Eco City Game

ElectroCity is an interesting online game designed for education. It's based around the SimsCity principle and users have to try to build a financially viable eco city where all the inhabitants can also be happy.

As I said the game was designed for education and there's a very handy teachers section with some downloadable worksheets. The producer put the level of the game at 7 - 9 year olds, but if you were using this with non English speakers for language development I think you could use it with any aga range and there would still be a good deal of motivation to try it.

There's also a downloadable version of the game for those with slower connections and wonder of wonders there is both a PC and a MAC version. It's quite a small download too ( 1 - 2 Mb). You can find these in the teachers' resources section.

You can also have a look at some of the cities other players have created.

If you register you can also enter your students in a competition to win a prize for the best designed city and students can keep track of how well there city is doing.

This looks like a really handy educational game.

Hope you enjoy it.

Best
Nik Read More..

Microsoft Small Basic - Simple Programming For Kids

Small Basic is a simplified version of Microsoft's programming language Visual Basic, suitable for kids and beginners. It includes dozens of lessons and exercises that explain basic programming concepts in detail. 

 WEBSITE: http://smallbasic.com/

For any child that has an avid interest in computers, one of the most magical experiences is when they write their first program. Microsoft seeks to introduce that amazing experience to students as well as adults with an impressive new programming tutoring tool called Small Basic.

Small Basic is essentially a "small" version of Microsoft's well known programming language called Visual Basic. Visual Basic itself is anything but basic, so by offering Small Basic, Microsoft can make <span class="fullpost">   </span>inroads with younger students. Small Basic may be a training tool, but it is a powerful enough programming tool so that some users have even created highly functional and intricate games such as board games or even simulations.

However, the real value of this software comes from its use in the classroom or in a home-school setting, where each lesson is laid out by Microsoft in a series of instructional lessons followed by exercises where the student can put what they've learned into practical use.


The Small Basic Application


When the student first download and installs the Small Basic application, it isn't really obvious how the software works. There is no instruction set or directory provided where students can just choose from available commands and functions. Instead, the student must actually work through the lessons and learn each of the functions individually. While this is more time consuming than a more visual tool may be, this lesson-based approach may actually provide better retention of that information.


Lessons and Curriculum


The most impressive thing about Small Basic isn't so much the application itself, but the fact that Microsoft put so much effort into coming up with a high-quality curriculum that consists of dozens of lessons. You can find each lesson under the "Small Basic Curriculum" header in the right navigational bar on the Small Basic website. Ideally, students should work through the lessons, starting from Lesson 1.1 and moving forward.


Slideshow Lessons


Each of the lessons are created as a PowerPoint slideshow presentation, so it's a given that teachers or parents will need PowerPoint available in order to work through each lesson with students. The PowerPoint lessons consist of animated slides that work through explanations of each set of instructions. Every lesson builds upon what the student has already learned in past lessons.


A Lesson Slide


Each slide is well designed by Microsoft, and obviously developed by someone with a good understanding of how students learn. The animated nature of each slide will hold the students interest, as actual snippets of code are displayed and the different elements of the sample program are pointed out.


Writing Programs in Small Basic


After each lesson, students can then go back to the Small Basic programming environment and put what they've learned into practice. Once they start typing the commands they've learned, helpful tips will pop up on the right side of the screen, showing the student additional information about the function and the many different properties and settings they can use.


Autotext


You can even see elements of other Microsoft products appear throughout the Small Basic application. For example, all the student has to do is type a letter, and the program will provide a pop-up box of suggestions of words that the student is probably trying to type. This is particularly useful for when students can't quite remember the full name of a function they wanted to use. All they have to do is type the first few letters and they'll see the function listed in the pop-up box.


Running Test Programs


When the student is finished typing their test programs into the Small Basic application, all they have to do is click the big blue "Run" button in the top menu. Small Basic will switch into "runtime" mode, and the application window will appear, displaying the textbox or images that the student programmed.


Advanced Games


For anyone that thinks Small Basic isn't capable of producing anything of any real value, all you have to do is browse some of the sample programs from the forums. Students often post the results of some of their work there, and you'll find everything from simple mathematical programs, to some impressive advanced game environments like tic tac toe or even a graphical driving simulator. The software is really only limited by the level of creativity and imagination of the student.

Source : http://www.educational-freeware.com/freeware/small-basic.aspx 

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Football vocabulary

This is a great free online game called GoalUnited. It isn't designed for education at all but I'm sure anyone who is keen on developing their English and has an interest in football would enjoy it and get a lot of vocabulary and reading practice from it.


The game is played in a similar manner to the popular Football manager computer game and each player builds up a team and plays against other teams online.

As I said it's free. It is available to play in other languages too so make sure your students choose to play it in the language they want to learn rather than the one they already speak.

I'm not really a football fan myself so I haven't really spent time with this, but for students that are, I'm sure it could be very motivational.

English version is here
To choose from other languages try here

Hope you enjoy it.

Best

Nik Read More..

New game: Lost numbers

We have made a game. It is aimed at Primary School children. It's a very simple game and try to make Maths a little more fun. It has three level: add, subtractions and multiply. Click here to play. Read More..

New game: Vedoque cars

A new game and this time is not for learning. We are on holidays and it's only for fun. A classic game with cars and three Grand Prix to win and becoming the new World Champion. Let's play! Read More..

New game: Colours Vedoque

We have a new educational game: Click here to play. The colours are the subject of the new activities. This game is designed for Nursery and it can be used by 3 years old children, although, with some activities, they may need assistance.

As before, we have mixed activities where you make use of the mouse and the use of the arrow keys on the keyboard. These activities will help with the understanding and learning of the layout of space: up, down, left and right.

Also, we have designed the game, so it prevents the appearance of the typical Flash menu when the right button of the mouse is clicked accidentally.

Some of the sounds are from The Freesound Project and some images from OpenClipArt.

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New game: Move the mouse!!

This game is made for small children so they can start using the computer at an early age. It focuses on three basic techniques using the mouse: point, click and drag. We have designed four activities for each technique with some hidden surprises to be discovered. It is recommended for children from 2 years old with the help of their parents or teachers. So, let's get started! Click here to play. Read More..

New educational game: Maths hide-and-seek

This is a new game where the Vedoques love to hide. But don't worry! They are leaving us clues to find them. The Vedoques are behind the correct answer.
We have three different activities. The first one works with adding numbers, the second one with the times tables and the third one, you use subtractions. To make it more interesting and encourage children, they can win our Vedoque Olympic Medals. If you can complete twenty sums without any mistakes you will win a gold medal. If you make up to 3 mistakes, you will get a silver medal and up to 4 mistakes, a bronze one. You can choose the level of difficulty on the front page of the game. There are 2 levels, in the easier level (6-8 years old), the sums are made with numbers from 1 to 10, in the harder one (8-11 years old) the sums are made with numbers from 10 to 100. Click here to play Read More..

New Game: Maths Farm

The game is aimed at Primary School children. It's a very simple game and try to make Maths a little more fun. It has three level: Sum (1 to 10), Sum (1 to 100) and Multiply. The player must click on the animal with the correct answer. Click here to play.
In the Spanish version, this game has been played over 200.000 times this year, according to Google Analytics and StatCounter.
We hope you will find it fun and leave your suggestions in the comments section.

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Vedoque Holidays: a Paint Game

Our first game in English. It is designed for drawing and painting using some tools a bit different from the usual ones. We think kids at Nursery and Primary levels would find this game very interesting. Even older people can spend some fun time painting with the symmetrical tools. Click here to play.
The game consists of 3 different activities:
• Colour: In this activity you can colour in the "Vedoques" as you like. Also you can print them, in case you prefer to do it on paper.
• Paint: This is "Windows Paint" with a little difference. You can paint with geometrical and circulars tools, and other ones a bit more unusual. You can also print your masterpieces.
• Dots: You can reveal the hidden picture connecting all the numbers in the correct order.
We hope you will find it fun and leave your suggestions in the comments section. Read More..

Hello world

At last, our blog in English. We are the developers of www.vedoque.com and in our page, we publish free educational games and other material suitable for all ages. At the moment, we run a Spanish blog, where we explain how we made the game, what is its educational aim and which ages the game is target to.

In the near future we plan to produce and develop our games and design our website in English and Spanish. But for now, the games are only in Spanish. Some of them contain small explanations in Spanish but they are easy enough for students or your children to try them out. So, why don't you test these games out, in which the main characters are called "Vedoques" (pronounced beh-doc-kes in English), strange beings that nobody knows where they came from:

• La Granja Matemática (Math Farm). The game is aimed at Primary School children. The player must click on the animal with the correct answer.
• El escondite (Hide-and-seek). As with the previous game. The player has to click on the correct answer of the sum in order to find Vedoques. You can select the appropriate level in the main page.

In following posts, we will show you other useful games and also publish our first game in English. Any feedback welcome.
(Thanks to Anuska for the translation)

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New game: Vocabulary

We have made the English version of our last game. It's aimed to learn words about colours, shapes, body parts and fruits. It's good for kids at kindergarten or primary school.

Now you can click here to play.

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A new game to learn Spanish

We have made a new game for kids to start learning Spanish. It is made to learn about fruits, colours, shapes and body parts.

Now you can click here to play.

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Create Spelling Games and Tests

Spelling City looks misleadingly simple but is really a fantastic site for creating or getting students creating their own interactive multimedia word tests, games and practice activities.

Students simply type in the words that they want to revise and then decide which of the three modes they want to use.

The three modes are:

1. Test - In test mode the students get a simple audio test. They can hear either the word in isolation or in a sentence and they have to type it into the field. This is a great test to use with words that sound similar as it can give students the opportunity to test their ability to hear the difference both in isolation or in the context of a sentence.
2. Teach - In the teach mode the students hear the word alone and in a sentence and then the word is spelled out for them.

3. Play - In the game mode the students have the choice of a range of games that they can use to develop their ability to use the word in context or just test the recall of the words and ability to recognise them.


Matching activity

Hang Mouse
How about using this with students?

• You can either get students working alone on Spelling City revising their vocabulary or if you have an interactive whileboard or data projector in class you can create the tests in class in response to the new vocabulary demands of your students during class. just collect any new words that come up during the class and towards the end of class or at the beginning of the next get the words up on the board and click to create some interactive tests live in class. Just add your words then click to test, teach or play a game. If you use a game you can click the small icon in the top right corner to see the game full screen on the board.
• Many of the games will also provide a print friendly version of the activity for you to print and use in class, so you caould also use this tool to creat a range of paper based word game activities too.
  

Spelling City is a great tool that can really help EFL ESL students with their spelling, vocabulary, listening and receptive pronunciation. Would be marvelous if you could download and save the activities that are generated, but I guess you can't have everything.

I'm also not sure how big the database of words and audio sentences is, so I'm not sure what kind of coverage this would have for higher levels, but for lower level learners and for kids, I'm sure it's a winner. Hope you find it useful.

• Here you can find lots more vocabulary activities for EFL ESL students

Related links:

• Create Image Books
• Create a Flickr Montage
• Great Time Line Tool
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Interactive presentations
• A Picture's worth
• Picture phrases
• Make Your EFL ESL Yearbook
• Personalised flashcards
• Animating vocabulary
• Exploiting Image Sequences

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Online Games for Kids

In our rush to find and report on what's new we can often overlook a lot of really valuable resources that have been around a while and stood up to the test of time. Often these older sites and resources have survived for only one reason - because they a really good!

Kindersite is one such site. Kindersite was created by Joel Josephson and it focuses on collecting and categorising web based games and resources which are suitable for educational use with children. There is a huge collection there now and every time I look I find something new.

• You can find the categorised directory of games suitable for 5 years and up here
  Games directory 5 years +
  

• You can find the catagorised directory of games suitable for pre-school + here
  Games directory for pre-school +
  

You can also sign up to a newsletter list to keep up on what's happening
Newsletter list

Kindersite is a really great resource with lots of really useful games for kids. I hope you enjoy it and I'm sure you will find something useful.

Here you can find games based activities for language learning

Related links:

• Teaching EFL ESL with Comic Strips
• Dfilm - Dvolver Adds Embed Code
• Text to Speech Movies for EFL ESL
• Great Collection of Short Films
• Great Source of Animated Movies
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Get Kids Animating

Animation tools seem to be getting better and simpler to use every day and this one by Anithings is a great example of that.

It's designed for young learners to enable them to create short animated narrative clips. There's a nice video tutorial here showing how easy it is to create a short animated clip.



You'll need to have Adobe Air installed and then it is just a very quick download and you are then ready to start animating.

There are some useful PDF guidelines on how to use it which you can download from the site too.
There's a catch though, Anithings is still in beta and once it is finished the final version will cost money. Shame they can't think of a more up-to-date business model! Best download it now and get using it, if you can live with the bugs.

You can find some nice examples here of what kids in UK have been doing with the software.

Related links:

• Teaching EFL ESL with Comic Strips
• Dfilm - Dvolver Adds Embed Code
• Text to Speech Movies for EFL ESL
• Great Collection of Short Films
• Great Source of Animated Movies
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Dfilm - Dvolver Adds Embed Code

I've been a long time fan of Dvolver from its early days as Dfilm Maker. It was one of the first site I wrote about (Make you own animated movies)when I started blogging back in 2007. It's a really great site that allows students and teachers to create animated Flash cartoon movies with their own dialogue in just a couple of minutes.


I was in the process of visiting it again this morning to create a joke movie and was delighted to discover that an embed code has been added for the movies you create. This is great news as it makes it much easier to share the movies and include them in digital materials you or your students create.

Here's a quick joke movie I created



Great addition to a great tool. Hope you enjoy Dvolver and get your students making movies.

Here you can find some Cartoon Activities for students

Related links:

• Text to Speech Movies for EFL ESL
• Great Collection of Short Films
  
• Great Source of Animated Movies
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Flickr and Wiktionary Based Image Dictionary

Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images, and more! This is a really handy tool for students or in the classroom if you have a computer + projector set up.

All you do is type in your vocabulary word and you get images ( from Flickr, Google or Yahoo) and a definitions with part of speech and some example sentences from Wikitionary.

If you want to give your students a better view of the images that the Shahi finds in relation to the word, then just click on the image and it enlarges.


Of course the most common problem with picture dictionaries is that the concepts of many words, especially at higher levels aren't 'visual' as such and are much more abstract concepts. I did a search on 'noise' and here's what I got.


You can use this to your advantage though by getting students to think about the connections and associations between the words you search for and the images. You can turn this into a game and give points to the students with the best explanation for the connection between word and image. The explanation could be literal or more imaginative and narrative based.

One other thing that I like about Shahi, is that the results from each word you type in are 'piled up onto top of each other, so if you use it as a reference throughout a lesson or activity, you still have a record there of all the words that came up.

You could also use this feature in reverse, by creating an image word list before the activity so that students can prepare their vocabulary and refer to it during the activity.

Shahi is a nice versatile free tool and one that your students could easily use on their own. Hope you enjoy it.

Related links:

• Image based activities
• Exploiting Travel Images
• Art Photography as a Basis for Language Activities
• Darwin and Evolution
• Create Image Books
• Create a Flickr Montage
• Great Time Line Tool
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Interactive presentations
• A Picture's worth
• Picture phrases

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

The Role of Computer Games in Formal and Informal Education

I've just been listening to this interview on Edutopia with James Paul Gee talking about reform in US state schools. He also has a lot of really good points to make about the role of computer and video games in education and the role that they already have in our students informal education.

I think this is a 'must see' video for anyone involved in teaching and education.


He does place very strong emphasis on technology, but I also find what he has to say about the de-professionalisation of teachers very important too. Well worth a listen.

Related links:

• Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL Students
• Educational Games That Really Are Fun
• Online Water Conservation Game
• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Eco City Game
• Exploiting two computer-based RPGs
• Games With a Purpose and a Social Network
• Create your own game
• Looking at There.com

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Coffee With Kyle Mawer

This Sunday 30th November (GMT 18.00 = 10.00 PST) will see the second in our series of 'Coffee With ..' educational chat shows on Edunation III in Second Life, so please do come along, join our audience and meet other people interested in developing education and learning within Second Life.

In this show I'll be interviewing Kyle Mawer from the British Council and finding out about the work he has been doing designing materials in the Second Life Teen Grid and about the forth coming opening of the British Council's island in the main grid.



Kyle describes the work of the British Council as "both an iconic virtual representation of Great Britain, and a rich setting in which learners of English can further their learning of the language and culture of the UK as well as raising awareness of visitors to the work and opportunities provided by the British Council."

Kyle is particularly interested in using the medium of gaming as a learning tool and adapts free online computer games for use with his classes. The games, materials and lesson plans he’s found, developed and successfully used have been posted on the wikispace he runs at http://kylemawer.wikispaces.com

If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation III and click the sign-up terminals or email Gavin at: dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places. The show starts at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 8 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 10.00 PST and 19.00 CET)

If you don't have a Second Life avatar but would like to know how to set one up then you can download instructions from here. Setting up a Second Life avatar

Related links:

• Coffee with Gavin Dudeney
• Filming in Second Life 1
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• More Second Life Tutorials
• Building in Second Life
• Lip Sync for Second Life
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..