Sporcle - Possible Education Tool

One of my favourite ways to eat up a few minutes when I'm taking a break is the website Sporcle, which contains thousands of entertaining, educational games on basically every academic topic taught in schools, and allows you to compare your results to everyone else who has played the games. Here are a few examples of games in my areas of interest:

Periodic Table of Elements
Multiplication Table
High School Math Grab Bag
Anatomy of the Heart

I think this site has quite a lot of potential for use by educators. Teachers could use a projector to show the class the picture of the heart, and as a class they could try to finish the game before the time runs out. It would also be useful for kids learning the multiplication tables or the periodic table of elements; perhaps every few days they could play the game at home and see their progress, as the site lets you compare your current score to your most recent and your all-time best score. The site also lets teachers (or anyone) create their own games, so teachers could create games tailor-made for their individual classes. Check it out and let me know if you can think of any other ways it might be useful!

Introduction

I thought I'd start off my blogging experience giving a little background information about myself. My name is Chris Peters and I'm currently in the Bachelor of Education consecutive stream program at Brock University in Hamilton. My goal is to teach Science and/or Math at the Intermediate/Senior level. Science, especially Biology and Chemistry, and Math were always my favourite courses in high school, and I'm very much looking forward to trying to pass that joy on to new generations of students; I'm especially excited about all of the technological innovations that have appeared in the ten years or so since I was in high school, and decided to take an optional Technology course offered at Brock to learn more about them. I think it's generally accepted that students learn much better by doing and being actively involved in lessons rather than just passively absorbing information, and new technology is constantly making this increasingly possible.

After graduating from McMaster with a BSc in Biology, I worked in accounting for several years while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Eventually I decided that education was what I was always passionate about above all else, and here I am today. Before I began working my accounting job, I was fortunate enough to discover (as a Brock job listing) an opportunity to volunteer in the Galapagos Islands, helping to develop an organic farm and remove invasive plant species alongside a small group of permanent residents, mostly native Ecuadorians. In return for a few hours of volunteer work a day, I could stay on the Islands for much, much cheaper than it would have been to visit there any other way, and still have weekends free to travel between all the islands.

Here are a couple pictures, one of the farm we worked on, and one of myself with some Galapagos tortoises:



The trip certainly helped deepen my appreciation for many aspects of science, and a highlight of the trip was a mini-research project where I helped complete tallies of the different species of Darwin's finches on different parts of an island. It was a real joy to experience first-hand something I had been studying for so many years, and as a teacher I hope to find ways to bring that joy into the classroom.