Online Game Reflection and Rubric- Word Connect

In our search to find the ideal online game, we came across a game called Word Connect. WordConnect is a puzzle word game similar to the classic game Tetris. Some have called it a hybrid between Tetris and scrabble. You have to place the falling letters to form a word found in the list. For every word you complete from the list, a new image is displayed. You finish a level when you manage to find all the words found in the list of each level.(yougame.com, 2012) What I  really liked about this game was the the fact that the player, or student, would have to use a mix of speed, intelligence, and critical thinking to gain points.
In today's technology advances world, students must utilize higher order thinking to advance.
"Students are different today because of technology. Every educator knows this, of course, but this change is about much more than agile thumbs,shriveling attention spans, and OMG’d vocabularies". (Pirvine, 2011) In math, STEM education is rapidly growing. This movement is to promote higher order thinking skills in children to help the become better problem solvers. Although this game is not directly related to my content area, math, it can be very useful in developing those pertinent skills. Pattern identification is prominent in this game which is a crucial part of math. Ideally, I would like to find a game similar to this, but possibly using numbers instead of letters and word forms.
On a scale of 1-10 I would rate it overall a 7 for functionality, purpose, and ease of use.


References: http://www.yougame.com/game.php?id=3945

 Pirvine, 2011. http://www.stemeducation.com/