- November 29th, 2009
Wee Musicians performing with Wii Music
- Derek Robertson
- Comments: 2 Comments »
Years ago, when TV was a source for the collective conscious, I remember sitting down with my folks to watch the Generation Game on BBC1. The willing contestants were always presented with challenging and nonsensical tasks to try out and one that sticks in my mind involved handbell ringing!
Somehow a visit to a school in Peterhead last week to see a game based learning initiative that used Wii Music brought that memory back to me as I watched groups of children swing their wiimotes and nunchunks in a campanology stylee but in so doing they really were ringing the bell for game based learning in schools…
I was contacted by Jonathan Cordiner from the Aberdeenshire Glow team some time ago to be informed about the work that he was doing with Esther Clark and her P.6 class from Buchanhaven PS in Peterhead using the game Wii Music for the Nintendo Wii. Now Wii Music involves a number of games that encourage you to ‘jam’ with the Miis on screen and in so doing play various instruments and learn a surprising amount about music.
When I mentioned the potential of learning about music through this game to some people they did not initially think that standing in front of a screen waving a game controller up and down or side to side could have any real substance or add value to learners experience in this area. Having visited the class and seeing what they have done for myself I can’t help saying just how incredible the skilled and informed use of this resource has been and just what a tremendous impact this has had on the learners in this class.
What have they been learning?
The first thing that struck me when I met the class was just again how excited and motivated the children were to show what they had been doing and to demonstrate their new skills.
For me the educational ethos in a class is so important if children are to be engaged by learning and here we saw a class bursting with enthusiasm, industry, skills and knowledge of their subject. I saw:
- Groups of children accompanying the Miis with various vitual instruments in the game to perfectly perform a selection of songs
- Children learning about the role and responsibility of the orchestra conductor and showing their skills in conducting the Wii orchestra
- Children moving away from the game to play ‘real’ instruments in order to play the songs they had performed within the game
- Children talking confidently and knowledgeably about the range of musical instruments AND musical notation
- Children performing their own ringtones that were created using a pentatonic scale
- Children using Glow to share their work and to engage with tasks set bu the teacher in Glow Learn (and to perform at an international education conference go to 30mins)
- Class displays about various composers and the different genres of music there are
Above all I saw learning happening in a classroom bursting with life. We have videoed a lot of the work that the children have been doing but is just at the edit stage but have a quick look at some of the work that the children have done about the composers that they investigated:
Yet again we see how a game built for entertainment can prove to be such a rich source for learning when used by skilled and thoughtful teachers who know how to use game based learning in order to create the appropriate context and climate in which rich learning can thrive. There have been many requests to the Aberdeenshire Glow team for the plans that were used for this project. These can be accessed here:
Aberdeenshire Council’s Wii Music plans
This project was a sheer delight to see and many congratulations must go to Jonathan and Esther for their imaginative and thorough approach, an approach that has made this initiative such a success.
Categories Aberdeenshire, Consolarium, Nintendo
Bridie Mackay
Senior Project Officer
VITTA, Australia