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.

For a number of months I have been doing some work in and around South Lanarkshire authority, first of all with Aubrey Taylor  from the Advisory Service running staff development and latterly with  the support of Andrea Reid QIO in a number of primary and nursery schools. It’s really great seeing so many forward thinking folks in education in such close proximity to each other.  A good number of schools are running their own GBL topics with  and really staring to get great results from their work.

Cathkin Community Nursery

In particular I enjoyed visiting Cathkin Community Nursery which , with the support of Andrea Reid, has been undertaking a topic on pets which has included input from a special pet called “Eyepet” which comes as software on the PS3.  Check the video below for a wee flavour of the kinds of things he can do..

The steps shown in the video are only a small part of how the nursery went about planning and implementing a project with Eyepet,  but a case study exemplification will be produced and shared over the next couple of months.

I had never seen a GBL topic wholly undertaken in the nursery setting so I was intrigued to find out how they had gone about it. Liz Mercer the Head of Nursery was delighted with the way the project worked and how well it involved the children and their families.

“We are thoroughly enjoying our eyepets. They are part of our family now and the children have taken to them so well. Each group had adopted an eyepet, where they nurture and care for him/her. Some children have also created their own eyepet using a variety of materials. They are fab and on display in the room where eyepet lives and breathes.”

Open Doors Event

Cathkin Community Nursery then took the expertise they had gained from running Eyepet as part of their project and held an open doors event where the Early Years workers shared their experience of using Eyepet and how it tied to the curriculum with colleagues from South Lanarkshire.  There were also a number of other brilliant presentations on involving parents and involving children in the planning process and digital learning books. The evaluations from this event were wholly positive and it was great to see CPD opportunities like this being provided by practitioners for practitioners. Liz and the team are real advocates of CfE,   and you can see from the slideshow below how that looks in practice when undertaking the Eyepet project.

HMIE

You may also be interested in reading the thoughts of HMIE about this nursery.  Their report was published today and all areas of their work were graded as Excellent and HMIE thought their work with Eyepet was wonderful.

“Staff provide a very well-balanced curriculum firmly based on play, active learning and enjoyment. High quality staff interaction, a stimulating environment and very well planned use of resources support children’s progress most effectively”

We currently have a number of Eyepets out on loan across Scotland at the moment, some as transition projects and some as literacy focus work and the pictures below are of some of the reactions of children watching their Eyepet hatch and some of the work that has come out of looking after their Eyepet.

Home School Partnership

As a follow on to that I attended a couple of parent workshops run by Colin Venters from South Lanarkshire’s Home School Partnership, encouraging parents to see the potential of their child’s use of gaming consoles as a positive chance for meaningful interaction between themselves and their child. Hear below what Colin and some of the parents who visited had to say about these sessions.

Last week, Charlie posted a summary of our 2 day Kodu training session with the Girvan Academy cluster schools.  We had 2 teachers from the secondary school, 12 from primary schoosl and 1 from the local authority.  After receiving some feedback on the event from the staff involved, I thought I’d share what we learned from what we hope will be the first of many Kodu training events.

During the 2 Days …

We decided to start the training getting the teachers to use the terrain building tools in order to familiarise themselves with the Kodu interface and the controller.  Trying to stay topical, we decided to model a volcano.  However, as Charlie previously mentioned, one of the key difficulties we found, was that a number of staff had never held an Xbox controller or played a 3d computer game.

As it turned out, many of the teachers involved did find the 3D world difficult to navigate/play in.  Just too much movement on the screen for them to deal with.  While they all agreed that this wouldn’t be an issue for pupils as they are’ 3D native’, we needed to address this.  So, Charlie and I changed track slightly and decided to focus on static world games.

By setting the camera position to fixed, we took the teachers through building games based on the classics such as Frogger and Space Invaders.  This technique allowed the teachers to build worlds without that initial disorientation they experienced with the camera set to free mode.  This allowed the teachers to focus more on game functionality and scripting.

It seemed obvious to then move to the Fixed Offset camera mode where the camera angle tracks the main game character; this allowed the teachers to engage a little more on the terrain building aspect of Kodu.  During this task we set about making side scrolling games in the classic Mario / Sonic style.

