Consolarium

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!

What a great day! 

Rock and Roll is helping the Scottish Learning Festival ’08 turn it up to eleven this year in the form of the Scottish Schools Guitar Hero Challenge! If you think that your pupils have the potential to win this then get involved in this year’s Game Zone Challenge at SLF’08. All you need is one of the following: a PS2, PS3, XBox360 or Nintendo Wii along with a copy of Guitar Hero III (with a guitar).

Over the next few weeks we are asking you to let your children play When We Were Young by The Killers. Pupils validated scores should be emailed by their teacher to consolarium@ltscotland.org.uk and we will then upload this to the leaderboard The competition heats will end on Friday 12 September when the top four on the leaderboard will be identified and invited to Glasgow to compete in the Game Zone Challenge. Travel costs will be covered by LTS. This event will take place at the SLF’08 on Wednesday 24 September, 4:00pm.

It promises to be quite an event what with the finals being held on a stage with a PA, large screens, lights AND a dry ice machine…eat your heart out Spinal Tap! Oh, and the champion can win computer games goodies for their school.

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…send your high scores to me and I’ll add it to the leaderboard. If you like you can send me any other material your class may have done in relation to Guitar Hero and I’ll post it in Glow.

The song that we want you to play does not immediately appear in the game so you have two ways of accessing it.

1. Play the game until it opens the song
2. Use a cheat. If you don’t know how to do this then follow these instructions:
   1. To enter cheats, from the main menu in Guitar Hero III go to Options -> Cheats -> Enter New Cheat. For each code, you have to strum while you press the given buttons. Notes in parenthesis are held together while you strum .i.e. (RY) denotes Red and Yellow buttons held at the same time and strummed once.
   1. The cheat code is as follows: GRBO, GRYB, GRYO, GBYO, GRYB, RYBO, GRYB, GYBO, GRYB, GRYO, GRYO, GRYB, GRYO

Please contact us if you have any difficulties with this. Good luck and maybe we’ll see you and your pupils at SLF’08!

Do your pupils have what it takes to be the Scottish Schools Sonic and Mario at the Olympics Champion for 2008? If so, then get involved in the Mario Olympics Challenge at this year’s Game Zone Challenge at the Scottish Learning Festival ‘08. All you need is a Nintendo Wii, a copy of the game and up to four Wiimotes (the handset that you use to play the Wii).

Over the next few weeks we would like your pupils to enter the trampolining heat. They must try to get the highest score they can on the trampoline event in the game. Their validated scores should then be emailed by a teacher to consolarium@ltscotland.org.uk and we will upload this to the leaderboard.

The competition heats will end on Friday 12 September when the top eight on the leaderboard will be identified and invited to Glasgow to compete in the Game Zone Challenge. Travel costs will be covered by LTS.

One school in Dundee has already piloted this game and not only was this great fun but it led to enthusiastic learning around the associated curricular areas. This work will soon appear on the Consolarium’s website in case study format.

We have established a Glow group for those who want to collaborate and share their work and experiences in this venture. If your school is not in Glow then please do still feel free to join in and compete….

Please note that the finals will comprise of the 100m sprint, the swimming and the trampoline so get cracking with it. They will be held on a stage in the Education Village (Thursday 25 September, 3:00pm) so that an enthusiastic audience can cheer on the competitors. The champion will win some computer games goodies for their school and this prize will be presented by one of Scotland’s best rugby players of recent times, Gregor Townsend MBE who now works with the Winning Scotland Foundation.

Please contact us at consolarium@ltscotland.org.uk if you have any queries about this. Good luck and maybe we’ll see you and your pupils at SLF’08!

A few months ago Stephen Heppell visited the Consolarium in Dundee and I had the pleasure of taking him to a couple of games based learning projects that were happening in the city. One of those was the Dr Kawashima Nintendo DS project that is featured in our sharing practice site. He was very impressed with and interested in what we were doing with this game and in the resultant gains and impact that it appeared to have. As a result of this we have been invited to his Be Very Afraid event at this year’s London Games Festival. “This is an annual event held at BAFTA in London combining ingenious students - from primary to university age, cool technology, conversations with key influencers, and some remarkable projects - all jammed into a room which is literally bursting with creativity.”

Stella Andrews (HT), myself and two of the P.6 boys from St Columba’s who participated in the case study will be attending and contributing to this year’s event. They will be armed with their Nintendo DS machines, the Kawashima game and tales of their experiences using the DS in the classroom. More information about the event can be accessed via this link but this short paragraph from the London Games Festival website possibly captures the essence of what it’s all about:

“Be Very Afraid” poses a number of questions for policy makers. It is clear that the old “factory schools” who were “delivering” a curriculum into “empty vessels” are disappearing. But what is replacing them is exciting AND effective. Be Very Afraid annually brings us all up to speed with what our children are capable of, when you add inspired teachers, new technology, imagination and a little space into the mix. It has become a major fixture for senior policy makers and for those who care about the future of cinema, television, games and learning. nowadays, they are afraid to miss it!

We have also been asked by ELSPA to deliver a session about the games based learning initiatives that the Consolarium has led this year. This will again be delivered at BAFTA and will be focused mostly on the DS case study and the Guitar Hero case study. If you are in London at this time (Oct 24) then please come along and see what some of the pupils and teachers in Scottish schools have been getting up to with games.

Needless to say we will document the children’s experiences at the event on this blog so stay tuned (or RSSd)!

Since December ‘06 we have had quite a lot of local authorities visit the Consolarium. An initial interest in what games based learning has to offer and then an exploration of how this could impact in their particular context leads to projects and pilots happening in schools. On Friday we had a visit from colleagues from Perth and Kinross. Having seen a couple of the games based learning presentations at SLF ‘07 Jim Hynd and Matthew Mackie from Perth High School contacted me to see if they could visit the Consolarium and find out a bit more about what is happening with games in Secondary schools. So along with Mark McShane, ICT Development Officer, they came for a visit yesterday.

It seems that Jim in particular has an interest in games. He is a level 6 ‘Mage’ (is that right Jim?) in World of Warcraft and has used games in his practice for years it seems. Matthew and Mark were also aware of the wider landscape of games and they were very keen to explore how games could impact not only in Perth HS but also across the authority.

The Consolarium is proving to be a successful set-up in terms of engaging local authorities with reflecting on the concept of and practical application of games based learning. A visit allows engagement with the arguments and debates around the subject and then a chance to have a go at many of the games that we suggest could work in schools. Here we see Jim having a go at Wii Golf but we spent quite a bit of time looking at a range of games.

Unfortunately the gentlemen from Perth had to get back to school for the afternoon so the session had to be cut short.

Looking forward to working with colleagues in Perth & Kinross.