Homemade PowerPoint Games - Lloyd Rieber & Gretchen Thomas

It's better because it's homemade!

A Call for K-12 Teachers to Have their Students Build and Share Homemade PowerPoint Games!

Lloyd P. Rieber & Gretchen Thomas
Department of Educational Psychology & Instructional Technology
The University of Georgia

Click here to learn more about the background and rationale behind this project.

Do you want to involve your students in a creative and constructivist form of technology integration?
Do you want to spend less time trying to motivate your students and more time guiding their learning in the content areas?
Do you want to show off and share your students' best work and help other students learn around the world at the same time?
Are you ready for something bolder and more student-centered than WebQuests?
Do you want to be part of the ground floor of a new project?
Do you have very little or no money to spend on extra resources?

If you are answering "Yes!" to these questions, consider having your students build homemade PowerPoint games and share them here on the WWILD Team!

Homemade PowerPoint Games, Phase 1: Building an infrastructure

This project is just beginning. As part of Phase 1, The WWILD Team is looking for innovative and creative teachers to help us build an extensive web site of resources and examples. We are looking for teachers working with their students to contribute PowerPoint games with the following characteristics:

Easy for others to play;
Easy for other teachers and students to modify or customize;
Good integration of content and consistent with curriculum standards across States;
No copyright restrictions - you agree to let all teachers and students copy, use, and modify your game at will;
All games must include the following mandatory slides: Credits, game directions, and materials list (more information about these mandatory slides is below).

To contribute a PowerPoint game, you first upload it to a web site, then submit a description of it along with its web address to the WWILD Team. Use the module category "PowerPoint game" as part of the description.

Mandatory Slides

All PowerPoint games submitted to the WWILD Team need to include the following slides to ensure consistency.

Credits - Each PowerPoint game must include a credits slide containing the names, email addresses, and affiliations of the game's designers. As a game is modified or adapted, the names, email addresses, and affiliations of the new designers are added to the credits page. Do not delete any names from this page. This ensures that proper credit is given to all designers over the life and evolution of a game.

Game Directions - Each PowerPoint game must include appropriate and complete directions on how to play the game. The directions must be written well enough to explain how to explain the game to new players. If the game requires the building of game boards, spinners, etc., directions on how to build these game elements must likewise be included. Think of writing game directions as a wonderful language arts activity for students!

Materials List - Each PowerPoint game must include a complete list of all other materials needed to play the game, such as dice, playing cards, string, cardboard, etc. As already mentioned, if any of these elements must be constructed, appropriate and complete directions need to be included.

Resources - Free to copy!

PPTgame-template1.ppt - This template provides a good generic shell for starting a game. It includes the following slides: Title, story, directions, game preparation, game pieces, play the game, objectives, credits, copyright.

MyQuestions-template1.ppt - A simple template for making questions that link to right and wrong feedback.