I am currently attending the TCEA Virtual Convention, so I plan to share a little about what I’ve learned in each post this week.

“Let’s Play: Flexible & Engaging Games Your Students Can Play Virtually or Face to Face,” was one of the first On-Demand sessions I watched when I joined TCEA 2021 online this morning. It was presented by Jonathan Spike (@JonathanSpike), who also publishes the GameStorm Edu website. If you are registered for TCEA, I highly recommend that you “attend” his presentation, which also includes a Google Slides file full of templates you can copy for games. (Thanks to Jonathan for permission to share this!) A couple of the games in the presentation, as well as some others, can also be found in the Games Library section of his site. You may recall that one of my “Gifts for the Gifted” recommendations in 2020 was the game Codenames, and that happens to be one of the templates you can download!

If you do any type of game design unit with students, you will definitely want to take note of some of the other pages on Jonathan’s site, such as “How to Create a Game,” “Types of Games,” and “Resources for Creating Games.” One thing that I’ve learned with students is that they tend to resort to one or two different kinds of games when they design, and I think it’s definitely helpful for them to have a handy reference so they step outside that comfort zone. I also think it would be beneficial for them to have Jonathan’s digital Designer Guide and Designer Workbook (located on the Resources page).

If games in the classroom interest you, don’t forget my article for NEO on mining talk shows for ideas. It has lots of links and a template you can copy also!