ABCYA For Education

Week Twelve

This week I gave ABCya.com a thorough investigation. The website is dedicated to educational interactive games and programs for Pre-K through 5th grade. The applications are cloud based and there is no prerequisite sign up to use this free website. I was really impressed with the quality of educational games. They are all organized by grade level and then by category. There are skill building applications for letters which help to word build and improve reading, writing and spelling. There are story books which can be selected to read and highlight as the words are being spoken. There are games that aim to improve subject, verb, nouns, contractions, antonyms, synonyms & homonyms, parts of speech, and the list goes on. There are even games for improving Spanish and Italian. There are a wide variety of math interactives such as counting, adding fractions, decimals, addition, multiplication, division, etc. There is a strategy category that has an array of puzzle and brain teaser interactives. There is a holiday category which had a build a snowman, carve a jack-o'-lantern, make a gingerbread house. These are more entertaining, yet there are still skills being used to read the screen and use the tools which involve building visual literacy. There is even a skill category with a color, draw, and paint program. The tools provided are a paint and watercolor brush, roller, spray paint, bucket, a pallette of color, and an eraser. I enjoyed dabbling with the tools. They are very user friendly and have interactives with sound and motion algorithms to give the feeling of using the actual tools.

I strongly recommend using ABCYa and exploring its many capacities. It is both educational and entertaining. It can be used to improve language and math skills with many of the applications. Teachers can use this website as a token reward system for students. My only reservation is that it has so much offered, that one would have to limit or monitor the use. I could see it being highly addictive. As with any online application, if it is not being used for what it is intended, it is not serving its purpose. For example, if students are supposed to be reading a storybook and they are really building a snowman or a gingerbread house, then it did not serve intended the purpose. The other negative is the distracting advertising here or there. Aside from that, the only limitation is needing a device and wifi to use it.