Puzzles and Games: they won't all work!

Even though there are a host of games and puzzles available for the iPad, they won't all work for a school context. I'll use just two to explain why.

Scrabble will work brilliantly.
Seven Little Words probably will not.

The problem is that as the iPad was devised as a personal device, many games are personal as well, in the sense that they are designed for one person to play them through, and don't have any way for multiple iPad users to all play.

Scrabble works fine. Each game is stand-alone, so nothing is lost by passing an iPad on to a student in another class. That student can simply start a new game. In addition there are some interesting ways to play with others such as pass-and-play or even by using an iPhone with what  I belive is  a free app to be the "tile rack" from which tiles can be flicked onto the iPad board to position!

Seven Little Words is a nice word puzzle. First problem is that it requires in-app purchases to get better content once the introductory puzzles are completed. Second and larger problem is that it has not way for multiple users to be involved. The puzzles are linear (so after completing the first one, you can only see and attempt the second one). Though it is a fine word game, I can't see how it could work in a school context.

Another game that comes close to failing for this reason is the excellent logic puzzle "Trainyard". This is largely linear, however has the saving grace that even though puzzles have been completed, another player can go back and re-do puzzles. This spoils the idea of the game guiding your progression through a sequence of growing difficulty, but does mean there is a way for it to be used. It is otherwise a fine game of quite devious complexity at the latter stages.

Andrew Lack