I love watching the Grand Prix so it will be no surprise to learn I also love Mario Kart for the Wii.I could see an opportunity here for a great context for learning so I was delighted that Head Teacher, Gillian Penny at Gavinburn Primary School could also see the potential and was happy to trial it for me with a P5 class.
I visited on June 18th and class teacher Lorna McNicol had done a great job. The P5 classroom was festooned with pieces of writing, maths and art work all arising out of the context facilitated by Mario Kart.When I arrived the children were busy rehearsing advertisements about an up and coming racing championship. Later on these were captured on the computer complete with sound effects and music, ready to be burnt to CD to take home as a memento of the project, all done with the help of a P7 tutor. Nice to see ICT permeating through the learning!
The children had been organised into seven kart teams of four. The teams competed on Mario Kart and a championship had been created out of that. All the teams had names – Killer Karts, Wheels on Fire, Mega Mushrooms – and everyone had their own name badge.Team logos and pod stickers for their karts had also been designed.
Writing: Each kart team comprised a driver, a mechanic, a press agent and a manager and they had written biographies about imaginary characters who are drivers, mechanics etc.The children had interviewed each other in role as their imaginary characters and produced an account of that interview.They had drafted letters to a company asking for sponsorship and had also written reports about an accident at the race track.Lorna explained that drama had been used where ever possible to help with the writing process. She said that it had really helped the boys in particular to be immersed in this imaginary world with the visual aspect of the game helping them with a starting point for writing activities.One boy said, “ I don’t like writing but I liked writing The Accident Report.We had pictures of a racing car accident and imagined that we were there and of course we have crashes when we play Mario Kart!”
Maths: Problem solving in maths fitted easily into this context with opportunities to calculate fuel consumption, speed and costs.The children had looked at decimal places for lap timing using a model race track and had also investigated the cost of flights and accommodation to visit a Grand Prix location.
Art and Design: Logos had been designed, karts made from junk material, suits designed for racing drivers and a crowd scene witnessing the crash had been created.
Next week, the plan was to focus on Science and some of the science teachers from the secondary school were coming to get involved in the investigation of friction, air resistance, stream lining and water and fire proof materials in the classroom.Great – and an opportunity for cross sector working too!!
Lorna is a probationary teacher and this is her first experience of games – based learning and she has been delighted with the enthusiasm and motivation that the children have shown. The children were obviously still motivated, energetic and excited and were producing work of high quality – and there was only a week to go before the holidays!! Lorna has been enthusiastically sharing her experiences with other probationary teachers which is great news.
Much more had been planned for the project, but the end of term was looming.Drama, music, animation, web design and a trip to a kart track will all be on the agenda next time they run the project….(and Gillian says they will definitely be doing it again….!)
Rock and Roll is returning to the Scottish Learning Festival this year so be prepared to turn those speakers up to eleven once again with the return of the Scottish Schools Guitar Hero Challenge! The standard of competition last year was extremely high with David Whyte from Baldragon Academy in Dundee outperforming all comers to take the title. If you think that your pupils have the potential to win this then get involved in this year’s Game Zone Challenge at SLF’09. All you need is one of the following: a PS3, XBox360 or Nintendo Wii along with a copy of Guitar Hero World Tour (with an extra guitar).
This year’s competition is different in the sense that we are not looking for individual entrants but groups of players who will form a band to play the instruments in Guitar Hero World Tour. This would mean a drummer, guitarist, bassist and vocalist!
This year we are offering a choice of songs as opposed to just one. The songs that you can choose from are as follows:
Eye of the Tiger by Survivor
Some Might Say by Oasis
Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi
Are you Gonna’ go my Way? by Lenny Kravitz
You can open all the songs in the game by going in to the Cheats option and keying in the following combination Blue, Blue, Red, Green(2), Blue(2), Yellow
Scores that are achieved by bands should be validated by validated by their teacher and emailed to consolarium@ltscotland.org.uk and we will then upload these to the leaderboard. Schools can enter as many bands as they like. The closing date for submissions to the competition is Friday 11th September with the successful contestants being notified by Monday 14th September. Travel costs will be covered by LTS. This event will take place at the SLF’09 on Wednesday 23 September, 4:00pm.
