Lori
Van Order
Online
Games Elective
SLM521
Summer
2003
ONLINE GAMES
I
first tried to go to Yahoo games to check out what was on that site, but almost
every game I clicked on needed to be downloaded. I use my school’s
computer, so I can’t download anything onto the harddrive, so I
couldn’t find much to do on that games site.
I went to
Funbrain.com, which is a site that my students go to quite often.
I’m glad that I had the opportunity to check this site out, to see that
it is appropriate for my third graders to be using. The games were great, and
they were on a variety of topics as well as various skill levels to choose
from. I played a game called Stayed Afloat, which was kind of like hangman. I
was impressed with the categories…one was even a category on Harry
Potter.
Then I tried to do
the Fact Monster Arcade, which several of my students have been playing this
year. It looks like a cool game, but it would never let me get past the
introductory page, so I didn’t get a chance to try this one.
I played a game
called Fresh Baked Fractions…this was great, as it focused on different
skills with fractions, and again, different levels. It would be a great review
game to use with my class. Another math game I played was Math Baseball, again
another game with various operations to choose from (either adding,
subtracting, multiplying, or dividing) and different levels of each. Tic Tac
Squares was the last Math game that I played, another game with various
operations to choose from and varying skill levels.
A grammar game
I played was called Grammar Gorillas. In this game the player needs to click on
the part of speech asked for in the sentence (for example, to click on the verb
in the sentence). This was a pretty cute game for reviewing grammar. Also, I
played a general game of Fun Match, which is just a memory game.
I enjoyed
playing the games through this site..I especially liked that I didn’t
have to download anything in order to play. The only thing that really dismayed
me was that every minute or so a new pop-up screen would appear, and I’d
have to click it closed to get back to my game. I haven’t noticed this
happening with my kids so much at school, but I know that it is just something
to be careful of. There were also a few advertisement along the edges of the
screen, and I clicked on a few which turned into a page that wouldn’t
load, or some other site. I think that when I take my students online to play
games, I will be sure to tell them not to click to any other sites, and if they
do, to raise their hand immediately so I can check it out and get them back to
where they need to be. With all the clicking options, I’d be afraid that
my students could end up navigating all over the Web…and to places I
wouldn’t want them to be! Overall, I was pleased with this website and
plan to keep it as a link on my school web page for my students to use.