It should be at this point we moved to the full Free mode option and get the teachers to create fuller 3D worlds and utilise the scripting techniques they gained during the Space Invader/Mario-esque games.

As for scripting, using creatables and making paths – all of which Charlie and I thought might be too much for inexperienced teachers,  turned out to be one of the most rewarding aspects of the course.  With the free motion 3D issue dealt with, the attendees got stuck into the mechanics of the games they were making.

That being said, there were of course a number of teachers who were familiar with the 3D free scrolling games of the Xbox generation. Their experience in this genre of game allowed them to carry out most of the tasks with little or no difficulty and illustrated the need for strategies to deal with such a diverse set of learners such as this.  One welcome suggestion was that we should have training days especially for primary school teachers and secondary school teachers (in particular secondary Computing teachers)

What Did We Learn?

So, what have we learned from our initial 2 training days when dealing with non experienced gamers?

1. Allow teachers to play in pre build Kodu world to get used, or indeed see what types of games Kodu can be used to make.
2. Create simple games using the Fixed camera position – little terrain building and simple scripting.
3. Move on to Fixed Offset mode and create side scrolling games, increasing the amount of terrain building
4. Turn on Free mode on the camera settings to create full 3D games.
5. When dealing with diverse groups, it is probably best to have separate training events.

Next Steps

Both Charlie and I will be out to visit and support the implementation on Kodu in this cluster and continue to feedback to you here and within GLOW, with a particular focus of Curriculum for Excellence.  Within GLOW we will encourage the teachers involved will contribute to discussions, lesson ideas and resources over the next few months for all of us to use.

On the whole, it was a very rewarding couple of days, and those that attended gave really useful feedback  in relation to their pupils learning experiences and curriculum for excellence, as well as how we can refine this training process.  I will leave you with a few of thoughts from some of the teachers that attended our course.

I would like to give Kudo a go as soon as possible, it would certainly answer the outcome of making a game, also I can see it cross curricular potential. I found the course worthwhile and it opened up my brain to a different type of learning. The kids will love it.

I’d really like to develop the use of Kodu and link it with literacy as a school project.

Kodu is a wonderful tool to use in class and pupils would be highly motivated to learn how to make games.  Training days were useful to show teachers what is available and how it can be used with pupils.

I think Kodu is a great tool and well worth doing with the P7s. Whether I could call myself capable to teach it after only two days is debatable. Possibly access to a helpdesk via e-mail or some such would be good as I fear a lot of problems may crop up of which I won’t know the answers.

I did learn a great deal from the two days as well as it being inspirational. I would also like to thank the presenters for their patience and hard work. They made it fun to learn. I will definitely use Kodu in Dailly Primary

As you probably know the Consolarium team was invited to the Games Based Learning 10 conference in London at the end of March. We presented on aspects of our work and if you click on you can follow the links to the videos of our presentations. ( Derek Robertson, Ollie Bray, Brian Clark and Brian McLaren)

During my own presentation there was a bit of a technical hiccup which prevented a couple of the embedded films, produced by teachers Mr Simpson (@familysimpson on Twitter) from Inverurie Academy and Mr Tait (@scotsnick on Twitter) from Grangemouth High, from working properly so I have embedded them here.

PS don’t forget to send in your MarioKart Times!!

Dum! dumdumdum! dumdum! dumdumdumdum!

<cue Murray Walker voice>

………….and there goes Mario!

………………and there goes Luigi!

F1 season is well underway and all over Scotland schools are taking up the SLF10 Mario Challenge.

Would you like to race head to head, in front of a live audience and win the title of

SLF10 MarioKarter Champion ?

This year at SLF10 there will be a Mario Kart Grand Prix for Primary and Secondary pupils.  In order to qualify you must be in the top 4 verified time trial times.

Teachers must submit a photo of a pupil’s verified Time Trial time. These times will be logged on a leader board held on the Consolarium Glow Group and blog so you can track your position against the whole of Scotland.

At the moment these leaderboards are empty (apart from my rubbish time!) – submit your time  now!

The four fastest primary pupils and four fastest secondary pupils will be invited, with  school representatives, to compete in a live race final at SLF10.  In order to submit a qualifying time you must run your time trial according to the criteria below.

