Create EduGames Online

Gamestar Mechanic is a game-based digital learning platform designed to teach the guiding principles of game design and systems thinking in a highly engaging and creative environment. Gamestar Mechanic was designed with the understanding that game design is an activity that allows learners to build technical, technological, artistic, cognitive, social, and linguistic skills suitable for our current and future world. The built-in curriculum in Gamestar Mechanic lets learners exercise these skills by creating games. Knowing how to put together a successful game involves system-based thinking, problem solving, collaboration, art, storytelling, and digital media literacy. The basic level is free but you can upgrade to a premium version for a small monthly fee.

There are two ways to use this site. Students can play pre-made games that are curriculum related or they can create their own games with the help of a tutorial. For teachers, librarians and parents, the Learning Guide provides rich game design content as well as a set of sample lessons and resources that can be used in conjunction with the Gamestar program. One section of the guide showcases lessons on connecting more traditional academic content to game creation. Each entry contains a story, with observations about the real world that then take shape within game creation activities. A brief class activity outline offers ideas for ways of engaging students in game creation around the entries.

Interactive Science/Math

Howtosmile.org, from the University of California, is an online collection of thousands of hands-on interactive science and math activities dedicated to making learning exciting and engaging for everyone. All activities are freely accessible. Howtosmile.org, funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the National Science Digital Library, brings together a consortium of science museums across the country to empower educators working with students in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology.

SPILL: Learning by Avatar

SPILL is a Business Simulation that takes place in a 3D world that teaches students how to apply business skills to environmental remediation. In the 3D city there has been an oil spill. Students design avatars and collaborate in teams inside the Virtual World to apply business skills, learn, clean up the spill, and win. Underwritten by Deloitte and provided to teachers at no cost, this new curriculum uses videogames and avatars as futuristic teaching tools in the classroom. Log into the Deloitte Virtual Team Challenge to use this game and win cash prizes.

FoldIt: Protein Folding Game

Foldit is a challenging, fun, protein folding game. The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

By playing the game, you also contribute to important scientific research. The Foldit team, from the University of Washington Departments of Computer Science & Engineering and Biochemistry, is collecting data to find out if humans' pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, Foldit can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever!