If you have ever attended one of our 30 in 50 presentations, you know we are fans of the work at GlassLab Games. After multiple years of being an invitation only beta, GlassLab Games is open to everyone.
GlassLab Games philosophy:
- Deep Learning Matters – Games are ideal environments for engaging students in complexity, giving them the power to figure things out at their pace, in their way, and through a medium that they enjoy.
- Fail Forward – Our games are an ideal way to learn from mistakes because they offer multiple opportunities to persist through challenge in an environment that is designed to reward multiple attempts and novel solutions.
- Immediate Feedback to Learners – With games, learning is continuous. When students are in the moment playing, there is no better time to give them insights into their learning.
- Not-so-standardized Assessment – Our reports reflect exactly what is happening as the child is learning. We capture evidence of student learning through our back-end and then make that learning visible through streamlined reporting that is real-time, personalized, and actionable.
- Transformative Learning – Our games are unique in their ability to create an immersive context for learning that sparks curiosity, fosters persistence, and opens students’ minds to new possibilities.
Current Featured Games:
Argument Wars
Argument Wars is an online game that lets players argue landmark Supreme Court cases. By finding and using the strongest support, students recreate historic legal cases while evaluating arguments and distinguishing between valid and invalid reasoning. Argument Wars brings gaming to the social studies classroom and lets students have fun while they learn about landmark cases and hone fundamental skills that are critical to success in meeting Common Core standards.
Game Over Gopher
Game Over Gopher is an exciting tower defense game built around the coordinate grid. To defend a prize carrot, the player selects various tools to “feed” the space gophers marching hungrily toward it. Game Over Gopher guides students in plotting coordinate pairs, differentiating negative coordinates from positive coordinates, and identifying the four quadrants. It helps establish the fundamentals of plotting functions on a grid. We recommend it for students who are struggling to understand the coordinate grid or those who just want to become more comfortable with graphing.
Funded by the National Science Foundation and developed by the Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University, Game Over Gopher is a game in the Math Snacks suite of interactive educational learning modules, and prepares students to better understand mathematics concepts crucial for 6th-grade math. Aligned to Common Core standards, it has been used effectively with students in 2nd through 7th grades learning to graph coordinates and track locations on a grid.
Slice Fractions: School Edition
Slice Fractions: School Edition is a fun problem solving game that guides students to intuitively and effectively learn fractions through critical concepts. In this puzzling world, players must slice the right amount of ice and lava to clear the mammoth’s path. The game is the fruit of multiple years of research and development by Ululab with the help of math learning experts from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). It has a smooth progression designed for kids who are new to fractions or who have not yet understood its basic concepts. The environment is free of written instructions, which lets students dive into math reasoning without being obstructed by their literacy level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVY0dA0T9q8&feature=youtu.be
Wuzzit Trouble
Wuzzit Trouble is a seemingly simple game that will challenge and engage your students – and even you – like never before! While saving the trapped Wuzzits, your students will engage in completing complex performance tasks that aren’t just aligned to the Common Core, but that develop number sense and the ability to use mathematics as a problem-solving language. Featuring a casual game look and feel, don’t be surprised if your students start playing at home, too!
Water Bears EDU
Water Bears EDU is a 3D puzzle game that requires students to use spatial reasoning and color-mixing skills to redirect water through pipes in a grid-based environment. The end goal of each puzzle is to fill each water bear’s bubble with the correct color water. Each puzzle has been designed to give students hands-on experience with different Systems Thinking concepts, such as identifying interconnections, using leverage points, and managing limited resources. Some puzzles introduce game mechanics or Systems Thinking concepts, while others provide engaging challenges that help students develop deeper problem-solving skills.
After working with systems in the game, students have the tools to participate in meaningful classroom discussions about Systems Thinking concepts that can be difficult to grasp without concrete experience. This guide includes lesson plans that give an introduction to Systems Thinking in the context of Next Generation Science Standards, as well as provides a framework to customize lesson plans to suit the needs of different classrooms and students.
SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge!
With SimCityEDU, educators have more than a just digital game. They have the tools and content they need to make learning come alive for their students. In the game, students play the role of mayor, doing the challenging work of addressing environmental impact while balancing the employment needs and the happiness of the city’s residents.
Designed in partnership with the assessment experts from ETS and Pearson, SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! not only teaches students about the factors affecting the environment in a modern city, but the game also provides formative assessment information about students’ ability to problem solve and explain the relationships in complex systems.
Lesson plans, teacher and student dashboards—along with student data reporting—complete the SimCityEDU experience, delivering personalized learning to every student.
Mars Generation One: Argubot Academy EDU
Mars Generation One: Argubot Academy EDU is an engaging futuristic adventure game for iOS tablets. Aligned to the Common Core State Standards, the game brings STEM content into the English Language Arts classroom, and helps middle schoolers develop persuasion and reasoning skills. In Argubot Academy EDU, players take on the persona of a new student at Argubot Academy, the city’s middle school. There, each player will have to make very adult decisions about the building and governance of the city, for example: What type of food should the citizens cultivate? Players have to build sound arguments for every choice they make – but in this city on Mars, people settle their differences by equipping their robot assistants, called argubots, with claims and evidence, culminating in a robot battle of wits!