Last year’s event was a great success and we hope that this year’s event will at least match if not better it. Who knows, we might even see this year’s finalists really going for it and coming ‘dressed for the event’. We’ll leave that idea up to you…
We have established a Guitar Hero Glow Group for schools to share the associated curricular work that can go on around a game such as a Guitar Hero but if your school is not yet in Glow don’t worry you can still participate by sending your high scores to the earlier stated email address and we’ll ensure that they are added to the leaderboard.
We have a small number of kits that we can loan to those who don’t have access to the game and the console so please contact us if you have are interested in this or if you have any other questions related to the competition
Do you have an idea for a computer game that might be the next worldwide smash hit or do you have an idea for a character that could capture the imagination of game players across the globe?
If so, then this year’s LTS does Dragons’ Den competition at The Scottish Learning Festival could be just the opportunity for you to showcase your imagination and ideas to a panel of professional experts from the Scottish computer games industry.
What we are inviting school pupils to do is to devise a concept for a computer game that they will be pitched to the Dragon’s. The time that you will have for your pitch is 10 minutes. The content of your presentation can take any form that you decide but we suggest five areas that you may like you to give consideration to. These are:
What is the underpinning idea for the game and its game play?
Give a clear and concise description of your game
What is the target audience and appeal of your game?
What age range is targeted
Who will buy the game and what will motivate them to do so?
What will the game look like?
Design at least two characters and one set to help the Dragons’ visualise your ideas
What makes your game original?
What does your game have that isn’t or hasn’t been on the market
How would you market your game?
Front cover design should be included in your presentation
What devices will the game be made for?
* Please note: if you and your team have made a game or have built any associated aspects of your game then please do include this.
Who is the competition open to?
The competition is open to boys and girls from the ages of 3-18
What is the maximum team size?
The maximum numbers of team members is four
Who are the Dragons?
The full and final line-up of Dragons has yet to be confirmed.
What form will the event at SLF’09 take?
The pre-event judging will select four teams to present at SLF’09. At the event each team will be given 10 minutes to make their pitch with 5 minutes questions and feedback from the Dragons. The Dragons will be given a few minutes at the end to decide on which entry they felt proved to be the most innovative and appealing for a games design company.
What presentation facilities are available at SLF ’09
A PC with Powerpoint and a Mac with Keynote will be available to present. We will try, where possible, to accommodate all presentation requirements
Submitting an entry
Entries to the pre-judging aspect of this competition can be sent to consolarium@ltscotland.org.uk. A detailed submission is welcome but contestants must realise that any detailed submissions need to be summarised and delivered in the 10 minute pitch that they have to the Dragons. The closing date for submissions to the competition is Friday 11th September with the successful contestants being notified by Monday 14th September.
We ask that competition entries are submitted by a teacher who has been working with the pupils involved.
Travel arrangements
LTS will cover the cost of travel to and from SLF’09 for all the finalists.
A day this week at Lairdsland Primary School surrounded by engaged and motivated children and creative and enthusiastic teachers was a real privilege and a pleasure.
I had been invited to visit Fiona Angus and her P4/5 class who have been using the Nintendo Wii game Endless Ocean as a contextual hub for cross curricular learning. Endless Ocean is a game in which the player explores the ocean and swims on a coral reef, interacting with a huge variety of sea creatures.
The children have been keeping diving diaries about what they find whilst exploring the ocean in the game, producing tourist guides, creating newspaper reports about discoveries on the reef, researching the animals they find, exploring many different media in art and design in producing art work of different kinds of marine animals and inventing their own exotic sea creatures. During my visit, we brought some of these creatures to life using CrazyTalk which allows a digital image to be animated and a voice added. The children were keen to share their writing with each other in this way (even those who were usually quiet and reserved!) and had been rehearsing some great accents! What wonderful ideas they had for their creatures and what fun! Children are bringing things in from home connected to what they are doing in school and are keen to continue with their activities even when the bell rings for break time or lunch time!
Fiona is using the Endless Ocean project as a starting point for a study of Australia and the children hope to have the opportunity to ask questions and to exchange ideas with visitors from Australia next month. Endless Ocean has already proved to be a great resource for creating a rich context for learning and has done it again at Lairdsland.