A picture of the complete time trial showing character, kart and time should be forwarded tob.mclaren@ltscotland.org.uk

The four fastest pupils from each sector will then race head to head in the

50cc Mushroom Cup Grand Prix

in front of a live audience at SLF10.

The driver with the most amount of points at the end of the Grand Prix will be the winner and crowned Mario Kart Champion SLF10 and win a Wii and copy of Mario Kart for their school.

Check out the glow group where schools involved will be posting plans, pictures and joining discussions about the game and the work they are undertaking within their class using Mario Kart as a contextual hub or as a subject specific theme.

The closing date for verified Time Trial times is September  3^rd 2010.  Qualifiers will be contacted after this date

The latest edition of the Consolarium podcast is now available. You can subscribe to the podcast from itunes via this link or listen to it via the embedded player.

Super samba inspired learning in schools!

This edition of the Consolarium podcast is solely dedicated to a project that came to an end just before Christmas 2009. Meldrum PS and Slains PS in Aberdeesnhire had been working with the game Samba de Amigo for the Nintendo Wii. When this game first came out the team at the Consolarium thought that this would have great potential in schools and so it was duly purchased. Here’s what it looks like:

OK, I think that after that clip you may be asking, “How on earth can a game that requires the player to shake out samba rhythms help children learn?” Well it most certainly has. What has been going on?

Samba de Amigo inspires ‘relevant and engaging learning’

The methodology that the Consolarium invariably employs in our approach to game based learning involves the computer game being used as the central ‘contextual hub’ about which learning can be situated. We have used this approach with many of our previous projects and it has proved to be a successful methodology. The teachers involved in this project worked together to create a collaborative story that focused on a rags to riches tale about a favela dwelling samba musician who made it to the big time. Accompanying this came the story of a plane, that was carrying the newly created Samba music superstar, crashing in the Amazon jungle and the associated learning about that. Here is some of the children’s work. Here is a news report of that event:

Some people may still be of the opinion that the idea of game based learning is something that does not sit with what school should be about but we would argue that game based learning, if used appropriately, can excite, challenge and create relevant and appealing contexts for learners. Just look at how writing has been developed here”

• The children created their own samba stars and wrote a biographies about them. Have a read of one these: The life of Angelo de Rimosto (biography)
• The children were inspired to carry out research about the Amazon Rainforest as a result of the “plane crash’ scenario and other ways in which the teachers had created the settings in which intrinsic motivation to explore the topic. Have a read of this piece of writing: The Amazon Rainforest
• The children from both schools used Glow to begin to explore how they could work together on story start project. Here is the beginnings of their efforts: Trible Troubles Chapters 1, 2 and 3 If you would like to find out more about how Glow was used then join their Samba de Amigo Glow group.
• The children also used Crazy Talk to great effect to bring their writing to life. Here we see how writing about an imaginary Amazonian rainforest creature can be enhanced by this simple piece of technology:

If you take the time to listen to the podcast about the Samba de Amigo project then you’ll here us talking to a pupil about his experience. If we could have written a script for a pupil to read out about the benefits of game based learning then what he said (without coaching or prompting we may add) would have been what we would have said. He talks about his learning connecting up, about it being exciting and active and how he will rmember this project. Great stuff from him. Here is a brief clip of some boys  actively involved in the project and warming up for their Samba music creation lesson.

Hopefully the podcast and this brief blogpost will give you a flavour of just how good this GBL project was. A fuller account of what was done and how this GBL context impacted on learning will be released in the near future. In the meantime can we just say thanks to all at Meldrum PS and Slains PS for working with us on this project.

Mario Kart Competition @ SLF10

Calling all Jenson Button and Lewis Hamiltons of the future.

Would you like to race head to head, in front of a live audience and win the title of

SLF10 MarioKarter Champion ?

This year at SLF10 there will be a Mario Kart Grand Prix for Primary and Secondary pupils.  In order to qualify you must be in the top 4 verified time trial times.

Teachers must submit a photo of a pupil’s verified Time Trial time. These times will be logged on a leader board held on the Consolarium Glow Group and blog so you can track your position against the whole of Scotland. The four fastest primary pupils and four fastest secondary pupils will be invited, with  school representatives, to compete in a live race final at SLF10.  In order to submit a qualifying time you must run your time trial according to the criteria below.

