Even though the Osmo Words game has been around for a few years, many people probably do not take advantage of its full potential. The Words app is engaging and fun, but can be even more powerful educationally by customizing it.
If adults sign up for a free account at myOsmo, they can add their own albums of pictures and words that can be downloaded to the library on the mobile device being used to play Words. For example, my first graders choose their own countries to study. As we learn about different features of the countries, I add photos to an album in myWords that they can then use to review.
You can find instructions for customizing the Words game here. Using your own albums not only allows you to make the game relevant to current learning topics in your classroom, but also to differentiate. You could use the same pictures in different albums with different vocabulary. Or, you can associate a picture with several words of varying difficulty. For example, a picture of the Taj Mahal may prompt the students to guess Taj Mahal, India, or even tomb.
The online album customization is made even easier with links to UnSplash, an awesome resource of Creative Commons photos. Or, if you don’t want to make your own album, there are many that other teachers have made and shared publicly that you can also download to your device.