I also had a chance to talk to Vicky Mackenzie and Fiona Morrison about their Guitar Hero World Tour project currently running in P7 and P6/7. They have replicated a lot of what has been highlighted as good practice with this resource but this year the topic has the title ‘Making it BIG in the USA’. The idea is that the children are members of a successful UK band and they are now trying to break into the American market. The children are going on a tour of America and are responsible for budgeting and managing their own tour.
The children have their ‘Making it BIG in the USA’ glow group. This group contains these sections:
Notice board - used to target news such as promotions on hotel rooms, deadlines for budgets etc Classified Ads - this will be used to advertise for staff (such as security) and will also be used to advertise band merchandise (which they have designed), to raise funds. Band Banter - this is a discussion page where the class teachers will set questions that the children must respond to in the style of their band. Useful Websites - this has been categorised into Travel, Accommodation, Restaurant and General Websites. The children will use these when booking their flights to the USA and between states, finding appropriate places to stay etc. Band Budgets - this is for the children to store their Band Budgets. These are excel spreadsheets that the children are creating throughout the topic. They will keep a record of everything that they have spent and earned. At the end of the topic the band with the most money in their account will be awarded a prize. A good way to use the context for learning about currency conversion and financial education and a great way to use Glow!
My last stop was the P3/4 classroom where class teacher, Catriona Calvert, is using Nintendo’s Cooking Mama World Kitchen as a starting point for another interdisciplinary project. I was shown the chefs’ hats that the children have made and the instructions that they wrote for that process. They have researched countries and have made fact files, they have written menus and are in the process of setting up a restaurant in the classroom for role play. They have just completed a really successful enterprise project in which they wrote, produced and sold their own cookery book, selling over fifty copies on the first day! I have been promised photographs and examples of the children’s work as the project develops which I can’t wait to see. Well done Vicky and Catriona for spotting the potential of the game for classroom use!
A few weeks back I was up at Fraserburgh South Park PS because of visit from the BBC Newsround team who were interested in doing an article about the Dr Kawashima work that we did. I met a propbationer teacher called Jo Barcas Buchan and got to see what she had been doing with Nintendogs in her P.2 class.
It was great to see that Jo has written about her experience with this games based learning approach on the GTCS probationerscotland.org.uk site.
Great to see you sharing your experience Jo and hopefully other probationers may learn from what you have done.
Ollie Bray, depute headteacher of Musselbrough Grammar School, East Lothian, took first place in the Innovation in Community section for his presentation of ‘Thinking out of the XBOX’ at the Innovative Teachers Forum 2009 in Vienna. He is currently on secondment to Learning and Teaching Scotland as a National Adviser for Emerging Technologies in Learning.
Inspired by a project initiated by Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Consolarium initiative he organised an extension of this innovative idea and organised a transition project for the associate Primary schools of Musselburgh GS using Guitar Hero. This approach proved to be a great success and the Guitar Hero transition project will now be rolled out across East Lothian schools within weeks. Schools all over Scotland are already using this resource. Schools in England and even as far afield as Hong Kong and Australia, are interested in the project. Mr Bray devised a three-step process of ‘learning, social interaction and reflection and moving on’ as children change.
Being involved with and leading the games based learning initiatives with the Consolarium is great fun but it is also a great experience in terms of meeting teachers who take some of our ideas forward and then really make the realisation of such projects their own. We are finding that in doing so, these teachers are setting the standard for the use of some of the games. Names that immediately spring to mind in this regard include Kim Aplin and subsequently Ollie Bray with Guitar Hero and Anna Rossvoll, Ruth McDonald and Michelle Law with Nintendogs as well as many others who have taken this on and extended the practice of the appropriate integration of computer games into teaching and learning. I’d now like to add another name to this list and introduce Margaret Young to everyone. A teacher at Port of Mentieth PS near Stirling Margaret has been using Moshi Monsters with her P.1 - P.3 class. I wrote about Moshi Monsters a wee while back due to my interest being stirred when I watched my wee girls using it last summer. It reminded me of Nintendogs in the way it replicated much of what that game does in terms of looking after a virtual creature: ensuring it was healthy and happy as well as managing a budget. However, Moshi Monsters has problem solving, early literacy and numeracy tasks all embedded into the game play as well as the facility to introduce social networking to children via a friends finder and a noticeboard. However, this game was freely available (although an enhanced experience via subscription is now on offer) and can be used by anyone that has an computer with an internet connection.
