The Doctor and the Dalek is the perfect way to sneak some educational gaming into a little (or big) Whovian’s life. Allons-y!
The game takes the player through a twelfth Doctor story written by Phil Ford (“The Waters of Mars”) and teaches basic programming concepts along the way. It’s been available in browser-based form for a while, but the new version adds four new levels and is now available for free on iOS and Android tablets.
The coding fundamentals it introduces in the form of puzzles tie into recent additions to the computer curriculum for UK schoolchildren, and the focus is largely on logical “if… then” statements that get more complex as the game goes along. Sadly, like the school curriculum that goes with it, the game is currently only available in the UK.
Maybe someone, or several people organized on the Internet, could get them to release a U.S. version? Meanwhile, American children still have to learn to code the boring way. Or with Anna and Elsa. Or with cupcakes. It’s great that the UK sees how important it will be for kids to grow up understanding how the technology they use every day actually works, and hopefully the U.S. will follow suit eventually, but having to watch kids in other countries get games like this to go with their school work makes it feel like we’re taking forever to catch up.
(via The Next Web)
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Published: Feb 2, 2015 04:09 pm