Oh Yeah, It's Educational!
by Kim Vandenbroucke, The Game Aisle
I'm a game inventor and typically work with mid to large manufacturers who don't do "educational" games, because frankly, there isn't much money in them. Why is that? One reason is that it's hard to get games into schools because the curriculum is already packed so tight that teachers just can't make time for them, and the other is most non-educators don't buy game that are intended to teach and learn, they buy games that provide FUN!
Therefore, when I found out that my newest invention, Scattergories Categories has found it's way into classrooms I was thrilled!
As the name implies it's a spin-off of the classic Scattergories game but instead of rolling the giant letter die and coming up with answers in a bunch of categories that all start with the same letter, each round has only one category with lots of different letters. As an example, the card may have the phrase "CAMPINGTRIP" on it and each player has two minutes to come up with items that you might see on a camping trip that start with the letters C-A-M-P-I-N-G-T-R-I and P. The goal is to get as many unique answers as possible so I might say "Cooler" for C, "Ants" for A," Mosquitoes" for M and so on. Players get one point for each unique answer and you play to 25 points and since there are 250 challenges in the game, you're always playing different topics.
One of the educators I heard was using it with her students is Danielle Kos. She and her colleague, Vicki Reagan, are Speech-Language Pathologists at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, IL.
Here's what they had to say about Scattergories Categories:
Scattergories Categories has proven an effective game for adolescent age students struggling with language difficulties. The categories consist of high interest topics that vary in level of difficulty. It has been found to provide opportunities for various levels of academic/language abilities, it facilitates collaboration among students, and it allows for healthy competition between students. As Speech-Language Pathologists, we have found that this game targets word-finding skills and increases overall vocabulary. It also helps language-impaired students generate a variety of descriptive words that revolve around the category. Additionally, it is easily adaptable with incorporating an increase or decrease in response time as well as allowing students to come up with their own categories. High school age students have been very engaged with this game and do not even realize the skills that are being addressed while they are playing!
I think this is outstanding and reinforces my belief that games are educational regardless of whether or not they are marketed that way!
If you're looking for an expert in the game industry, you're probably looking for Kim Vandenbroucke. Not only does she review games at The Game Aisle, but she also designs them and is one of those people that companies call when they need to have a game designed.