I have been working on ways in which we could try an extended pilot for Moshi Monsters but while I have been doing that Margaret Cassidy, ICT Development Officer in Stirling decided to try it out with one of her teachers. She introduced the idea to Margaret Young at Port of Menteith PS and since the initial presentation of the idea the most fantastic set of associated rich learning tasks has just flourished.
I had the great pleasure of visiting the class last Wednesday morning and within 5 minutes I was captivated and enchanted by what I was seeing and hearing and I found myself like a child in a sweet-shop in terms of not knowing where to look in terms of the quality learning that was happening.
I had a discussion with Margaret about how she got involved in the project, how she managed it and what added value she feels it has brought to learning in her class and to her continuing professional development.
The game at the heart of the learning experience
The most prevalent method that we employ in our Consolarium initiatives usually involves the game becoming the contextual hub about which learning experiences are planned for and presented to the children. This gives the teacher the freedom and flexibility to combine curricular areas and present learning tasks via the creation of a collaborative story or a process of enquiry. The flexibility of such an approach allows the teacher to accommodate any ideas and questions that come from the children as a result of their experiences and interests arising from the learning tasks. This is exactly what Margaret has done with Moshi. as from the following examples you will see that the game really became the beating heart of the rich learning in the class.
Writing
Very many contexts for writing were facilitated by the game. These included writing adverts to sell your Moshi Monster’s house, writing to explain the desing of flags made to represent Monstro City as well as news flashes about what has been happening in Monstro City itself. I was particularly impressed by the idea of making a tourist information leaflet for visitors to refer to if they were planning a visit to Monstro City. Have a look at how the teacher did this:
…and have a look at some their adverts:
Talking and listening
An engaging debate was cultivated in the classroom when the question of whether or not the children should allow new building work to be permitted on Flutterby Fields: a beautiful fun place to be in Monstro City. The teacher talked about the development of the children’s thinking and their ability to consider and reflect on opposing points of view in this task and even how some children changed their minds as a result of the discussions and arguments put forward by their peers.
Encouraging problem solving in maths
In order to function in the game you must visit the Hall of Puzzles. This is packed full of puzzles that engagement with rewards you with Rox, the currency in Monstro City. The more Rox you have then the more you can spend in the various shops that you can visit. The puzzles are particularly engaging and the children were all very keen to tell me what their high scores were at many of the different puzzle that are available. The teacher has worked with the children to set up the Hall of Puzzles in the class. This became a really appealing ‘den’ in the classroom for the children to visit and explore a range of puzzles and games with each other. Have a look at how this was done:
Design and Technology
The children were asked to think about what kind of shops should be in Monstro City. These ideas were then brought to reality as the children made their own models of their shops from card, paper and other materials. Have a look:
Animation
Children are naturally creative. They have ideas. One of the superb aspects of learning with ICT is that it gives young learners the vehicle through which they can express their creativity and ideas and in doing so develop their ICT skills set. They can also have a positive impact on planning, presentation and awareness of audience. Here we have one example of a stop motion animation created by two 6 year old children. Just look at what they can do….
They also used Crazy Talk to bring to life their Monster characters that had been created in Art & Design.
Keeping connected and being safe
One of the benefits of using this resource is that children can keep connected. One child in this class spends six months of the year in Scotland and six months in New Zealand. Currently in her antipodean abode she can keep in touch with the class via her noticeboard. As Moshi Monsters is freely available to anyone (see their safety policy) there is an issue in terms of ensuring that the children are not exposed to any inappropriate contact. The teacher and the class decided to use a special code for the duration of the project and this meant that they could only accept a friend request if this code was in the name of the person requesting to make friends. This meant that the community was kept to the classroom and any worries about unknown people becoming involved with the children in the classroom context were fully addressed.
There has been some concern about children wanting to play with their Moshi Monster for far too long at home. Incentives to jump up the levels and to ensure that your Monster is happy and healthy in the game play need to be maintained and balanced in terms of appropriate time spent on the game. Lessons need to be learned about what the Consolarium can do to ensure that parents are fully informed about such initiatives, what benefits they can bring to their child’s learning but also what the school and the home need to do to ensure that children understand that too much of one thing is not necessarily good for them. Everything in moderation is a lesson that we can help children learn.
