register you can also enter your students in a competition to win a prize for the best designed city and students can keep track of how well there city is doing.

**Personal finance** game called MoneyU. You can check it out at [|www.moneyu.com].


 * // Modern Electronics //** that teaches kids about managing a retail business and includes budgeting for advertising, pricing, financing inventory, etc. It can be downloaded from []
 * Gazillionaire** by Lavaminds is pretty good. You can try it at []. It's an oldy, but a goody.

[|Trade Ruler]
===The Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory is about how two countries can get greater gains from trading with each other if they have different resources – one have more labor and the other have more capital (that is technical equipment and machinery) ===

[|Planet Green Game]
===Starbucks and Global Green USA collaborated on the Planet Green Game to educate the public about climate change through engaging and informative game play while encouraging individuals to become part of the solution in their own lives. The game also assists individuals - through simple tools and links - in advocating action by elected officials, business and community leaders.===