Edheads provides an online resource for kids. Its various games and activities engage students. Students can develop their critical thinking skills in fun way. Information from the website is noted below: Edheads is an online educational resource that provides free science and math games and activities that promote critical thinking. Choose from Simple Machines, Virtual Knee Surgery or Stem Cell Heart Repair, among others. All activities meet state and national standards. We partner with corporations, universities, and school systems throughout the United States, which help us research, design, and test our activities every step of the way. Not only do teachers and students appreciate our free activities, Edheads has been recognized by almost every major award on the Web for our excellent educational content.
Type of Material:
Animation
Recommended Uses:
Use in Self-paced activities and home to explore a students strengths and weakness in the fields of STEM.
In class / homework
Technical Requirements:
To view the activities you will need: A computer with a sound card and speakers (make sure your volume is turned up).Internet Explorer (6.0 or later) or a similar, updated browser such as Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera.The latest version of Adobe Flash Player.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The goal of Eddheads is to gain intrest of potentially future STEM careers. The material provides exciting free and paid games to inspire today’s K-12 students to become the STEM leaders of tomorrow.
Target Student Population:
Students and teachers teaching and learning science
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
None
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The animation provides learners with motivation to learning a certain topic. This is especially true for those learners who find STEM to be difficult. The individual games provide objectives.
Learning materials provided are simple and easy to use.
Each of the resource is backed up with real life situations.
Resources are arranged according to grades.
Teachers can upload their resources to the site as well.
Concerns:
Currently, the content focuses on STEM. However, the objectives are not listed even though the “About US” section provides general goals and values. It would be helpful to know specifically how the games help them achieve goals. Learners may be looking for games that meet a specific objective without the need to explore all the game. This is especially true if they explore free games before signing up for a subscription.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The use of animations is a very good concept to help students learn about the STEM field outside of reading out the field. Especially, now that in K-12 students are thinking about their career path earlier than 5 -10 years ago.
Can be used to prepare classes.
Teachers can make use of resources uploaded by other teachers.
Learning material can be uploaded after registering in the site.
Concerns:
The prerequisites and objectives are never stated.
The animations assume the learner know what areas of STEM will be covered and what they will learn. An introduction presenting any prerequisite knowledge and learning objectives will be helpful.
One needs to register to make use of the resources.
Anonymous usage not permitted. This is a privacy concern for many schools.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The animation is developed with both text and video for all learners to access. The timing is not to fast or to slow. The green arrows and the red pause allow the user to work on the activity at the speed that is best for them.
It is simple to learn Topics are arranged according to their category.
Target audience for the material is clearly identified.
Concerns:
The animation was tested in both Edge and Chrome. It worked very well in Chrome but if Edge the activity was getting stuck or did not display all content. If a statement was added in multiple places to state potential issues with Edge it would be more beneficial to the user.
Creative Commons:
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