Maybe Moshi Monsters also need to consider ways in which children can withdraw from the game for periods of time without their lack of engagement with their monster leading to its demise! Something akin to the ‘dog hotel’ in Nintendogs wouldn’t go amiss here.
A delightful time at Port of Menteith was most certainly had by me. Rich learning, happy and motivated children, innovative teachers and a Headteacher willing to allow informed risks with new ideas and approaches in the use of ICT and games, in this example, to happen in his school.
Superb stuff and very many thanks to all at Port of Mentieth PS and Stirling Council for enabling such innovative work to take place. Now, how do I make an extended study of this work….?
Hello, I’m Kim Aplin. I’ve been working in the Consolarium with Derek Robertson since January. I was interested to read in The Times today that Scottish children are falling behind in science because they see science as ‘uncool’. Well this certainly was not the case at Meldrum School last week where children had been investigating friction and gravity and excited by their learning!…..
Kororinpa at Meldrum School: The project is now in full swing in P5. I was very pleased to see how enthusiastic and excited the children and their teacher, Hazel Sim, were about their whole learning experience. The work that had been done with the game involved the investigation of friction and the designing of the class marble run. The game had been used to analyze what they could incorporate into their designs for their marble runs. The class have worked together to create a wall mounted run that they are immensely proud of.
There had been a thorough investigation into friction with a consideration of where friction is helpful and unhelpful. One of the children suggested that making rubbings of the soles of shoes would allow them to study the patterns closely and then they could work out how the patterns related to friction and whether a shoe was ‘fit for purpose’ – an investigation suggested by the children with a real objective!
Hazel reported that the project has resulted in an excellent ethos in the classroom. The children are hooked into the learning and some in particular have displayed a real progress in developing their practical problem solving skills that they are now transferring into other curricular areas.The children are also planning and writing stories about their own marble characters and they are creating animated PowerPoint presentations of their stories so that they can be shared easily with younger children. The characters are displayed on the wall and the children are incorporating each other’s characters into their stories.The quality of the descriptive language in their stories is fantastic. The children also suggested writing poetry about the feelings and emotions you might feel if you were travelling down the marble run. The poems are tremendous with a rich and varied vocabulary that captures the imagined journey eloquently. Have a look at this example by Holly in P.5:
The Marble Run
Gradually, little by little
The marble starts to race
It’s very cold just now
Until it builds up its pace
Swerving, hopping, spiralling
It’s crashing quite a lot
So much friction going on
The marble’s getting hot
Wee! It made a jump
Lifting off happily on its back
Soaring over treetops high
Until its back on track
Very gently the marble
Skids daintily to a halt
It was dizzily racing down the run
Though it’s not the marble’s fault
The class described in detail how they worked together as a team to solve problems and listened to everyone’s ideas. They had also discussed their learning and thinking and this has been recorded in their big talking book and clearly illustrates the problem solving process that they have gone through.The class have designed and made their own games. They used Kororinpa to discuss what they liked about a game and incorporated these things into their own ideas for designs. They all agreed that playing Kororinpa gave them a really good starting point for the design process.They have even re-enacted being in a marble run with equipment in the gym!This is the first GBL project that Hazel has been involved in. She is delighted and excited by the learning that is taking place and how engaged and motivated the children are. It has resulted in quality discussion, quality work, confident children and a fun, active way to learn. The children summed it all up: “It has been a fun way of learning that made learning easier and gave us lots of ideas”. Kororinpa in Meldrum School has definitely facilitated the creation of a rich context for quality, active, challenging and enjoyable cross curricular learning!
The Consolarium’s approach to the use of games is somewhat exemplified by the Nintendogs project we carried out last year. Nintendogs is a game that was made for commercial sale and one that is very much for entertainment. Look a little closer though and you can see how powerful this game/learning environment is and with a little bit of imagination and a big bit of belief that it is appropriate to use this you can do tremendous things with it.
