language arts – DiG-iT! Games

Articles Tagged with: language arts

National Read A Book Day: What to Read

September 6th is National Read a Book Day! However, with so many books, finding something to read can be hard. So, we put together a list of book suggestions! Even though we’re a game-based learning company, we know the importance of reading regularly as part of continuing education. Make reading a part of your daily routine.

Get Motivated

When: a suggestion for Read a Book Day

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing teaches you all about how motivation levels rise and fall throughout the day. Pink helps you identify your “chronotype” in order to best predict when you’ll be most ready to work and when you’ll get nothing done. Knowing this makes getting things done in a timely fashion much easier.

Learn how to get the most out of your day by finding the motivation to read this book. If you need more convincing, read this review from The Guardian.

Creative Teaching

Wild Card: suggestion for national read a book day

Whether you think that you’re a naturally creative person, The Wild Card guides you through the process of reaching that creative breakthrough as a teacher. Draw on yourself and your strengths to offer engaging lessons that draw in students to the course work in a more personal manner.

If you’re getting started as a teacher, or you just want a new perspective, this gives a lot of useful advice! If you need to know more about it first, check out this review from The Inspired Apple.

Game-Based Learning

Play to Learn: a suggestion for Read a Book Day

Play to Learn bridges the gap between instructional and game design to give insight into what makes a good game-based learning product. While it focuses itself towards designers like us, knowing the process helps when using these products in the classroom as well. Also, it provides a good starting point for anyone interested in game-based learning.

Learn more about what this book has to offer with this review from eLearning Industry.

What Are You Reading for Read a Book Day?

Let us know what books you’ve been loving recently! What we shared here makes up only a small sample of the plethora of amazing resources out there for all topics. Do you have a reading goal for the year? Let us know by leaving a comment or replying to us on any of our social media channels.

Literacy is incredibly important, so make sure you keep reading whether you’re a teacher, student or neither.

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Our Summer Gaming List 2018

Game Based Learning in the Classroom

Fractured Fairytales: Twisting Familiar Stories

Fractured Fairytales: Twisting Up Familiar Stories

We all love fairy tales. The sheer number of beloved Disney movies based off these ancient stories can attest to that. We love to see the heroic prince slaying dragons or the plucky princess pursuing true love. Sometimes though, we wonder what if. What if Cinderella had been more rebellious or Red Riding Hood more observant? Because of that curiousity, we make fractured fairytales.

What is a Fractured Fairytale?

At its most basic, it’s a rewritten fairytale. Simply put, a fractured fairytale takes an existing story and, literally, fractures it. Instead of following the plot to the letter, the rewritten story changes point of view, certain events, time period, or even the ending. Fracturing the fairytale provides new perspectives on the story through considering how else the story could have gone.

Examples of Fractured Fairytales

The video above comes from a segment of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (19959-1964) dedicated to fractured fairytales. On the show, everything from Rapunzel to Little “Fred” Riding Hood to every pun on Sleeping Beauty you can think of is covered. Despite its age, the charm and comedy remain timeless. Collections can still be found online or single episodes can be found on YouTube.

For more literary examples, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs transforms the Big Bad Wolf’s story into a true crime drama (for kids). However, all it takes is a quick web search to find a copious amount of other delightful examples.

Fractured fairy tales fit well into many language arts curriculums, particularly in elementary school. Read Write Think has several great ones, including this resource which walks groups through analyzing the common elements of a fairytale. Then, groups use that information to make their own fractured stories. Education World and Teachers Pay Teachers also offer a selection of different ideas for teaching these offbeat stories. These include both reading and writing exercises.

Roterra: A Fractured Fairytale Puzzle

$Roterra is inspired by fractured fairytales among other influences$

Roterra eschews the traditional structure of the fairytale. Princess Angelica takes destiny into her own hands instead of waiting for a huntsman or fairy godmother to give her a hand. While it’s not a true fractured fairytale, since it doesn’t retell any particular story, it retains the ethos of giving more agency to the heroine. A better term might be “flipped” or “upside-down” fairytale. It gives Princess Angelica a role she might not usually fill in other fairytale stories.

You’ll be able to step into the role of Princess Angelica this year when Roterra releases. Until then, keep yourself up to date with the development by signing up to the newsletter on the game page or giving the teaser trailer a watch. We’re very excited to be giving you an awesome female protagonist in a fairytale setting. If you want to know more about the development of Roterra, keep an eye on the blog! We’ve got some inside looks into the world, characters, and development process coming up!

Our Summer Gaming List 2018

Summer is a great time to get gaming. Libraries are always handing out summer reading lists, so we assume that you’re already covered when it comes to setting yourself and your family up with great books (but if you’re not, here are a few recommendations). But do you know what games to set yourself up with? Look no further than this list, where we give you a few recommendations for what to tackle when you’re trying to avoid the heat.

