Consolarium

Isn’t the Christmas and New Year break just great. However, getting back to work and attempting to fit in to the work clothes can bring one back down to earth with a bump as the two weeks of festive excess appears to still be with you! Fully in-keeping with our Health and Well-Being agenda the team at the Consolarium has resolved to try to shift from their expanded wasit lines the trifle, turkey, mince pies, Black Bun and possibly the occasional beer  that they had consumed over the festive break.

The Wii Fit Weight Loss Challenge

We are quite lucky at the Consolarium as we do have access to a variety of exergaming titles. Dance mats have always been popular but we have decided to focus on looking at how the Wii Fit can help us lose weight. The Wii Fit Weight Loss Challenge is now underway! We all weighed ourselves on Wednesday 6th January 2010 and we plan to undertake our exergaming exercise programme over the next 8 weeks with a finish date of Wednesday 3rd March 2010. Here are our initial weights in kilogrammes:

If you would like to participate in the Consolarium’s efforts at getting the weight off then feel free to join us. We are posting our weekly weigh-ins on Twitter with the hashtag of #wiifitweightlosschallenge. Have a go and let’s see if we can make those work-shirts a little less tight fitting!

Stirling Council visits the Consolarium

A recording of us using the Wii Fit board to record our initial weights is part of our second podcast. You can access/subscribe to the podcast via this link. This podcast also contains an interview with our colleagues from Stirling Council, Margaret Cassidy and Joe Shaw. Margaret and Joe have been great partners of the Consolarium and have been involved in quite a few projects with us for example Moshi Monsters, Endless Ocean and Crazy Talk.

AOCBGBL

Our AOCBGBL (any other competent business games based learning) section sees us talking about these resources:

Blue Murder Mystery Files: A narrative driven puzle packed murder mystery game for the PS3. Beautiful graphics, an engaging narrative and real challenge in those puzzles.

Light-bot: Control a robot by giving it commands. Use programmer-style logic for more complex levels that include functions to re-use.

Yudu: A lovely little tool that allows texts to be converted to page turning digital books.

Let us know what you think of the podcast. Your feedback would be appreciated and do feel free to join us in our #wiifitweightlosschallenge!

Some time ago I had the pleasure of welcoming Dr Sam Fawkner and Dr Ailsa Niven to the Consolarium. They are both lecturers/researchers from Heriot Watt University and they were keen to find out more about ‘exergaming‘ software. We spent an afternoon working out on the DDR dance mat attached to the PS2 and engaging with he PS2 Eye-Toy and playing Wii Sports. As a result of our discussions it transpired that we both shared an interest in using wireless dance mats as a motivational tool and appropriate context for adolescent girls, who may be tuned off by ‘traditional PE’. Our intention to embark on a joint project was somewhat inhibited due to the cost of the resource that we aimed to use. This resource enables up to 32 class sets of industry standard dance mats to wirelessly connect to a Linux PC that logs, in real time, each player/dancer’s performance … but the cost was always out of our reach.

Today I attended a meeting at Heriot Watt University where a working group met to support and offer advice at an early stage to a PhD student Called Joan Henretty. Joan intends to explore the range of exergaming applications that are currently available (and what will be coming) in order to see how appropriate and relevant exergaming resources can impact in a positive fashion the attitudes of adolescent girls’ towards exercise. Representatives from Sportscotland, Scottish Health Promoting Schools Unit and East Lothian Active Schools were also in attendance.

The Consolarium’s remit was always to encourage, nurture and promote games  based learning in Scottish schools but it also aims to forge links with industry and academic partners to explore and make sense of the practice that happens in schools. Today’s meeting proved to be very fruitful and the work that will develop through this group and via Joan’s work will no doubt help us identify how schools can resource and manage exergaming in classrooms but with an underpinning evidence base that will help inform our practice….