Teaching computing skills with games

I'm teaching a course using Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access) and keep having at least some of the class get done early. Would anyone have ideas on games or other fun activities that those early finishers could do that would continue to play with some of the basic computer skills I'm trying to teach them?

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Permalink Reply by Marie on November 29, 2008 at 6:18pm

There are so many free games available - what age are your students?

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Permalink Reply by James Dykstra on November 30, 2008 at 7:04am

My kids are in Grade 9, so that's 14 or 15 years old.

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Permalink Reply by MJ Page on November 30, 2008 at 8:25pm

I have taught a Business Tech course and we have students make games in powerpoint. I will try to upload the files.
Not sure if they will be interactive if converted to a different format for on-line viewing.
see attachments- basically what you do is work with action buttons to make things happen.
The kids like this. good luck.

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Permalink Reply by MJ Page on November 30, 2008 at 8:27pm

These grade 9 students (14-15) are asked to make an interactive power point game suitable for younger children. here's a few more samples. You have to move mouse around to activate actions.

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on December 4, 2008 at 10:56pm

How about moving past the Office suite?

There are a lot of applications that teach other parts of computer skills. Editing audio or video teaches skills that can't be learned anywhere else. Google tools include Sketchup which allows kids to build 3D models that can be placed on Google Earth maps. Scratch is a simple programming language specifically designed for kids to learn how to control the computer, not just use it for simple tasks.