Recommend fun but educational games for boys aged 10-12

The Game Room
1

What are some fun games suitable for 10-12 year old boys that are also somewhat educational?

I teach computer skills to boys learning English as a foreign language (I teach in English). They have a 100 minute lesson, so I allow them some free time at the end if they have worked well. Right now, they mostly spend this time playing flash games or reading about their favourite cartoons. I don’t want to take away their reward for hard work but I think they can make better use of this time.

I would like to install one or more games that the kids will enjoy playing but which also provide some educational benefit. The game could teach them strategy, geography, history, English comprehension, maths - anything really. Right now I am thinking that Civ4 would be too hard for most of them but a version of SimCity could be good. Maybe an RPG to teach language and maths, or a real time strategy game they can play competitively / cooperatively over the network.

There is one computer for each student - roughly two year old PCs running Win XP.

I know I learnt a lot from computer games as a kid. Does anyone have any experience or suggestions? What would you like to play if you were a kid? Any other comments or highjacks are welcome…

Thanks!

2

Going way old school here, dunno if it would even run on those machines, but remember those text adventure games from the early 80s? The one I’ve thinking of had you finding a cave, navigating it and encountering various things, at some point learning the code XYZZY that took you back outside or some such. Not the most exciting thing by today’s standards, but it would involve reading and problem solving in English…

3

Thanks, that’s a good idea - I think the newer graphic adventures might be good too. I think only the brightest and most patient students would be able to handle adventure games though. I’ll what older games are free or cheap…

4

I’m going to move this over to the Game Room, where the gamers hang out.

twickster, Cafe Society moderator

5

Where do you teach? If you’re somewhere with even a small game industry could you get the American/EU English versions of some local games? The rationale being they’ve possibly played these and could experience the story in English already somewhat knowing where it goes in their native language.

Otherwise there’s always the old standby… Oregon Trail, at the very least they learn what Dysentery and Fording a River is.