Will all of the questions be answered in time?!

Skydiver is the latest Flash-based interactive learning game added to What2Learn. It is only the second anagram-based game on our system so we are very excited about it and pleased to be making it available. It is FREE for you to make your own learning games using this game engine so make one today!

The game sees a skydiver hurtling down through the air towards the ground. All eight questions must be answered within the time limit for the parachute to be safely deployed. Questions are asked at the top of the screen and the answer is shown with the letters jumbled up at the bottom of the screen. With great cartoon graphics and a real sense of urgency generated with time passing this is a game that your students will love to use to enhance their learning.

Click here to play a sample Skydiver game

All you need to do to make your own skydiver quiz game is supply a game title, eight questions and eight one word answers.

Create a skydiver quiz game!

Alternatively, why not pick from our wide range of other game engines – they are all quick, easy and free to use. Quizzes, interactive wordsearches, even zombie-boxing games for your students are all ready for you to supply the questions and answers to. You can even embed the completed games into your own blog, VLE or website. Alternatively you can add your games to W2L to enable you to track the progress of your students through your games – a great way to reduce your marking!

Click here to see our game generator tool.

Help students to learn while saving the world from the zombie apocalypse!

Zombie boxing is one of the most popular game engines at What2Learn. Based on a hangman game engine, students are asked a question and need to type in the letters that are in the answer. If they press a correct letter they will hit the zombie – wrong letters result in the zombie fighting back. Young learners will be keen to replay the game time and again until they are confident in their knowledge of all of the answers in the games.

Any subject content can be added to this quiz game.

You can use our FREE learning game generator to make a range of interactive learning games such as ‘Zombie Boxing’. The Flash-based games can be stored as a bookmark on your browser, linked to from another site, embedded into your own VLE or website or even added to the main content within What2Learn. The added advantage of this last option is that you will be able to see the scores your student get in this game.

Zombie Boxing Will you answer enough questions correctly to survive the zombie apocalypse? Play a sample game Make your own game. Answers must be single words.

Anybody can make a downhill racer quiz game – all your need to do is to supplpy eight questions and eight answers. The game requires answers to be single words.

You can make lots of other types of educational games using our free game generator. Once you have made your game please use the ‘Retweet’ button under your game to help others to find it.

I recently came across Photo-Peach. This is a great tool for creating eye-catching photo slideshows which which be used to create a really effective focus for discussions in lessons. It is quick and easy to make an account and all you then need to do is start uploading the pictures you want in your slideshow.

You are given two options for how your slideshow is presented – story and spiral (see below). You are also given a range of ways of using the completed slideshows including code to embed it into your own blogs.

Sprial

Try clicking on one of the images!

Story

Using it in lessons

I created the spiral slideshow above on Photo-Peach for use at the start of an A’Level ICT project on ICT in Society. In turn students had to select one of the images (pressing on it to make it large and stop the rotation). They then had to talk about the image and how it represented a way in which ICT is impacting upon modern society.

Do you have any suggestions for how it could be used in lessons? Please let us know.

We recently received the following testimonial from our pilot project with Hertfordshire Local Authority’s ESTMA team. ESTMA is responsible for providing education to students who are unable to attend school due to medical reasons. We have been providing support to their tutors to help them bring the benefits of What2Learn to their students.

The What2Learn package is a super tool for ESTMA teachers.

It can be used with any age group, which makes it very useful for us. I have used it successfully with a Year 11 preparing for a higher GCSE Geography paper as a revision aid. It helped me re-engage an agressive very unhappy Year 10 student. Likewise I am currently using it with Year 6 pupils.

The IT element, the collecting credits for their own micon, and the suggestion that they are playing games ( whilst really working! ) is excellent.

I have not found a student who did not enjoy using the package. In contrast once introduced to it they frequently ask to use it again and again.

It is a very comprehensive package and covers most topic areas in each subject.

Used along side other materials and teaching I find this package a super addition.

Learn more about how What2Learn works

Do you have a testimonial to give us? We would be delighted to hear from you.

Our chief tester for this post is now three years of age and has very clear opinions on what makes a good iPhone / iPod Touch application. Many have been downloaded and uninstalled pretty quickly afterwards. Only the following five applications have enjoyed a sustained level of interest. Some are of great educational worth, others will develop creativity but are really just a bit of fun and a great distraction when needed. Most importantly, all are free to download from the Apps Store.

No doubt many of you will disagree with this ‘Top Five’, but our chief tester had the final say on what made the list so we apologise in advance. Please suggest any you think should have made the list using the comments box below.

1: Feed Me!

Feed Me is a fantastic app created by the good folks at Honolulu-based Edutainment Resources Inc. With crisp graphics, a great user-interface and amusing game play this has resulted in a fair few hours of histerical laughter and enjoyment. It also has some great educational content including recognition of colors, shapes and patters as well as some early mathematics skills.

Essentially, each question is multiple-choice, with the player needing to choose from a choice of three possible answers. They then drag the answer to the mouth of the monster who begins to wave his arms excitedly and open his mouth wide as the object gets nearer. Once the player has dropped the object in it’s mouth it will either give a contented burp of enjoyment or suffer some serious indigestion depending on whether the answer was right or wrong.

There are mutlple levels within the game, with the player earning a different trophy for their trophy cabinet at the end of each. One minor improvement here would have been to have allowed the player to replay a previous level as the levels become increasingly challenging and for young children it would be preferable to repeat earlier levels.

A truly great application that will delight young children and develop their thinking skills.

2: Giraffe’s Memory Match Zoo

Speaking as somebody with the memory of a sieve, I was delighted to see how effective this application was at encourging children to really work the old grey matter and develop their memory skills. I am sure there are many more matching pair type applications available from the apps store, but this was the one that proved the most engaging and retained interest for many weeks.

