The Adult Years

I wanted to structure my blog to cover all sorts of games, from preschool age to adult. This is an introduction into my venture of the more adult focused games. Now when I say adult, don't get too excited, I am still referring to educational games, its just the content may be intellectually more challenging. Some of the stuff may still be applicable for a younger audience, it depends on the game itself.

I want to share with you some of the games I use in class with my adult learners. I use small games sometimes to enforce particular topics. I use logic games in my math class to help exercise the left hand side of the brain. I think of it like training for football. You don't always practice football itself, sometimes you do push ups or run lines or strength train. So in order to be better at math, I find these logic games 'strengthen' the logical part of your brain. This site, School Time Games, has lots of different logic games to choose from. There’s checkers, Sudoku, and one called A Little Mess. You’re supposed to untangle the line segments so the lines no longer cross, it's quite a challenge. All the games require some sort of problem solving or strategic planning. Another good site, Brain Bashers, has a plethora of games dedicated to such logical brain training.

In addition to math I teach various computer science classes and we look at a lot of algorithms. I like to teach the algorithm on the board and then if available, I like to use a computer game to have the students practice the algorithm. A great example of this is the Towers of Hanoi game. This is a perfect illustration of recursion. The text book I use in class, Introduction to Java Programming, uses the Towers of Hanoi as a game to create via Java. It’s nice for the students to play an already working version of the game to get a full understanding of how it is supposed to work.


The great correlation between the computer programming classes I teach and educational computer games is that my students are learning how to create applications. Such application could be games. I would love to teach a class on designing educational computer games. This could combine my love for education and educational design with computer programming and writing code. The best of both worlds. Maybe I could even teach the class online, adding a third element of things that I’m learning. Who knows what the future holds.