Educational games in schools
There’s been quite a bit of news the past few weeks about schools trying out educational video games, and I can’t quite figure it out. While using PSPs in school is certainly new, even when I was in elementary school back in the late 80s, we had educational games on the Apple computers. We had Spellicopter, in which you used a helicopter to pick up the letters in a word. I can’t remember the name, but I also recall playing one (in high school, on some version of Windows) in which the player was a student in the school cafeteria and had to pick out a nutritionally balanced meal. Heck, there was even the Carmen Sandiego series.
Certainly most of us who were in school in the late 80s and later had educational video games available to us – if my tiny school where K-12′s entire enrollment was only 700 students had games, bigger schools must have had them too! So why are these educational games suddenly such big news?
Do any of you have fond memories of playing computer games at school during indoor recess or study hall?
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Yeah I remember the Karmen Sandiego games and there was another one but I can’t remember the name. It had to do with crossing the country in a wagon? Something “Crossings”? and you’d learn stuff.
Kimbo, that was Oregon Trail, and it ruled. My school only had Apple IIe’s, so we had that, Number Munchers, a typing tutor, and that turtle drawing program. Good times.
I have to say that my favorite one was Midnight Rescue back in first and second grade. Running around a school after it closed taking pictures of robots.. fun stuff.
Oh yes, Oregon Trail! Thank you.
Kimbo, you have died of dysentery.