A few years ago one of my students created a memory game app with the MIT App Inventor. It was a great exercise through which she learned about all of the variables and parts of the app that need to be designed. If you're a little more pressed for time than my student was and you just want to quickly generate some matching games for your students to play, there are easier methods than programming your own app.
Matching Game is one of the many Google Sheets templates that Flippity offers. Like all Flippity templates you can make a copy of the template, modify it by adding your own words or terms, and then clicking the activity URL provided by Flippity. Try a sample Flippity Matching Game here and get the template here. Watch my new video that is embedded below for guidance on using the templates.
Educandy is a game builder that offers a handful of online game creation templates. One of those is a matching or memory game template. To use the template you simply provide a list of words or terms and Educandy does the rest. Your game will be assigned its own URL that you can distribute to your students. Watch this video to see how Educandy works.
Making online educational games used to be the domain of those with specialized coding and programming skills. Today, there are free tools that anyone can use to create their own educational games for students. Likewise, there are now some excellent free tools for creating online skills practice and knowledge recall activities to share with your students.
Educandy is a neat service for creating simple vocabulary games and multiple choice trivia games. A convenient aspect of the service is that once you've created a list of vocabulary words it will automatically be applied to multiple game formats for you. In other words, write one word list and you'll get three games that your students can play. Your students can play the games without needing to create an account on the Educandy site. Watch this short video to learn how you can create your own educational games with Educandy.
Flippity is a free service that provides nearly two dozen Google Sheets templates that can be used to create a variety of online games including spelling games, vocabulary games, problem-solving games, and trivia games. The board game template is one of the most popular templates that Flippity provides. That template can be used to create an online board game that is similar in nature to Candy Land or Shoots & Ladders. Watch the video here to learn how to create an online board game with Flippity’s free board game template.
ClassTools.net has long been one of my favorite places to find free educational games and templates for creating educational games. On ClassTools you'll find templates for creating map-based games, word sorting games, matching games, and many more common game formats. Use the search function on ClassTools to find the game template that is best for you and your students. You can see a video demonstration of ClassTools right here.
TinyTap is a free iPad app and Android app that enables you to create educational games for your students to play on their iPads or Android tablets. Through TinyTap you can create games in which students identify objects and respond by typing, tapping, or speaking. You can create games in which students complete sentences or even complete a diagram by dragging and dropping puzzle pieces.
TeacherMade is a service on which you can upload a PDF then add to it fillable text boxes, lines for matching activities, multiple choice questions, and interactive hotspots to highlight specific points in the PDF. You can also use TeacherMade to add audio to an uploaded PDF. Depending upon the type of questions that you select, TeacherMade will automatically score assignments for you. Canva offers nearly two thousand worksheet templates for teachers to copy and modify. All of the templates can be downloaded as PDFs. You can combine the use of Canva and TeacherMade to create online activities for your students to complete. Depending upon the TeacherMade settings that you choose, your students can get immediate feedback. The process of combining TeacherMade and Canva is demonstrated in the video here.
As we get toward the end of the school year many of us will be looking for some fun activities for our students to do to review key terms and concepts of the last year or semester. I shared a handful of ideas for doing that in this week's Practical Ed Tech newsletter. Another idea is to create some simple online word games for your students to play. This might sound difficult, but it's not. Thanks to Flippity and EduCandy everyone can create their own online word games.
Flippity's Snowman word game is a game in which students have to correctly guess the letters of a word in order to prevent their snowmen from melting. The template lets you make your own variation on the game with words and hints of your choosing. Your game can be shared with students via its assigned URL. Students don't need accounts in order to play the games that you create. Here's an overview of how to create your own online word games by using Flippity's Snowman template.
Educandy is a neat service for creating simple vocabulary games and multiple choice trivia games. A convenient aspect of the service is that once you've created a list of vocabulary words it will automatically be applied to multiple game formats for you. In other words, write one word list and you'll get a few games that your students can play. Your students can play the games without needing to create an account on the Educandy site. In the following video I provide an overview of how you can create games on Educandy and how your students can access your games.
Flippity's Spelling Words is a free Google Sheets template that you can use to create individualized spelling games for your students. To do this you simply have to make a list of words that you want each of your students to practice. You'll then put those lists under your students' names in a Google Sheets template that is provided by Flippity. The following tutorial video walks you through the process of creating individualized spelling games in with Flippity's Spelling Words template.
This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.
Educandy is a new service for creating simple vocabulary games and multiple choice trivia games. A convenient aspect of the service is that once you've created a list of vocabulary words it will automatically be applied to multiple game formats for you. In other words, write one word list and you'll get three games that your students can play. Your students can play the games without needing to create an account on the Educandy site. In the following video I provide an overview of how you can create games on Educandy and how your students can access your games.
Educandy is a neat service that I recently learned about from Eric Curts. As I mentioned in this week's episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast, Educandy strikes me as a slightly more polished version of Flippity. On Educandy you can create a list of vocabulary words or a list of questions and have a set of games instantly created based on those lists. You can then share those games with your students through a dedicated link and game code.
To get started on Educandy you will have to create an account on the site. Once you've created your account sign in and select the option to create a list of vocabulary words, matching pairs of words, or a list of quiz questions. Once you've made your list Educandy will automatically generate a game or series of games that your students can play. If you make a list of vocabulary words or a list of paired words the game options will include memory, hangman, word search, and crosswords. If you write quiz questions, the game will be a simple quiz game.
Once your game is created on Educandy it will appear in your account under "my activities." From there you can select your game and find its code. Students can then use that code to play your game at Educandy.com without creating an account on the site. You'll also find an embed code that you can use to place your game on your own website.
Applications for Education
Educandy isn't providing anything revolutionary, but it does provide a convenient way to create some simple review games for your students to play on their own. If you're looking for a new way to make games for your students to play as review activities, Educandy might be for you.