Younger Players

When picking games for younger players, it’s important to keep a few considerations in mind. Games must be appropriate for the age group in content and difficulty but they still have to be fun too. Check out our recommendations.

Grow Home

Ubisoft

Grow Home is a short and sweet little adventure from Ubisoft. Play as B.U.D. (Botanical Utility Droid) as he attempts to grow a plant which will oxygenate its home planet. The open world offers many opportunities for exploration as B.U.D.’s actions and movements adapt to the environment. Controls can be a bit difficult, but that’s just a way for parents to play along. Overall, it tells a sweet story with an adorable art style and a fun sense of discovery.

Grow Home is available on Windows, Linux, and PlayStation 4.

Super Mario Odyssey

Nintendo

The Switch is the big new thing for good reason. While the amount of games remains small, the game available are stellar. Like Grow Home, Super Mario Odyssey offers a great sense of discovery. Take Mario and his friend Cappy on an adventure through the many lands the game has to offer. From urban to jungle, Mario explores all kinds of places in his journey. Controls, particularly the motion controls, can also be finicky, but they’re not bad.

Super Mario Odyssey is available on the Nintendo Switch.

Older Players

As gamers get older, they want more complicated games to play. Fast-paced, thoughtful gameplay or narrative heft are both considerations when picking a gamer for bigger kids (or even for parents!) to play. Here’s a few suggestions.

Fortnite

Epic Games

Battle Royale is the big craze and Fortnite is the king among them. Like Overwatch, Fortnite offers player vs. player gameplay without an excess of gore. The game features a building mechanic where players can craft walls or ramps for themselves with material they collect in the environment. Just watch out for the online interactions to make sure your players are not harassing others or being harassed themselves. Best way to prevent this? Make sure they’re playing with known friends or keep the voice chat off.

Fortnite is available for Windows, Mac, iOS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Shadow of the Colossus

Bluepoint Games

Shadow of the Colossus is one of the classics of video games, and it’s more accessible than ever with the remake that came to PlayStation 4 this year. Experience a great example of storytelling through games. An added bonus- if you’re not quite caught up to the current generation of systems, a remaster of the original version of the game can be played on the PlayStation 3. For gamers who enjoy narrative, Shadow of the Colossus is definitely a can’t-miss.

Shadow of the Colossus is available on PlayStation 2, 3, and 4.

Summer Gaming for the Whole Family

Gaming doesn’t have to be a solo activity. Make a night of it and bring the whole family together to play games. While local co-op can be hard to find, we’ve got you covered with these two awesome possibilities.

Overcooked

Ghost Town Games

Test your family’s ability to cooperate with Overcooked where your group of chefs must work together to save the world from a ravenous beast. First, however, you must train in an increasingly complex set of kitchens. Deal with cooking on top of two trucks, on a sailing ship, and in the middle of a busy crosswalk. Overcooked supports up to four players in both cooperative and competitive modes.

Overcooked is available for Windows, Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Human Fall Flat

No Brakes Games

Human Fall Flat challenges you to take control of the most awkward, clumsy humanoid creature there is and solve physics-based puzzles with nothing but your genius and a bit of nonsense. While Human Fall Flat only supports two players locally, it’s easy to pass the controllers back and forth if your family expands beyond that. The game offers a lot of fun and a lot of laughs as you try desperately to clear challenges in the most awkward way possible.

Human Fall Flat is available on Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Dig-It! Games’ Gaming Catalogue

Summer Gaming List 7: Dig-It! Games

Of course, we have our own catalog of games! While our focus has always been on education, we’ve been applying those experiences to puzzle games recently. For fans of match 3, there’s not a better fit than Silk Road! Head on down the famous trade route with Matthias, the friendly but sassy camel who serves as your companion. Also, coming this year is Roterra, our map traversal game where players take on the role of Angelica. Help guide Angelica home through the twisting, turning world of Roterra. Both of these games will challenge your mind in different ways.

If you’d like to beta test for Roterra or just stay up-to-date on the development, make sure to sign up for updates on the game page.

Educational Escape Rooms: Benefits, Examples, & More!

What is an Escape Room?

It’s pretty likely that you’ve at least heard of escape rooms. Companies that run escape room puzzles have begun to crop up everywhere across the country. Nowadays, nearly 2,000 escape rooms exist, compared to twenty-two at the end of 2014, according to Room Escape Artist. Generally, these puzzles limit themselves within physical spaces where players must work together to escape from the locked enclosure. Players find pieces, move contraptions, solve riddles and more to make it out.

However, all the fancy mechanisms simply make up the aesthetic flair. Actually, creating an escape room or escape room-style puzzle is easy. All you need is something to unlock and some puzzles that players must solve that will help them unlock that something. While it may not end up as fancy, anyone can make an escape room around any topic. Including teachers! And including you!

Educational Escape Room Benefits

educational escape rooms are great in classrooms

Escape rooms teach valuable life skills that are highly applicable to education. A student needs to practice teamwork, time management, problem solving, focus under pressure, and respect. Escape rooms encourage all these valuable traits. Additionally, the puzzles that make up an escape room can be created around a theme which correlates to the class it’s presented in.

Of course, the implementation itself proves challenging sometimes as teachers must grapple with standards, classroom size, and class period length. Yet, there are a number of ways to combat this through using boxes instead of the room itself or using pre-made escape rooms from educational escape room companies.

“The concept of meaningful gamification is not to provide external rewards, but rather to help participants find a deeper connection to the underlying topic,” writes Scott Nicholson, a professor of game design and development at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. Escape rooms provide motivation and give students a reason to try and understand and connect with the material.

Find Resources for Your Classroom

For making your own escape room, try out this advice from Classcraft. It has tips about how to use the physical space, how to make puzzles, how to order puzzles and more. Some subjects are harder to design than others since math has a lot of opportunities for puzzles and social studies less. However, it is possible to design for any subject.

Many companies also offer pre-made escape rooms that can be easily implemented into classrooms. Breakout EDU (which we talked about on a blog post before) is a great resource for finding games that can be brought to any subject, complete with provided locks and boxes for students to work with. The Escape Classroom is another option (they also have a mystery-style workshop!) and Lock Paper Scissors has simpler printable guides to use for easier set-up.

Educational Games Are Great Too!

Our educational games were designed with C3 standards in mind for math, social studies, and STEM classes. While not as physical as escape rooms, bringing game-based learning in to the classroom is also a great way to give students motivation and engage them with learning. Our upcoming game Roman Town 2 casts the player as Team Q. They collect clues and solve puzzles to track down a thief rather than escape. However, the concept of solving problems remains the same!

If you’d rather get something for yourself, make sure to keep an eye on Roterra, our upcoming map-traversal puzzle game. Roterra will challenge your own mind and keep your brain working. Follow along with its development by signing up to be a beta tester on the game by going to the game page.

Unity3D – Dinosaurs and a Word Game

Our studio has been working hard through the summer on a number of projects soon to be released. The summer came and went in a blast until we realized Labor Day weekend had arrived. Did we have enough summer fun? Of course we did because we build games for a living; what could be more fun than that. But, how about taking a moment and do a hackathon for a game that came from the many game ideas floating around in the studio? This week we decided to jump in and build a crazy game involving space, farts, spelling and of course a dinosaur.

tyronne in space

Today is day 3 of our three-day marathon hackathon to build a prototype of the game in Unity3D. The studio has been abuzz stroking pens on tablets and creating space stations, dinosaurs, and retro 80s game backgrounds. Think Atari console games and an image of the behind the scenes work might appear for some. However, for those too young to remember Atari games here is a splash of some of the art.

Game development is a team effort and everyone is participating and some acting in different roles adding to the fun. Now you will recall we did say farts. While we won’t give away the whole game mechanic yet words like toot, gas, poof have been bringing some laughs, tears and groans in the studio. Then there are the sounds of groaning dinosaurs as the team brings the sound effects into play.

This has been a fun exercise for the team and the end of the hackathon is drawing near. How close will we get? We hope to have a playable game that we might share with our customers and friends. Getting a sneak peak is easy by registering on our game portal. Once a version is available for initial feedback it will appear in your game library.

Say hello to an early base mesh version of the dino!

rex_wip_01

National Read A Book Day: What to Read

Get Motivated

Creative Teaching

Game-Based Learning

What Are You Reading for Read a Book Day?

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Fractured Fairytales: Twisting Up Familiar Stories

What is a Fractured Fairytale?

Examples of Fractured Fairytales

Roterra: A Fractured Fairytale Puzzle

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Puzzles and Their Positive Effect on the Brain

Female Rulers from World History

Game Review: Odyssey on the TeacherGaming Desk

Our Summer Gaming List 2018

Younger Players

Grow Home

Super Mario Odyssey

Older Players

Fortnite

Shadow of the Colossus

Summer Gaming for the Whole Family

Overcooked

Human Fall Flat

Dig-It! Games’ Gaming Catalogue

You Might Also Be Interested In:

World History Explored Through Video Games

Puzzles and Their Positive Effect on the Brain

Stop Summer Learning Loss…While Having Fun!

What is an Escape Room?

Educational Escape Room Benefits

Find Resources for Your Classroom

Educational Games Are Great Too!

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Puzzles and Their Positive Effect on the Brain

Breakout of Your Old Lesson Plan!

World History Explored Through Video Games

Unity3D – Dinosaurs and a Word Game