I met a probationer teacher during my time at Fraserburgh PS called Jo Barcus Buchan. A P.2 teacher, Jo recently graduated and was lucky enough to get a chance to try out the Nintendogs project with her class. She replicated a lot of what has been established as a good practice with this resource. Have a look at some of the photos .
She has though extended the learning that may be achieved through the context of Nintendogs by moving into the world of art & design and to engage her P.2 children in dialogue about artists craft and what paintings make you feel or think. She introduced four paintings about dogs to her class and these were observed and discussed. These observation’s and discussions were then taken into the children’s own work where they had to think about what choices they were making in the creation of their pieces of art based on what they had seen.
Have a listen to the latest Consolarium podcast to hear our more detailed discussion, some perspective from the children and the view of the Headteacher.
Thanks go out to all Fraserburgh South Park PS for allowing us to come and see and record the excellent work that is happening up there. Well done to you all.
Earlier last week LTS was contacted by BBC Newsround and asked if we’d be able to accommodate a visit by them to a school that has been using Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training. Apparently they had picked up on an article in The Scotsman that was questioning the costs of such a venture and the suggestion that schools were being ‘urged to spend’ on games consoles. At short notice Fraserburgh South Park PS were able to offer a venue for the ‘shoot’ and it was all systems go and up to the Broch everyone headed!
The BBC crew arrive and duly made their way to the P.6 class who were to play the starring role. Fraserburgh South Park was one of the primary schools involved in our extended Kawashima trial that we carried out last summer. The school was, however, one of the control groups and after their go with the consoles and games they decided to allocate some of their own funds to purchase their own set of consoles and some games.
The BBC engagement was interesting. They spent a bit of time interviewing me and asked me to remember that I was speaking to a young audience, Now, I thought I would manage that quite well but it became quite difficult to distil what we have been trying to do into a quick soundbite for children’s TV. I was directed in some way to saying that using the game was fun and better than boring maths but I don’t believe that that’s what it is about. There’s so much more to this than having fun with a computer game. They eventually got something that they were happy with and then made their way to the class.
The eager Newsround stars of P.6 were very excited by the arrival of the BBC Newsround people and it must be said that each and every one of them conducted themselves in a manner that must have delighted their Headteacher. They were polite, friendly and very willing to talk openly about what they thought the use of games in the classroom meant for them. If the story about costs is what the BBC Newsround team were more focused on then I think they really missed the point. If you have a look at the clips on the Newsround website where the children are interviewed you can hear how much they think the intervention has helped them. Each response from the children was better then the previous one with one boy in particular talking about how the game has really helped him with his maths because he now feels much more confident and doesn’t feel that it’s such a struggle any more. Every time I hear comments such as this I smile. I have to ask Newsround a question though and it is was the decision to go on the costs issue the right one in terms of presenting this idea as an issue for debate to their audience? Shouldn’t they have been debating the efficacy of such an undertaking? I can’t help feeling that they may have missed an opportunity here to present the real issue to their audience.
Irrespective of whether the children were asked to look glum by the BBC people as they constructed their piece that talked about moving from old school pencil and paper (look glum please) to new school (games consoles and now smile) or if I was slightly disappointed about the focus of the piece the visit and subsequent coverage turned out to be another positive experience for Scottish children and further positive exposure of the work we are doing.
One last thing, the Campaign for Real Education person they rolled out this time talked about schools having money to burn, this being a crazy idea and that children need to do maths - well have a look at this. On my arrival at the school I was told about a boy who was able to do the x20 game in Dr Kawashima in 9 seconds! Yes 9 seconds!!! I had to see this for myself so they went and brought this ridiculously talented lad to me as I couldn’t believe he had bettered my best time of 10 seconds! Who did he think he was! I watched him do it in 13 seconds but saw his profile and look for yourself…9 seconds:
Brilliant stuff young man! This is why we feel games have a place in school. We believe that our work in this paricular context has helped make it an aspiration for children to be as good as they can possibly be at mental maths,. How can anyone suggest, with such fundamental zeal, that this is a crazy idea?
Thanks to all in Aberdeenshire, Fraserburgh South Park and the BBC for a great day and for showcasing the innovative, yet informed, work with games and learning that we are willing to explore in Scotland.
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I watched him do it in 13 seconds but saw his profile and look for yourself…9 seconds: