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Friday, 5 September 2008

Educational Games That Really Are Fun

It's often been a criticism of many attempts to make MMORPG computer games educational, that when that happens the fun goes. I have to say that it is often the case, but I think Power Up is an exception.

Power up is an educational computer game based around the concept of helping students to understand the need for clean energy. It takes the scenario of a planet ( set in the future) which needs rescuing.
The game looks and feels convincing and has some nice collaborative game play thrown in with some blasting of alien beasts. Students can play it alone or in multi-player mode. They are assigned missions that they have to complete and there is even use of some text to speech.

There are ready made lesson plans for teachers as well as a section for parents with advice on child safety.

The game is free, but you will have to download the software (200Mb!) which takes about 40Mins on a good broadband connection (and lots longer on a bad one)

It's great that the quality of these games is improving so much. This would be a really motivating game for students to play to learn more about clean energy and also good for intermediate + EFL ESL students as they would need to work at understanding the instructions to progress through the game. Also great to base a CLIL lesson around.

Definitely a serious game to be taken seriously. Hope you enjoy it.

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Nik Peachey
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4 comments:

  1. santic6 September 2008 at 20:09

    I love your comments, Nik. I don't like to see 0 comments in this window, so just write to say thank you for all the information you give us. Never use the computer, or very very little, and I hope to start using it in class soon and give you some feedback about this particular site when I use it in october (hopefully!).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nik Peachey8 September 2008 at 10:32

    Hi Santic

    Thanks for thee comment and I hope things go well for you. Do send some feedback and feel free to ask questions if you need to.

    Best

    Nik

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown5 June 2012 at 09:54

    I am suggesting your tips to my students (and to my student´s parents too). I wish there would be more people like you, inspiring to improve life using learning, teaching & thinking. Thanks a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  4. departament anglés18 October 2012 at 20:44

    Hi Nick. I've been browsing the net for years looking for useful tools for our students. Your blog is one of the most innovative,thought-provoking , easy-to-use that I've found. Thank you

    ReplyDelete

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