World Geography Games
No-frills digital geography quizzes may appeal to some, but not all
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World Geography Games
Pros: Simple quizzes help kids learn to identify a variety of geographical features.
Cons: There isn't much variation in gameplay, and learning content lacks depth.
Bottom Line: While useful as a quick assessment tool or personal challenge, it isn't a place for deep learning.
You might find the site to be most helpful as a follow-up quiz tool. For instance, after teaching the 50 states, challenge kids to find them all on the blank map without making any mistakes. It can also be fun to practice geography-themed trivia. Although World Geography Games is designed for individual play, you could potentially project a blank map for the whole class to view; students could work in teams to find the correct answers.
Since there isn't a way to save scores or print a score report, teachers will need to watch kids closely if they want to get a sense of how well they're doing. Teachers could also just let students explore the site freely. These kinds of games are bound to interest some kids, but won't appeal to others at all.
World Geography Games is a collection of quizzes that test kids' ability to locate various geographical features on digital maps. There's a fair amount of content here, though none of it goes very deep: continents, states, countries, rivers, oceans, deserts, mountains; even atmospheric layers. Students click on a category -- say, U.S. States -- to bring up an unlabeled map. The game cycles through questions like "Where is Rhode Island?" while students try to click the correct answer. They'll hear a buzzer if they click the wrong place.
Once in a while, some extra information -- population, for instance -- pops up when kids answer correctly. A counter tells kids how many questions they've answered, how many are left, and how many incorrect attempts they've made. When they've answered all questions correctly, the map lights up and kids see a simple animation. If they're having trouble, kids can click "give up" to see the map labeled and then start over again.
The best thing about World Geography Games is the variation it offers in terms of different geographical features. Kids can test their knowledge of countries in Europe, but also world rivers, flags, volcanoes, and mountain ranges. This makes it a nice tool for geography and trivia buffs. Gameplay is very simple and accessible; it's incredibly easy and quick to get started on the site.
That said, play can easily get boring and tedious. What's more, there isn't any help for students who aren't great at geography, or are perhaps having trouble with just one question. It would be nice if the site gave hints, or revealed answers, even if just for one question at a time. As it stands, students will have to reveal all answers or restart the whole quiz. It could also be more helpful for teachers if kids' scores were saved and packaged into reports. A few ads appear on the home page, creating a small distraction, though they're mostly benign.
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What in The World Do You Want to Learn? Learn it from World Geography Games
It is a fun and possibly addicting game and might appeal to those students that like to compete for better scores or challenge themselves to do better at each drill. I like that the game times a student for their information, but does not shut them down if they have not successfully located information. It seems like it would be good for the student that needs a slower pace to learn. This may be a great practice tool to apply what has been taught in the classroom and assist with homework. A suggestion would be to add an audio feature to recite the correct answer in addition to the pop-up, to help those who respond to audio stimuli.
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