Science Video Games for Children

While video games are more often seen as leisure entertainment than educational tools, many games directly illustrate that games can both teach and be fun at the same time. Games like the award winning Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? have been teaching children (and adults) history and geography, problem solving and critical thinking skills, since the 1980s.

There are several fun and interesting edutainment science video games online, but none have struck it big for science like The Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego? did for history and geography. Today we’re addressing games that directly teach science. We’ve decided to focus on computer games, because computers are more often available at schools than PlayStation2s, but we have a handout with a list of games and what they teach for various systems. This handout will also be available on the conference website. In focusing on computer games, some games can be used for multiple areas, while others are directed at one area or another.

The slides in this presentation cover multiple games that teach either specific scientific data or scientific concepts. Many games aren’t directly created to teach still teach scientic concepts. Games like Super Mario Sunshine, Pikmin, Metroid Fusion, Beyond Good and Evil, Resident Evil, and others all teach basic scientific concepts, along with most games that use evolutionary monsters (where the monsters slowly become stronger versions of the earlier monsters – SMB, Maximo, MMORPGs), creatures indigenous to their regions (Legend of Zelda, MMORPGs, almost all games), and more. Overall, the best games for education are the games that both teach abstract skills like critical thinking, accurate real world data, and games that are fun to play so that kids will play them. We’ve presented some of the best games we’ve found and we encourage you to email us with any games that you find so we can keep our online list updated and useful as we encourage kids in science.

Please view the slideshow over the subsequent pages.

Science Games For Children

GENERAL SCIENCE GAMES

(Teaching basic scientific principles)

Kinetic City is an online science activities site dedicated to children grades 3 to 5. Some of the games are fun enough to teach and entertain children and adults past the fifth grade. (www.kineticcity.com)

Games include:

All Systems Are Go! where players help Arnold (supposedly Schwarzenegger) click and drag his respiratory, digestive, nervous, and circulatory systems back into the correct position in his body.
Gravity Launch teaches angles, motion, and basic physics using satellites.
Zap!, which teaches about reaction time by helping a frog try to catch a fly.

Planet Science has some of the best science games and activities on the web. (www.scienceyear.com/wired/)

Games include:

Earth Rock Hunter (which is reminiscent of old Atari games), where you fly through space shooting aliens and collecting rocks from the former planet Earth, which exploded. After you collect the rocks, you have to answer geological questions before you are paid, or given points, for the rocks.
Energize, where you try to stop pollution by turning Smog Jockeys into Eco Monkeys while traveling in your Eco-raft down a polluted stream in front of a smoke billowing factory.

GAMES TEACHING ABOUT SPECIFIC TOPICS

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Neverwinter Nights teaches computer programming, visual design, and more. It must be purchased, but it will operate on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Neverwinter Nights is great for all sorts of learning because it is such a complicated and modifiable game. Teachers could even have students use it to build scenarios that could then be used to teach other students.
Cosmic Blobs (http://www.cosmicblobs.com/software/index.html) Cosmic Blogs is a computer animation program that teaches concepts of form, shape, and movement, as well as basic computer skills and a level of comfortability with technology. This must be purchased.
Josie True (http://www.josietrue.com/) Mary Flanagan's The Adventures of Josie True is a web-based historical adventure game for girls. The hero of the game is Chinese-American Josie True, a regular girl who becomes involved in intrigue across time and space as she tries to find her inventor-turned-teacher Ms. Trombone. This is a free online game with over 11 cool science, math, + technology games in this internet adventure. One thing that makes this site appealing is that it has a phenomenal teacher’s guide that gives prep for teachers before the games and worksheets and activities to reinforce the concept after the game.

NATURE

National Geographic interactive maps teaches about Earth's ecosystems (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/wildworld/)
PBS interactive nature (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/fun.html)
Planet Science doesn’t claim to be the most amazing science site like Kinetic City, but it does declare to have the best science games and activities on the web (http://www.spinapse.com/products/photohunt/)

ART AND NATURE

Two beautiful and delicate introductions to the beauty of nature and science are the Orisinal games. (http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/)
And, AquaMoose 3D (http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/grow.php)
http://www.funbrain.com/
Explanatoids teaches about science. While these aren't really games, students are certain to enjoy watching these and exploring the website: (http://www.explanatoids.org)

ENGINEERING

Bridge Building Games:

Build a satellite:

http://www.thetech.org/hyper/satellite/)

Do it yourself 3D model building blocks:

http://www.distorter.net/builder/default.asp

ORGANIZATIONAL AND CRITICAL THINKING GAMES

Games like SIM CITY and the Civilization games teach city building, social trends, and about issues like irrigation, farming, city zoning, and more. These games must be purchased, but they are extremely fun and students can learn many different skills and concepts.

HEALTH

PLAGUES

Infectious disease study game (http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/infection/infectionindex.html)
Epidemic/who wants to be a millionaire game (http://www.disted.mcw.edu/mpm/epidemic/millionairegame/millionairegame.htm)
Paper-based plague game http://www.mcn.org/ed/cur/cw/Plague/Plague_Sim.html
Online of the same (http://scorescience.humboldt.k12.ca.us/fast/teachers/Plague/P.html)

GIRL SCOUTS

GirlTech has a “game cafe” where you can download instructions on science games to play with your friends, but it is not an actual video game. This is quiet prevelant now as online gaming for both girls and education becomes more popular. (www.girltech.com)

CHEMISTRY

Proton Don’s Game to learn the periodic chart (www.funbrain.com/periodic/index.html) or other element games from the Jefferson lab (http://education.jlab.org/indexpages/elementgames.html).

BIOLOGY

Virtual frog dissection kit (http://froggy.lbl.gov/). After learning the parts of a frog, students reconstruct a 3-D virtual frog, piece by piece, by pointing and clicking to complete the frog’s anatomy (http://froggy.lbl.gov/cgi-bin/dissect). The Virtual Frog is just one example of the many video games and interactive websites that help students of all ages learn science.
Cool board game that teaches the basics of genetics (http://www.edvotek.com/S-80.html)

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL WRITING

Almost all games can teach scientific and technical writing through the fan walkthroughs, which detail how parts of the game operate and how to play each section, including details on how to perform certain maneuvers and more. To see examples, see (http://www.gamefaqs.com/ )

OTHER, NON-COMPUTER GAMES

Many games aren’t directly created to teach still teach scientific concepts. In nonfree, console game systems, games like the Nintendo GameCube's Super Mario Sunshine, Pikmin, Metroid Fusion, and Beyond Good and Evil.
Almost all games teach basic scientific concepts, along with most games that use evolutionary monsters (where the monsters slowly become stronger versions of the earlier monsters – SMB, Maximo, MMORPGs), creatures indigenous to their regions (Legend of Zelda, MMORPGs, almost all games), and more.

Overall, the best games for education are the games that both teach abstract skills like critical thinking, accurate real world data, and games that are fun to play so that kids will play them. This list includes some of the best games we’ve found and we encourage you to email us (using the contact form here: http://www.recess.ufl.edu/contact.shtml) with any games that you find so we can keep our online list updated and useful as we encourage kids in science.

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