Hi and welcome back! Hard to believe June is just around the corner. I love it when we get closer to the end of the school year and our teachers bring in some new fun things into class as we get closer to the end of the year. It looks like that’s what our MPS teacher is looking to do in our featured question of the week…
| Dear Tech Integration Team – Help! My students love games and I love Kahoot and Blooket, but I have used them a lot this year. I’d like to keep things fresh as we shift into these last weeks of school. I’m looking for other free games or activities I could use to support my instruction while still bringing the fun. Do you have any ideas? Thanks, Mr. J |
Hey Mr. J –
Free games or activities? A fantastic and inspiring quest! For more than 25 years, researchers have been studying the effects of game-based learning and gamification. The results support what we see in our classrooms, when integrated with intention, games are a great way not only to support learning objectives, but to help students build resilience, exercise critical thinking and communication skills, and have fun!
A great free go-to for creating custom games is Flippity, a passion project of Massachusetts Technology Teacher Steve Fortna. Originally designed to create custom flashcards from a programmed Google Sheets template, Flippity now offers 20+ user-friendly and customizable games and activities including Wordle-Style puzzles, digital board games, breakouts and more.
Each Flippity activity has two “starting points,” (1) a “Demo” linked to an example of the specific activity and (2) step-by-step instructions and a linked Google Sheet template to customize. Because Flippity leverages Google Sheets, teachers and students alike can easily create their own games and, just like all things Google, sharing is just a couple of clicks away.
Below the instructions for each activity, Flippity includes a “Frequently Asked Questions” section outlining options for even more customization including tips for designing answers, options to email teachers student results, and when possible, how to bring in links, images, videos, Desmos and EquatIO into Flippity creations.
Oh, do you share my spreadsheet-a-phobia? No worries! Flippity’s Sheets are ready to go, just replace the content that is there with your own. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! Really, I mean it! Here’s a digital breakout I created about World War I, it is a little more trivia-like than head-scratcher puzzle, but it showcases some of the features available in the Flippity Breakouts; they can be created any way imagined! What will your first Flippity game topic be?
Who says learning can’t be fun? Game on, MPS!
Wendy
Check out the MPS Tech Diaries Blog! This week I learned how Flippity + Google Sheets support teaching & learning with great custom games and activities! #MPStechnology #Google #MPSteacher #Flippity
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