Trainyard delivers the goods with simple, interactive visuals

Submitted 12 years ago

Community Review for Trainyard

Gary S.
Gary S.
Webster City Middle School
Webster City IA, US
My Rating
Pedagogy
Supports

My Take

Trainyard is a good tool for students to work on logical, sequential thinking skills. It starts simply and builds logically, step-by-step. Tutorials accompany each level up, making learning the current concept easy. Accomplishing the conceptual goal gets more challenging with each level. The user works their way through 14 levels named for UK cities. Within each level, progressively harder screens advance you to the next city. By the time the user gets to the middle of the challenge cities, the thinking is starting to get somewhat advanced. The tutorials are excellent, doing a great job of guiding the user through the challenges. I had no trouble understanding the concepts and enjoyed working with this app. The elegant simplicity of the design lends itself to playability. Considering the way students like social learning some would ask for a multi-player version; I think it would muddy the workings of the app and take away the simplicity of play.

How I Use It

This app would be a good extension app for students that like a challenge. It could be used singly or in small groups. With the social aspect of learning so many of our students use these days, I see the group activity being the most requested choice. In an elementary school, this could be used in a learning center or in a free-choice time setting.

More community reviews for Trainyard

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Charlie J.
Charlie J. Elko, NV
September 24, 2014

Great puzzle game that stimulates critical thinking

The puzzles get incredibly difficult as they progress and completing all of them was addicting for me. I think it's perfect for advanced students who need to be challenged.
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Chris C.
Chris C. Media Specialist
May 22, 2013

Colorful and engaging as children build tracks and watch trains move along them.

This is a great app for problem solving and creative thinking. While watching my five-year old grandson manipulate the tracks i frequently find myself thinking, "well, that's not what I would have done, but look how logical that is". Players move from station to station creating the tracks to get the trains from the train-yard to the station. The complexity grows as the player solves each problem. Two players can play on the same device but the real competition is with ones self. As the player advances tutorials add skill sets to the solutions. The player can choose to watch the tutorials or skip them. The entire application is graphic, including the tutorials, thus language skills are not necessary. Special needs children, if they can use their fingers will be able to build the tracks. If there is a support person to build the tracks they will enjoy watching the colorful trains race down the tracks and successfully enter the stations or crash, depending on the success of the track laying.
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