My favorite games are Jeopardy, scavenger hunts and treasure hunts. To play Jeopardy you will need twelve categories (six for regular Jeopardy and six for double) with five questions answers in each. On the first page list each of the categories followed by the five dollar amount ($100, 200, 300, 400, 500, or 200, 400, etc for double Jeopardy). I list the categories rather than creating the graphic because I find it faster and easier. You may place them whichever way is best for you, however. Each dollar amount is linked to an answer. To respond, the student must go to the "find URL" file option and enter /WhatIs____.html. If they are correct, they add the points to their score and are advised RIGHT! If they are wrong, there will be no such file and they lose the points. It can be played by an individual student or by teams. A typical layout would be: (this is for illustration only,)
I briefly discussed scavenger hunts earlier. You divide the class into teams of two or three students depending on the number of computers available. Give each a list of items to locate on the WWW. When a site is found, the students either add it to their hotlist, or write the URL down. A variation is to have them create an HTML document with links to the sites. The items on the list should reinforce learning in some way. If you want the students to remember certain attributes of an object, like in the Jupiter example, use them on the list. If you are teaching categories such as cloud types, use the members of the set. The student uses several modalities in this activity: typing the words, adding them to a hotlist, discussing them as they decide on which to find, etc. The activity stimulates communication, cooperation and problem solving.
Treasure hunts are great for teaching students to recognize members and nonmembers of sets in discrimination tasks. Have the students themselves create treasure hunts for other teams. They will need to come up with a series of multiple choice questions based on the concept they have been studying. Have them place each question on a separate page and link them in such a way that a correct response presents the next question on the path to the treasure. I find a series of ten questions work well. The final correct response on the path presents a page with a graphic of the treasure ( i.e. a chest of jewels, ice cream or whatever they want). Each wrong response is linked to a question not on the path. A wrong response to that one gives a message that catastrophe has struck and they need to start over. A correct response to that question gives the message that they have the right answer but it has led to a dead end and the team needs to go back to where the wrong answer was given (the second question back). Thus the penalty for one wrong response is having to answer an additional question. The penalty for two consecutive wrong answers is catastrophe and having to start over. Once the teams have finished creating their hunts, they exchange them and the race begins to see which team can locate their treasure the fastest (the fewer errors, the quicker the time). If you don't want a competitive game, everyone who finishes can be rewarded. The teams creating the hunt learn as much as the treasure hunters and by rotating hunts among teams, several hunts can be undertaken.