Critical Thinking

Youth Radio is part of a nonprofit that gives kids hands-on training in all aspects of new media and journalism, allowing them to have a voice in the national dialogue.

Lifeboat to Mars is an ecosystem simulator hosted by PBS Kids Go! An interplanetary ark transports microbes, plants, and animals from Earth to Mars to create an ecosystem capable of supporting terrestrial life.

Geoguessr is an addictive online puzzler that tasks students with guessing the location of Google Street View images from around the world.

The Republia Times is a browser-based game that's part of a growing genre of smaller games that explore serious, challenging, and often political social issues. The player assumes the role of an editor overseeing what articles appear on the front page of a newspaper in a fictional country that's just had a political revolution.

Minecraft is a sandbox game that rewards players for collecting and combining resources into new, useful items that enrich gameplay and help further exploration and creativity.

Papers, Please is a simulation video game that puts students in the role of an immigration officer for the fictional communist nation of Arstotska. Students can learn how detailed, textual investigation, along with evidence analysis can develop skills that greatly help with writing, reading closely, and applying information to particular contexts.

Spent is like a jazzed up, text-based, choose your own adventure, but with a powerful message about social justice. Players are thrown into the tough -- often impossible -- life of someone living on the poverty line; they choose a job, get a set income, and must make choices based on events that pop up.

Historypin is a map-based website that allows "people to come together, from across different generations, cultures and places, to share small glimpses of the past and to build up the huge story of human history."

Scribblenauts Remix pushes the boundaries of puzzle games with word-driven problem solving. A uniquely open-ended experience, Scribblenauts Remix allows kids to imagine solutions and try them out by spelling out solution words. Read full review.

MindMeister is a simple and easy to implement mind mapping tool, to encourage students to think about a topic, lesson, problem or subject from every angle.

Whooo’s Reading, an online reading log, not only requires students to answer open-ended questions, but every automatically prompted question is Common Core-aligned, so you can be sure your students are thinking about the text in terms of the various reading and writing anchors.

ProcessOn is an online business tool was not made for the classroom; however, students can use it to map out the visual representation of a process, adding notes, colors and details to show their knowledge of the topic. A