Humana Games 4 Health

Humana Games 4 Health is an engaging site where kids can play a variety of games that help reinforce healthy eating and living habits. Users can navigate around the town, stopping at different locations such as the Schoolzone, Hospital, Senior Citizen Center and Workzone. The screenshot below shows a portion of this community.


At each location they can learn different facts and information about healthy living. Most of the locations have their own games for students to play that also reinforce that specific information. For instance, at the Physical Therapy building you can play the Freewheeling Cycle Challenge where you navigate your bike around the course trying to avoid potholes and other obstacles while also needing to pick up water, fruit and other nutritious items in order to keep your energy level high. Students can also participate in The Horsepower Challenge, which is an offline challenge where students keep track of the steps they take and log them online as a way to track their physical activity.

Jam Legend

For those of you who like to rock out with games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band you can now take your music making madness online with Jam Legend. Jam Legend lets you play along using your keyboard rather than other conventional instruments, which meant that I was even more terrible at playing this than I was playing Guitar Hero. You can even challenge others to play you online and sign up as an artist and add your songs to the site for others to play. I think they are really counting this since the list of available songs is quite short at this point. Jam Legend is currently in private Beta but you can get a preview by watching the video below.
JamLegend Trailer from JamLegend on Vimeo.

Lego Universe

I'm breaking just about every one of my rules in regards to what resources I choose to share on this blog by writing about Lego Universe. First of all, it isn't free (or at least it won't be once it is out of Beta testing). They are planning on providing it on a subscription basis. It is billed as a game rather than an educational tool. They are classifying it as a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game). And the icing on the cake is that it will run on PCs only and I'm a Mac man. Why then, you may be asking yourself, am I sharing this with all of you? Because I am a Lego maniac and have been ever since I was 5 years old and received my first Lego set from my grandparents for Christmas. I have gotten a set of Legos for Christmas every year since then, I'm 38 now, and I still enjoy playing, building and creating. My daughters are particularly happy when I share with them. Keep an eye on the Lego Universe. It may just be one of those tools that you can utilize that allows you to take advantage of your students' motivation and engagement to achieve some curricular goals.

NASA to Create Educational Games

NASA recently announced that it is moving into the realm of educational gaming by developing a massively multiplayer online gaming environment that will focus on teaching kids STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills. You can read more about the initiative on their site but it certainly sounds promising. They are seeking to harness the power and engaging aspects of virtual worlds and combine it with their vast array of high quality content to create and educational gaming environment. Unfortunately, I don't have anything concrete to share in the way of the actual game but stay tuned and I'll try to keep you posted of any developments.