Online Games Tapped by West Virginia to Improve Education

Students love to play computer games, and the West Virginia Department of Education is tapping into that love through a website called Learn21.

The site offers all kinds of games that help students in every grade level brush up on their studies.

Fifth grade students in Dottie Pownall’s classroom at Orchard View Elementary in Martinsburg have played Probability Pond, a math game offered on the Learn21 website that features a big green frog.

The frog can eat fireflies in colors of blue, yellow, purple, and red. The students have to determine what the probability is that the frog will eat a particular color. The studentstake turns guessing the answer and entering it on a large smartboard in front of the room.

Special education teacher Sharon Collins led some lessons this year, incorporating as much technology as possible.

“Almost every day, we find something online through Learn21 or other resources and incorporate it into our classroom,” Collins says.

“With having an inclusion classroom, we have students who have vision problems. We have students who have speech problems, learning problems. We have an autistic student in our class, and then we also have regular ed. students, and it really appeals to their different types of learning styles.”

The state education department started Learn21 two years ago. The website offers online games that go along with the curriculum. Teachers can use the games in class, and students can access the website from home ifthey want to practice some more.

Donna Landin, the department’s e-learning coordinator, says Learn21 is meant to help students in a variety of ways.

“They could find content on the website, go into that content, complete a game or an interactivity that went right along with what they were learning in their classroom, so it was either supplemental, or it helped them get at areas where they were having some problems, or it could accelerate their learning,” Landin says.

Learn21 also offers the opportunity to review material. “They can go back and pick up concepts that they had gone over formerly, maybe in previous grades or earlier in the year,” Landin says.