With quality, colorful graphics and amusing sound effects as each animal is displayed, this app provides a great educational resource and a stimulating distraction. You will be surprised at just how quickly children as young as two are soon able to complete the grids.

3: Baby Flash Cards

There is a reason that Baby Flash Cards by Dream Cortex has had well over 100,000 downloads from the app store – it is quite simply as good as an app for flash cards can really be. That said, they have released ‘Baby Flash Cards 2′ with an added voice to read out the cards for any parents too lazy (sorry… busy) to read them out to their own children. Our chief tester felt she had moved beyond flash cards by the time of this post being writtent so we are unable to talk about this latest version.

High quality graphics are used throughout, with cartoon-style images which are both clear and stimulating to young users. There is also a range of ways to use it, with cards able to be displayed in alphabetical or non-alphabetical order. For youngsters who are beginning to learn to read the cards can also display the word before the picture is added.

As parents we often worry that we do not devote enough time to edcational activities such as Flash cards. Having a copy of this on your iPhone or iPod touch makes it easy to steal an extra five minutes here or there while you are out and about.

4: Baby Piano Lite

Kudos again to those lovely people at Dream Cortex for providing this fun little musical application. The app comprises a colorful seven-key piano with cute, animated animal characters. It will soon have your little angels producing masterpieces of their very own. Well… at the least they will be making a bit of a racket but highly enjoying themselves in doing so!

Despite being the free ‘lite’ version of the app, this is surprisingly full-featured and will retain interest over a good period of time. It is possible to switch between having piano sound effects or the sound effects of animals as the keys are pressed. Two modes of play are also available – freestyle and ‘play along’ in which the next key the child should press is highlighted as they are guided through playing a nursery rhyme.

5: Make a Martian

Make a Martian, by 3DAL, is a great little application for developing imaginative and creative little minds. Combining excellent animated graphics and an extremely easy to use interface, your little ones will soon be creating a wide range of fun and colorful alien life forms.

So, there we go. These are the five free apps that we have seen bring the most enjoyment and development to one little mind. Are there any different ones that would have made your top five? Let us know by sending a comment below.

Once you have made an interactive learning game using the What2Learn game generator there are many different ways you can use it. One way which is growing in popularity is to embed the game into your Moodle Virtual Learning Environment. This is a great way of providing some fun and effective learning opportunities to your online materials.

Step One: Make a game using the What2Learn game generator. This is quick and easy to do – simply select the game engine you want to use and fill in a form stating the questions and answers you want.

Step Two: When you play your completed game you should see some ‘embed code’ to the right of your game (see below). You need to highlight and copy the embed code.

Step Three: Log in to your Moodle as a teacher and go to the subject you want to add your new game to. Then press ‘Turn Editing On’. From one of the ‘Add a resource’ drop-down boxes you should select ‘Compose a a webpage’.

Step Four: Give your new resource a name and a quick description.

Step Five: In the ‘full text’ window, press <> to toggle the view to HTML Source view.

Step Six: Paste in your embed code and save your new page. Your game will now be available through your Moodle VLE.

Did you know that when you make a game using the free What2Learn game generator, you can add the completed game to a PowerPoint presentation?

This is a great way of adding some colour, fun and interactivity to your resources and to reinforce the learning you want your audience to do. Anybody can do it – no programming skills are required and once you have made a game it only takes a couple of minutes to embed the game into your PowerPoint presentation.

We have created the following ‘How-to’ guide to show you how to do this. Enjoy!

Note: The instructions provided here are based on Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 – your version may differ slightly.

Step One: Make a game using the What2Learn game generator. This is quick and easy to do – simply select the game engine you want to use and fill in a form stating the questions and answers you want.

Step Two: Copy the embed code for your game and paste it into a text-editing application like Notepad. The embed code can be found to the right of your game. Then find the ‘value’ reference (highlighted below) and copy it.

Step Three: In PowerPoint, show the Control Toolbox by pressing View then Toolbars then Control Toolbox. Select ‘More Controls’ from the control toolbox toolbar.

From the next list of options select Shockwave Flash Object and make a box on your PowerPoint slide where you would like the game to appear.

Step Four: Right-click on the box you have drawn and select Properties. You then need to paste the your game’s value reference from Step Two into the Movie field of the Properties Window.

Job done – press F5 to view your presentation and your game should appear in your presentation.

One of the big changes we will see at What2Learn over the coming months is the growth of teacher-generated content as it is now possible to pull games made using our game generator into the main What2Learn system. Not only will this mean that teachers will have greater control over the content they make available to their students, but it will free up our own time to keep improving the actual system for you.

One of the key improvements will be in the range and quality of game engines we make available to you through our free interactive learning game generator. We have added two such games recently, both of which are based on multiple-choice quizzes.

The first is 3D Quiz Maze a first-person perspective game in which students must navigate themselves around a maze and answering questions to avoid getting locked in.

The second is Cattle Collector in which students must answer questions correctly to provide enough power to a UFO on a mission to collect cattle around the American Mid-West.

We are sure that your students will enjoy these new game engines and look forward to adding more over the coming weeks.

Make a game today!

Free coloring pages to print for kids to help them learn the alphabet. Select a letter to see the full size printable image.

Images are adapted from the Microsoft online clipart library. In the formats above they are copyright What2Learn, 2008.

Are you looking for fun, free games for the Nintendo Wii? Have you bought a Wii for your kids and want to see them using it for something a little educational? Try out the following games – they can be played on your PC or on a Nintendo Wii if you have downloaded the Opera internet browser from the Wii shop.

Click on a game to get playing…