Excellent Educational Games

 I will be reviewing a couple of games this week. They both come from the site http://games.eduxtive.com/. They have loads of educational games over a variety of topics. Difficulty ranges from simple matching for lower elementary to stuff so hard that I couldn’t finish it. So no matter which grade level or content area you teach, this site has something for you. 
     The first game I’m going to review for you is “Protein Synthesis Race”. This game takes the player from the production of mRNA all the way to protein synthesis. It starts by describing the process of DNA unzipping and having the player separate it into its two strands. On the screen there are several icons that represent nucleotides bouncing around. The players job is to click on the nucleotide that matches and then guide it to its partner using the arrow keys. You get the hang of this pretty quick, and right before it gets too repetitive and old the strand ends and you move on. This part is timed and contributes to the score at the end. A quiz over the vocabulary and process follows and the player gets to try answers until they get it right. 
     Continuing on the quest to protein synthesis, you see a overview of the entire cell with your newly created mRNA strand floating in the nucleus. The player is asked to click on it and use the arrow keys to move it out of the nucleus and to the ribosome where protein synthesis occurs. The next mini game is a bit more complicated. After some explanatory reading the goal is to read the codon and identify its anticodon on tRNA at the top of the screen. Using an on screen key the player then uses the arrows to move the tRNA and grab the appropriate amino acid floating around on the screen. Put it in place and move on. Again you get the hang of this fairly quickly and are finished before it gets boring. This portion is also timed for your final score. One more set of questions follow and a final player score is given. 
     I teach middle school science and only touch on cellular division, so this is a little high for what I am doing. However I will be using this game in the future to give my students a visual on some of the processes we talk about. My kids always love anything they can compete on, I imagine we will replay it at least once to see who can get the highest score. Here are some tips to help that happen, if you would like to share with students: (or not if you want to impress them with your own score)

- Use WASD as arrow keys if you have a touchpad so that you don’t have to move your hands back and forth and look down, this saves time which improves scores.
- The faster you can match your nucleotides on the fly without having to think too much the better your score will be, the phrase GCAT helps me. (GC/AT) 
- Time is everything, so click wisely even during the quiz portions of this game to minimize wasted time. 

To find the game click on the link in the article or go to http://games.eduxtive.com/science/protein-synthesis-race!

Any other apps, devices or websites you need help incorporating into a certain objective? Or an objective you want to link to technology? Follow and let me know via twitter (@Techno4Teacher) or the contact form on the right!