June 16th, 2010

Falkirk Guitar Heroes

bmclaren

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: cfe, concert, Falkirk, Guitar Hero, maddiston, shieldhill, whitecross
 : Categories Added Value, Consolarium, Falkirk, Games we have, Parents, animation, cross-curricular, game based learning

I had a most enjoyable and very interesting day touring 4 schools in Falkirk who are all undertaking a transition project with Guitar Hero.  The teacher leading this within Falkirk, Stacey Collier-West, had planned a full timetable and we set off from Maddiston Primary where she is based and travelled to see Avonbridge Primary, Whitecross Primary and Shieldhill Primary as well as stopping off back at Maddiston to see the pupils working on this topic.

The first thing that was absolutely apparent from all the schools I visited was the engagement shown from all teachers and pupils involved, but what I found more interesting was the range of approaches across the schools but all within the same context.  Every teacher involved had been part of the inital planning and were in regular contact with each other but each one was very firmly focussed on what the children in their schools needed.  Seeing this so clearly reinforced with me the fact that this fact should remain at the forefront of the mind of any school undertaking a GBL topic.

Have  a look and a listen to some of the work we saw on our quick journey around Falkirk starting with writing in Whitecross Primary. Click on Mr Horne below to hear him chat about writing in his class.

mr horne whitecross

In the video clip below we can see how the classes are building towards their concert.  We can see them making stop frame animations with a simple digital camera and windows moviemaker software, which is a free part of most, if not all, winows pc s.  I love seeing everyday things used in an imaginative way like this, we then have a chat with a couple of groups of children who talk about what kinds of learning they are undertaking in order to get themselves ready for the show including writing lyrics, choreography and animation.  Next we meet another band getting their moves ready for the concert and chatting about how they have undertaken the work and finally we meet two of the teachers who have been running the theme in their class and hear them discuss the impact on the children.

As mentioned previously, all the schools were working toward a final showcase event where they would perform the songs they had written, show their choreographed moves and have their animations playing in the background.  As you could probably see from the slideshow above all the bands had also designed their own tshirts which they then sold and each school made a cd of the tracks they had produce and offered them for sale at the concert also. Brian Clark, Ollie Bray and myself got ourselves invited to the final concert and we had a wonderful time watching as all the children performed in front of their peers, parents and friends. Every child successful, confident, responsible and effective. Watch highlights of the show below.

March 25th, 2008

Crazy Talking and exploring Art & Design

Derek Robertson

Comments: none Tags: Tags: Aberdeenshire, animation, Consolarium, crazy talk, Elrick PS, LTS
 : Categories Aberdeenshire, animation

At SETT ‘06 I saw an application called Crazy Talk at one of the stands. Totally bowled over by this application I bought 25 licences for the Consolarium so that I could share them with my early adopter partners. The reason that I liked it was that it made bringing digital characters to life so easy, particularly in regard to the fact that I had been attempting to teach my students at University of Dundee to use Flash to animate computer goodies and baddies! This application lowered the technology threshold so much that it allowed anyone to achieve great success with the animation process which could then enable/allow the teacher to focus on what the learner had written…

I managed to get some great stuff going on, particularly in Stirling Council where they used it to great effect with a collaborative writing project that was showcased at a seminar at SLF 07.

Whilst at Elrick PS to se the Nintendogs project in P.2 I was asked to pop in to the P.7 class to see their Crazy Talk work. What they have been doing was again incredible in terms of pupil engagemewnt and enriching the learning experience. A visit to Aberdeen Art Gallery was organised and during this visit the children were going to focus on portraits. This focus would look at the style of the painting but also at the social history behind the subject matter/person. The main character they were finding out was an artist called Edward Burne-Jones.

The children had found out so much about so much about him and they were able to tell me all about how he studied under William Morris and that there was a supposed relationship with Queen Victoria. I learned quite a lot about this chap from the children.

It was clear that this application had again encouraged these learners to find out about their subject matter and then write it up so that they could bring their characters to life.

Have a look at the P.6/7 class blog where the children have published their animated Crazy Talk portraits.

September 27th, 2007

Crazy Talking in Stirling

Derek Robertson

Comments: 5 Comments » Tags:  : Categories Scotlearnfest07, Stirling Council, animation, writing

Apologies to all at Stirling Council for the lateness of this post regarding your presentation at SLF ‘07 but I have been waiting to see if I could source some photographs of your session. As yet I haven’t but I’m still looking!

One of the very early adopters of games based initiatives with the Consolarium was Stirling Council. The team came to visit the centre in early 2007 and as a result of the day we had a number of possible projects were discussed. One particular application caught the eye of the team that day and they felt that it had the capacity to really engage reluctant writers so that they would want to write. The application in question is called Crazy Talk and it really has great potential as a learning tool. Their presentation was yet again bursting with life, character and good practice. Margaret Cassidy and Joe Shaw from the Quality Development Team gave the presentation with help of some children from a local school that had been using the software.

The children talked about how they had used Crazy Talk in different topics of study. One such topic was a collaborative investigation of the story and history of the ill-fated Titanic. The kids created their own drawings of people that were on the Titanic and then they brought them to life in Crazy Talk. Have a look at one of these characters created by the kids:

A fiull case study of what has happened with this application and how it has impacted on the teaching and learning will appear on the Consolarium’s sharing practice very soon.

In the meantime have a look at how you use Crazy Talk:

A number of other local authorities are using this application so we look forward to finding out more about how it is making an impact in those schools too.