Making custom educational games
- Mobile Games Group
- Jun 15, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 27, 2020
There are a plethora of educational apps and games that are ready made, but there are also many resources that provide the opportunity for educators to create their own games for their students. A benefit of creating your own game is the ability to tailor content to align with specific learning outcomes for your students.
One example of this is Kahoot!, a tool that allows you to create engaging quiz-like games for your students. Students use their own devices to answer questions for review or it can be used as an assessment tool. Kahoot! is easily one of the most popular tools for this time of in class game but there are many other similar apps, including Socrative, Quizlet, and Gimkit.
Factile allows teachers to facilitate a Jeopardy style game in their classroom, by using their pre-made games or entering their own questions. Students answer questions on their own devices using either the Jeopardy format, multiple choice, or a memory game. Recent additions to Factile are the ability to play with students remotely via a screen sharing service and the ability for students to play on their own schedule. Factile is engaging, easy to use, and a far cry from the Jeopardy Powerpoint presentations of earlier times.
Perhaps one of the most versatile apps for creating games for students is BookWidgets. Surveys, flashcards, mindmaps, bingo, crosswords, timelines, word searches, memory games, exit slips, webquests, and quizzes are just a few of the 30+ formats you can use to create tailored and engaging activities for your students. This resource allows you to not only tailor the content of a game for your students, but allows you to choose the best mode of delivery as well.
Similar to BookWidgets but slightly more limited is Educandy. Educandy allows educators to create simple games like word searches, hangman, and memory using vocabulary or simple comprehension questions. The games are easy to create and easy for students to access on their devices with their app or a browser using a generated code.
While creating games for your students can be time intensive, the benefits of being able to target specific learning outcomes makes it a worthwhile endeavor. And luckily, these apps exist to make the creation of games simple to do without the need for knowledge of coding.
Have you created your own games? Share your experiences with us!
Our student council once had a giant Kahoot going during an assembly which was pretty cool. It kind of crashed a bit because we have a lot of students, but the buzz was palpable. Students seem to LOVE Kahoot!
I have also used Kahoot! on many occasions with my team at work. We use the app for competitive skill testing questions to keep our knowledge sharp. It's pretty easy to use and makes learning a bit more fun and interactive, we've had a lot of great feedback from the team.
I used to make custom games for my students using Flippity, which is a Google Sheets add-on that easily turns a Google sheet into a game, but the add-on is no longer available. Currently all the templates can still be accessed on the Flippity website: https://www.flippity.net/ Using Flippity, you can make games such as Bingo, Quiz Show (jeopardy) , Spinning Wheel, Spelling Words, Mad Lib, Badge Tracker, and many others. It is great for vocabulary development in any subject area. Sadly there is no app for flippity, but there is a way to use it on your smartphone: How to Add Website Shortcuts to the iPhone Home Screen; & How to add a web site to your Android home scree…
Over the years I have made lots of games using Kahoot! as it is easy to create, it is engaging and there is automatic feedback. The information you have shared about game creation has given me interest to try using both Educandy and Bookwidgets. Thanks!