A COUPLE OF BOOKS

The educational potential Adventure games is a subject on which I have touched before. Now a book, Learning With Adventure Programs (Melbourne House), has been written especially for teachers. It sets out how an Adventure game, not written with education in mind, can be used in the classroom to help develop many different skills.

The author, Rosetta McLeod, Principal Teacher of English at Linkfield Academy, Aberdeen takes three games, The Hobbit, Valhalla and Snowball, and describes how she devised work units for them, under the general headings of reading, writing, talking and listening.

Map-making, note-taking and the development creative writing skills are among the many topics introduced in the work units, as well as research projects into the subjects, eg Norse gods, the future of mankind, etc. For each game covered, a detailed work unit is provided. The theme of an Adventure game as the focus for a learning scheme for children of all ages comes over as a very exciting and interesting approach to study.

There is also a chapter on the Quill, in which senior pupils had the task of planning their own Adventure games (so this is where they're all coming from, is it?!)

This is a book that can be well recommended to teachers in search of innovative uses for their schools' computers.