Kristen Ciferri

May 4, 2005

SLM 521

Elective 10 – Online Gaming

My online gaming experience started many years ago when Excite.com hosted Pogo Games. I used to play games such as Spades, Dominoes, and Maj Jong. After I graduated from undergrad, I did not use my computer as much and went on a gaming hiatus. This past year is when I started playing online games again. I am an AOL subscriber so; I am able to access the Pogo games for free. Pogo now has their own website and charges fees for many of their games if you want to play past a certain level. As an AOL member you do not have to pay some of these fees and can go to http://onlinegames.channel.aol.com/ to play the games. Thus, in my free time at work and sometimes at home, I play games online.

Some of my favorite games to play now are puzzle ones such as Bounce Out, Popit!, and Sweet Tooth. In these games I do ok and get to the intermediate levels, but fail miserably at expert. I’ve also started playing Scrabble, but I’ve had trouble getting past Beginner because I am a horrible speller. I also still play Maj Jong and have been able to get to the expert level. I don’t play games against anyone much these days. I find that people often don’t have respect for others and say things I really am not interested in reading. I’ve experienced other players who feel that the chat board is their place to complain and about everything and everyone. They often use swear words and write things that I don’t think are very appropriate so; I stick to the single player games.

As a teacher, I’ve also discovered some great students that students can use and play educational games on. One of my favorites is http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games.html. It has about twenty different games that are all educational and still fun play. I had my students play Railroad Repair, which requires them to add decimals together in order to complete the railroad track and win the game. The kids loved it and were reviewing the addition of decimals skills at the same time. The games include math topics such as measurement, fractions, percentages, patterns, and more. I would definitely recommend this website to all teachers who want to integrate technology into their lessons somehow.