Educational games and toys
October 18, 2009 by Tucker
Playing and learning are so closely related that they often can’t be distinguished at all. In one way or another, most games are educational – even if it were only in educating the player up to a higher level of competition. That’s quite often overlooked, I believe… but it’s true: even your very own recreational game of tennis, on a sweet summer afternoon with a frefreshing drink witin hands reach, is an educational game!
But let’s be realistic: when talking about educational games, more often than not we refer to learning systems for our children. Especially in the last decade or two, an enormous number of educational “tools” have been developed for children of all ages, and even for grown-ups. The latter may or may not be intentional, but a fact is that many of the more intricate educational or learning systems, like those dealing with science and nature, are enthusiasticaly played with by the parents of the child for whom the gift was originaly intended!
This will not so soon happen with educational toys for very young children, like alphabet blocks or ABC blocks. And then there’s the enormous range of educational games/toys for all ages in-between! Looking back on my own youth in the post-war years I am truly amazed by all the educational tools that are available now! On the other hand I believe that our childrens own creative development suffers from those pre-chewed and bite-sized chunks. I used to be quite excited with the proverbial cigar box from my granddad, out of which I created houses, factories and garages – the box that is, not my granddad.
So it’s all a matter of relativity, I think. Some values are lost, others are gained. But at least, to the great relief of sometimes desperate parents, buying educational games and toys has become easier than it was ever before. Generally speaking, this is an improvement.
- You get access to a HUGE bank of educational tools worth hundreds of times more that what you paid
You should look into these sites, they give examples and background into your project:
http://www.his.com/~pshapiro/chess.html
Apples App store has from what I found several useful educational tools, some on the very cheep being free to few bucks.
I work for an educational services company. We are contacting you to gain permission to reprint your January 4, 2008 entry, Research on Student Motivation, in an upcoming graduate text. Could you kindly email me? I will provide further details at that time.
Thank you so much.
Beth Eck
Copyright Administrator
Performance Learning Systems, Inc.
http://www.plsweb.com
beck@plsweb.com
It’s been over a decade since the beloved brick-building toy company Lego introduced Mindstorms, its robotics system designed to help kids learn programming, along with other science, technology, engineering and math concepts. We’ve featured Lego Mindstorms previously in our series on tools for teaching kids to code, and Mindstorms is part of Lego’s broader educational efforts. Although Mindstorms kits are available commercially, there are a series of specifically educational tools that the company has developed in conjunction with other organizations, including MIT, Pitsco, and National Instruments. These help expand robotics education beyond what was, arguably, the initial target audience: middle-school age boys. Sponsor Now, it’s true that Lego may be a gender-neutral toy – loved by girls and boys alike, but robotics has often viewed as a particularly male endeavor. And while robotics programs, such as FIRST Robotics, often have as their mission to expand the interest in science…
The other way around:
its purpose is that of any system's
It's should be its – the possessive form (it's = it is).
The second apostrophe is correct. A word has been left out because it would be understood to be there. The full phrase would be: 'its purpose is that of any system's (purpose)'.
Not saying that is a well-constructed phrase – just that it is correct grammatically.
3 Fast Learning Systems to Master -