Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

There are tons of online educational games out there, and many, many collections of them, too.  However, I’ve found that most of these collections also include quite a few non-learning games — arcade type or shoot-em-ups that have no redeeming value (at least, that I can see).

That’s not a problem for me most of the time — usually, when I have students play online games I’m pretty specific about which ones I want them to play.

However, there are infrequent times (very , very infrequently) — students are done early with a state standardized test; it’s late on a Friday after a hard week and both they and I are pretty burned-out; or when our school’s schedule is all crazy because everybody in one grade is taking the H.S.  Exit exam and everybody else is in different classes — when I just want to give students the opportunity to play some learning games and not be concerned they’ll go to useless ones.

I thought that readers of this blog might sometimes be in similar situations, and thought I’d share a short “The Best…” list of sites that work well in those cases.

Except in a couple of cases, I”m just going to list the site and not give any explanation — they’re all pretty similar — they have a variety of learning games in a variety of subjects and offer very, very few, if any, useless ones.

Here are my choices for The Best Collections of Online Educational Games:

Childtopia

National Geographic Channel Games (Note that this is the channel, not the main National Geographic site. The main site has a lot of good games, but also many that have no educational value.)

BBC School Games

Nobel Prize Educational Games

Academic Skill Builders

Discovery Channel Games

Primary Games Arena has an impressive group of learning games.

Karooba is a neat site for learning games. It has a ton of them, plus you can easily create your own. You don’t have to register to play, but you do if you want to make games. You can play them and only compete against the computer, or you can compete against other people on the site. Unfortunately, though, there doesn’t seem to be a way to choose who you want to play with — it seems you get assigned randomly.

Play Kids Games (one of the added advantages of this site is that it lets teachers add their own content to some of the games. Because of that, I’ve also added it to The Best Sites For Making Crossword Puzzles & Hangman Games. (A teacher reports that an inappropriate ad popped-up on the PLay Kids Games site. Please let me know if others have a similar experience)

I also need to include collections of games that can be found in several previous “The Best…” lists:

The Best online Learning Games– 2007
The Best Online Video Games For Learning Language & Content Knowledge
The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too
The Best Websites For Creating Online Learning Games
The Best Online Learning Games — 2008
The Best Sites For Making Crossword Puzzles & Hangman Games
The Best Fun Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2008
The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”
The Best “Cause-Related” Online Learning Games
The Best “I Spy” (Hidden Object) Games For Vocabulary Development
The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories

Finally, I should mention my website, that has 9,000 categorized links accessible to English Language Learners, including many games (particularly, though not exclusively, in the Word and Video Games section). However, even though I’m mentioning it here, I don’t think I can say that my website deserves a “full” endorsement. There are just so many links that it’s fairly easy for students to find their way to mindless activities if left to their own devices.

You might want to read The Best Sections On My Website for more information.

Suggestions and feedback, as always, are welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.

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