Do not, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion, but by play. – Plato

Good morning all,

Yesterday I wrote about http://arcademicskillbuilders.com/, a site that allows kids to practice math facts in a collaborative online gaming environment. Today’s featured site, which I heard about from my PLN pal Dan Callahan at BarCamp Philly on Saturday, is http://tutpup.com/. It is similar but takes things a bit further.

Both http://tutpup.com/ and http://arcademicskillbuilders.com/ let you get right into the action and start playing, http://tutpup.com/ goes a bit further and allows teachers to create classes to group your students:

This data could prove helpful, providing basic information on which students use the service, what they play, and  how they do (difficulty levels attained). Here’s an example:

The students also get immediate feedback at the end of their game, showing them how they and their competition did. Pretty neat!

The signup process is straightforward, but the students will absolutely need help remembering their sign-in names – a combination of a color, an animal, and a number that they choose when they create their account.

Gameplay is simple and incorporates sound for feedback (which can be turned off, but I found it helpful and fun.) Here’s a game underway:

I like how the countries of the students are represented with flags. Nice!

The site loads quickly, there are a wide variety of activities, and even the spoken pronunciations for the spelling game are good (there is just a hint of a British accent). All in all, this site could be very popular with students as a practice site. The worldwide competition makes it even more fun!

Hope this helps!

-kj-

P.S. Credit for that Plato quote goes to the folks at http://arcademicskillbuilders.com/, which is where I saw it today!