Lemon Tech Tidbits

      Educaplay is a website that allows you to create and find educational activities, manage groups, export your resources, and use them with your students across devices. In addition, students can challenge each other and see the results in real-time. For those of you who use Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams, the activities can be easily integrated.       To get started, sign up for a free account. Spend a few minutes searching for your time zone (honestly, this was the hardest part of using the site), and then do a search for a unit of study in the search bar above. There are thousands of different games already created by other people you can use. If you find one that looks interesting, give it a try. If you want to use it with your students, click on the Share button and then click on Google Classroom (or Microsoft Teams). The top ten results will be posted by everyone who plays the game.      If you want to create your own game...

Lately, there have been many websites that allows a teacher to easily create educational games for students to help them learn new concepts or study for an upcoming test or quiz. Educandy is another one to share with all of you. This one seems to be geared more toward elementary than middle or high school students. It is free to use and doesn’t take much time at all to get set up. As a teacher, you can add a data set such as a list of vocabulary words or a list of questions. There are 8 different game formats to choose: word search, anagrams, noughts and crosses, crossword, match up, multiple choice, memory and hangman. To get started, you will need to create an account. Educandy will then send you an email to confirm. Once you are logged into the site, you are prompted to enter either a list of words or questions. Finally, based on your list, you can pick one of the game formats recommended for you to use. Once you create an activity, Educandy will provide you with a unique code ...

Remember playing this educational game when you were growing up? It was a fun and exciting way to learn about geography. You would spend hours trying to chase down the V.I.L.E. villain around the world. Recently, Google has announced her return with a series of games centered around Google Earth. The first game is titled The Crown Jewels Caper . In this caper, Carmen has stolen some jewels from London. Using your investigative skills, you must interview witnesses who provide clues to her next location. Once you have your clue, you must pick the next location. Since the game uses Google Earth, you can scroll around and explore the area. This game can be played from a website or mobile app on a phone or iPad. I did find it was easy to do simple Google searches to find the next location based on the clues even though they get a little more elusive as it goes on. However, I can imagine how fun this would be in with a large class using a projector. To play the game yourself, go to g.co...

Did you have an Etch-A-Sketch you loved to play with as a child? Well, there is now a website version! It is called Web-A-Sketch . Here is an article posted by Erin Whalen giving you all of the information including some ideas of how it can be used in a classroom. *I have been playing around with it on my MacBook and it is as challenging (and addicting) as the original toy. I do wonder though how it would work with students who have a touchscreen computer….

Geoguessr is an educational game in which students must use reasoning, research, and geography skills in order to play. When you start the game, you can choose either a single player or the challenge mode. Once entered, you are plunked down in the middle of a street somewhere in the world. You have access to Google maps that allows you to zoom in on different features around you. You can navigate forward or look around you to try to find clues as to where you are. In most cases, you are in such an isolated place, it may be a while before you come across your first clue. Students will need to use their geographic skills as well as researching the clues in order to play the game. Interference and reasoning skills also come in handy. The best part, as the students play the game, they find themselves learning interesting facts along the way.

KAHOOT! I am sure I talked about this before but want to remind you all about the power of KAHOOT. What is it? Kahoot is a free game-based student response system. Students can play a game on Kahoot from almost every device. They do not need to sign in or create an account. All they need to do is to put in your individual game pin on https://kahoot.it/ . The best part is there are already games within the system you can use. To make your own takes only minutes to add multiple questions or play the new game called Jumble. Another idea is to have the students create their own game over the content and share it with their classmates as a way to prepare for a summative test. To learn more, go to: https://kahoot.com

OUTLINE MAPS From the blog Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne Outline Maps is a free site that offers very simple games to help students realize where countries, states, cities, or rivers actually are in the world. ” A very simple game that helps you realize where countries, states, counties, cities or rivers actually are in the world.” You can search for the game by either name of the country or by feature. Once you make your selection and start the game, a stopwatch will be displayed in the top right-hand corner. The object of the game is to correctly identify all areas on the map in the shortest amount of time.

GOOSECHASE Goosechase is an interactive scavenger hunt game you can use with students and/or with your teachers and staff for Professional Development. Goosechase allows you to “blend the tried-and-true fun of a scavenger hunt with mobile technology to create a learning experience unlike any other.” You can sign up for a free account. There is also a paid version that gives you more choices. Some of the scavenger hunts are already available and ready for you to copy and use. For example, one of the games is called Simple Machines and requires students to take pictures of one of the six simple machines being used around the school. In another game called ELA Review, students must record themselves acting out different vocabulary words. For more information, visit: https://www.goosechase.com/edu/

History Game: Play Your Dates Right On FreeTech4Teachers ,  Richard Byrne shared a new game from ClassTools called Play Your Dates Right. The game was developed by Russel Tarr.  The object of the game is for students to be able to pick the right order of three historical events. To use the template to create your own game, click on the Edit button on the bottom right-hand side.