I had a mixed experience using computer games in the classroom the year I was an elementary/middle school computer teacher. I used Oregon Trail with one class. The kids loved it but at one class session a week continuity was a problem. Plus I was not coordinating with the social studies teacher at all. In short I was doing about everything wrong that I could do. But the kids did seem to be learning something and it seemed to stick. In another class, in another school at the same time (I was part-time at two schools) I tried out the Incredible Machine as a reward for completing other work. Again the kids loved it and they seemed to start thinking about real problem solving. The overall experience left me leaning towards the idea that computer simulations could be good learning experiences. So I found this list of educational simulations and games rather interesting and thought that it might be useful for others.
The College @ Home website (about which I know very little right now) posted a list of “25 Best Sims and Games For the Classroom.” This is the most complete list of such games and simulations I have seen in quite a while. The descriptions should help parents and teachers to get an idea about what games may be worth a closer look. A simulation may be the thing for the kids to play during bad weather in the summer or perhaps even support education during the school year.
In the long term I hope we seem more simulations (playable as games) to teach more things. Not just history and geography. Not as boring short attention span “drill and kill” games but opportunities for deeper understanding, problem solving and hopefully retained learning. Are these those games? Some maybe. Some maybe not. But they are a start. And if you know someone who thinks they are ready to write the next great educational simulation/game I’ve written about the tools for doing so using the game programming tag and the XNA tag.
Of course in terms of teaching some programming using fun tools three that come to mind are Alice, Scratch and Popfly – especially with Popfly’s game creator in beta. Alice and Scratch have versions for several operating systems while Popfly is all online using a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. And of course they are all free.
There is an old AppleII game I wish some one would update to Windows. It was called Rocky's Boots. Those of you that have been teaching computer science for a while may remember it. It was great for teaching logic and program design. At the time it was very graphically advanced.