I’m going to be listing my choices for The Best Online Learning Games — 2009 within this post, starting from the eleventh-ranked one and ending with my number-one choice. You’ll find a poll at the end, though the games are listed in the opposite order in the poll.  I’m asking that people vote for no more than three of the listed games.

Voting will end on December 1st. I thought it would be interesting to see how reader’s choices compare to my own. And, in fact, I’m going to be having my students vote on them as well, and would encourage you to do the same if you think it would be a productive educational activity.

People will be blocked (or, at least, are supposed to be blocked) from voting more than once. I’m asking that people vote for three games or less.

You can find links to these games, and thousands more on my website.

In order to make it on this list, games had to:

* be accessible to English Language Learners.

* provide exceptionally engaging content.

* not provide access to other non-educational games on their site, though there is one on this list that doesn’t quite meet this particular criteria.

* be seen by me during 2009. So they might have been around prior to this time, but I’m still counting them in this year’s list.

Here are my choices for The Best Online Learning Games — 2009:

Number ten is: Rain Words is a fascinating twist on a crossword puzzle. It’s hard for me to explain, but, basically, images of objects fall from the top and then the player has to move them to any number of places on the puzzle that have the correct number of places.

Number nine is: Tales Of Twentieth Century London lets the user play the role of a child in….twentieth century London. It’s sort of a “choose your own adventure” interactive, and is quite engaging and well-designed, not to mention accessible to English Language Learners.

Number six is: Scholastic has a good environmental game called Virtual Forest Challenge. It’s very accessible to English Language Learners.  In the game, you are a virtual character going through a typical day. You regularly are faced with having to make choices between decisions that are ecologically helpful and ones that are not – you have to make the call.

Number three is: National Geographic has put together a pretty sophisticated “I Spy” kind of game called Herod’s Lost Tomb Game. It combines archeology, geography, and vocabulary development – a great mix for English Language Learners.  They also have a n interactive map showing images, and their ruins, of structures built during that time.

Number two is: Audio Puzzler is a listening game where hear sections of a video, then have to type out correctly what you hear, and then put them in order.  It’s a pretty cool activity, and would be great for high Intermediate or Advanced English Language Learners.

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