Great Educational Games

My first introduction to the world of computer games was in school as a twelve year old. The game we were shown was a game for the BBC Micro called L a Mathematical Adventure. This game would show me mathematical concepts I would not see again until university.

I recall well the first time the computer was brought into the classroom. This was a very big thing for us. We had seen computers locked in store cupboards in the library, but to actually use one was very unusual. Our teacher obviously had a lot more confidence than the others, and was prepared to try new things. The computer was turned on and the computer game was loaded up and then we were off. Looking back with today’s eyes it would be hard to imagine such excitement in a class, from what is now a quite normal part of education.

L itself would probably not interest kids from the start as it did with us. The interface is a black and white screen, and the adventure is entirely text based. After half an hour in the game, I recall that all of us were totally captivated. It was all we talked about for days. This was a fantastic accomplishment when you consider that the game was designed to teach compass directions, maps and plans, powers of numbers, number sequences, ratios and proportions and co-ordinates and vectors. For an educational game L was highly praised by the computing media, often ranking in the top ten lists of all time BBC micro games.

The BBC Micro was replaced by the BBC B and Acorn Electron, but actually sold for longer than its replacements with the Electron being discontinued in 1985 whereas the original BBC Micro was sold until 1986. With the end of the BBC Micro compatible computers, the future for L looked bleak, until the original design team from the Association of Teachers of Mathematics updated the game to run on Windows. Twenty eight years later L is still being sold and is available from the Association of Mathematics Teachers website.