Consolarium

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