A picture of the complete time trial showing character, kart and time should be forwarded to b.mclaren@ltscotland.org.uk

The four fastest pupils from each sector will then race head to head in the

50cc Mushroom Cup Grand Prix

in front of a live audience at SLF10.

The driver with the most amount of points at the end of the Grand Prix will be the winner and crowned Mario Kart Champion SLF10 and win a Wii and copy of Mario Kart for their school.

The closing date for verified Time Trial times is September  3^rd 2010.  Qualifiers will be contacted after this date.

Have you thought about using MarioKart in your class as a contextual hub or topic?  Check out the Consolarium Glow Group for ideas on how you might do this.  You might also want to think about how you might use MarioKart in subject specific lessons also.  Share your thoughts on the Discussion Board at the Wii, Mario Kart section of the Consolarium Glow Group.

We also have a small number of MarioKart kits (console, software and controllers) available on loan until SLF10.  If you are interested in receiving one on loan send us a summary of how you would use it and what you feel the impact would be upon your pupils. Our team will get together and examine all bids and decide upon the lucky applicants.  Please send bids to b.mcmlaren@ltscotland.org.uk and ensure all bids are with us by Monday March 8th.

It’s always a treat to visit classes where the imagination and creativity of teachers and pupils has driven  engaging and effective learning and teaching. But shh! What’s that noise? Can anyone else hear the drums?

 Can you hear the drums?

I think we had better take a look around, follow me as we climb this hill for a look around.  Wow! what a panorama – look at all the animals..

Every child I spoke to was enthused and motivated by their topic, as was every teacher. You want creative and imaginative writing? It’s there, from a range of different characters and viewpoints. Functional writing? How many reports, factsheets, biographies would you like? Listening and talking? Interviews, presentations with movies, audio, photographs….

In mathematics the children were learning about measurement in a range of scales (15o kg of elephant poo anyone?) How tall is a giraffe? If an elephant was 2d what would its area be ? Can we draw it to scale in the playground? If we know that can we work out the volume of an elephant? So many mathematical questions.  How far away is the Safari we are going on?  How will we get there, will we fly and how much will that cost? and on and on and on; learning in context

I saw a variety of media and tribal art where the visiting specialists were involved in the planning and delivery, music teachers teaching tribal drumming and African chants, Masai warrior dances by children in Masai robes and class made jewellery.  I heard abou the significance of the jewellery in the different cultures and at every step the use of a range of technology enhanced and extended the learning going on.

And don’t even get me started on co-operation and collaboration as teams completed assignments together and presented their findings, reports and thoughts together.  The desire of the pupils to show their work and explain it’s significance and what they had learned was excellent, not just to me but to other classes and their parents and carers.  I saw children explaining food webs to their visitors, anything you wanted to know about a particular animal? Just ask the resident experts…..

I was invited to a couple of Parent Council meetings this week, asked in to explain the role of Games Based Learning within A Curriculum for Excellence and to showcase some of the projects the Consolarium already has  underway and potentially what parents could do to support it in their own child’s school.

Many families will already be familiar with the range of consoles and software available and most of the folks I spoke to at the meetings had more stuff in their houses than I had; yet very few had ever played with them and almost none had played them with their children.  (Derek Robertson writes a brilliant blog post “Cod Liver Oil and Effective Learning..”on his personal site at HotMilkyDrink which is well worth a read, from a parent’s perspective)

One of the best things about the job is seeing the sparks of enthusiasm and creativity created by the GBL approach and this was evident again as a room full of parents and carers were excitedly discussing the kinds of things their children could be learning.  One of the meetings ended with the Parent Council pretty much demanding (in a good way!) that the school take money from them and get out and buy consoles and implement them in their children’s learning straight away.

A positive partnership between parents and school is really important and ACfE provides a perfect backdrop against which these relationships can be strengthened; and the games based learning approach augments this beautifully.

All of these consoles in homes and all of these learning opportunities. A germ of an idea is beginning to form…………

In the meantime check out the Trailer for Parent Toolkit below

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!