Consolarium

November 23rd, 2007

ICET 2007: PowerPoint and Art

Derek Robertson

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: ICET2007
 : Categories Art & Design, Conferences

Sometimes simple ideas are the best. Amid all the high tech and new ideas I saw at the conference a very simple and yet very effective idea in relation to meeting the teachers learning intentions. Nur Ilyana was one of many teachers from Singapore at the conference whose work in classrooms had been recognised by the State. They were awarded a gong in recognition of their innovative and effective practice. Nur’s presentation was really quite enchanting and is something that anyone can do.

She is an Art teacher and she talked about how difficult it is to get children who feel that they can’t draw to engage with her subject in such a way that she can extend their knowledge, appreciation of and engagement with Art. What she did was introduce the concept of Shapes and Lines to the children and showed them how they could make impressive images by combining both. There was a real oriental feel to the images that were created and they were totally engaging. the children she had been working with were Year 5 and some of their work was hugely entertaining.

Once images were created using the drawing tools in PowerPoint Nur showed the children how to use custom animation tool within and how their images could then be made to move to music. The one that really caught my eye (and it is in the accompanying photograph for this post) was of Rhianna who recorded the song ‘Unbrella’. I’m going to email Nur to see if I can get a copy of this PPT because it was so simple and yet so effectice.

As I said, sometimes the simple ideas work.

November 23rd, 2007

ICET 2007: World of Warcraft demo

Derek Robertson

Comments: 4 Comments » Tags: Tags: , ICET2007, WoW
 : Categories Conferences, Multi-player games

One of the anticipated highlights of the conference was the presentation by Professor Angeline Khoo from NIE in Singapore. Her presentation was called Active Learning through Gaming. It seems that Professor Khoo is a World of Warcraft (WoW) player and the session was advertised as follows:

Looking back to the 24th of July, 2007, World of Warcraft, the award winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) made by Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. has officially surpassed the 9 million subscribers mark. What makes the game successful and how has it become a defining icon of online gaming entertainment? Why have 9 million people around the world given their time to it?

In the Gaming Demonstration at ICET 2007, we will “walk” through a gaming scene from World of Warcraft. There, players will form a team to fight an enemy (termed as the BOSS). Team members will learn how to plan, coordinate, and strategize in order to prepare themselves to attack and defeat the BOSS.

Players are constantly tested as the game progresses with new abilities and challenges. To look at it from another angle, the player has to gain the ability to learn, adapt, and implement his skills in the world to ensure the continued survival of its gaming character. The result: better learning rates, as well as higher levels of logical thinking, and coordination.

Come join us for the full insight on how gaming, and in particular World of Warcraft, can play a significant role in shaping the future of learning in gaming.

I must confess that I have yet to delve into and invest the necessary time required to make progress with WoW so I was interested to see what they were doing with this game in relation to its application in teaching and learning. Professor Khoo talked about how she has become hooked on this game and how important her avatar is to her. She has invested a lot of time in its creation and evolution and it has helped her make friends in her Guild, friends who come from all over the world. She demonstrated it in action in relation to how one would interact with another player. The text message system worked perfectly although the voice communication did not work.

Then Profesor Khoo invited a group of adults who were teachers and ICT professional on to the stage so that a live raid could take place in the game. Unfortunately there were some technical problems so the ‘raid’ was 10 mins late in starting! When it did start it was good to see how the team worked together in order to co-ordinate attacks on enemy monsters.

The question and answer session was interesting and points raised included:

• issues about connectivity with such games via school network
• how does current curriculum architecture facilitate the time required to make meaningful progress within the game?
  
• what are people learning when they play this game?
• is it appropriate to collaborate to kill in a game, and do to this in school?
• how do you balance your life when this game demands a lot of time?
• how can we make explicit the learning that implicitly happens within the game?

I wasn’t wholly convinced that this presentation would make me want to use this in my classroom although it does make me consider how such games could be used to help develop leadership skills and team dynamics. No doubt you have other ideas so I’d love to hear from anyone else that is using WoW in their practice.

November 23rd, 2007

ICET 2007: Useful Scratch resource

Derek Robertson

Comments: none Tags: Tags: ICET2007, Scratch
 : Categories games design

I met a very interesting teacher at the conference who was giving a presentation and running a workshop. Mike Leishman is a computer teacher at Newman College in Perth, Australia and his presentation was about how he is using Web 2.0 applications in his school. His post-conference workshop was about how to programme with Scratch. You may not have been able to make this workshop but Mike has made tutorials available via one of the wikis that he is using. His Kids Programming wiki has tutorials in Scratch and other languages so feel free to dip in and see what’s available. If you can contribute to this wiki then Mike has given me the password to share with you. It is ecawa.

Thanks for this very useful resource Mike.

November 23rd, 2007

ICET 2007: The Consolarium in Singapore

Derek Robertson

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: British Council, Consolarium, ICET2007
 : Categories Conferences

I find myself in my hotel room in Sinapore looking out of my window as I type this blogpost. I’m on the 12th floor of the Orchard Hotel on Orchard Road in Singapore and I am amidst high rise flats, offices and building sites. This really is a futuristic looking city and very very busy.

I have been lucky enough to have been asked to present the work that I have been doing via the Consolarium and with local authority partners throughout Scotland at the ICET 2007 Conference. This opportunity came about as a result of Laurie O’Donnell’s visit here a couple of months ago. He met up with officials from the British Council and he suggested that the work that we have been doing would be of interest and helpful to people in Singapore as they determine how best to approach games-based learning strategies in their schools. As it so happens they have already made inroads into this and have almost put in place two bespoke games that will be installed on PCs in all schools in Singapore. You can find out more about these here.

I gave my presentation yesterday and I decided to make a real effort to slow down my speech. This has come about as a result of the difficulties that I have experienced with the voice recognition on the DS and as a result of being asked to slow down my speech before a presentation in London last month! The lyrics for the Proclaimers song ‘Throw the ‘R’ Away’, come to mind here…although like Worzel Gummidge used to say, “You need different heads for different occasions.”

My presentation was very well received and many teachers waited behind to ask me more about what we have been doing, how we have managed the projects and how we managed to get the ideas and the resources to try such projects. Quite a few schools have expressed an interest in following up our initial discussions so I think there could be opportunities for collaborative games-based-learning projects in the future.

I met with Eunice Crook OBE and Sandra Bodestyne from the British Council this afternoon. My trip was sponsored by them so we had a debrief session about how things have gone. I must report back to colleagues in Scotland that your imaginative work has caused quite a stir here. Both Eunice and Sandra commented on how positively the work that we have been doing was received and they were very interested in the imaginative and creative ways in which we have been applying games in teaching and learning. There could be the possibility of future collaborations between us as they are very keen to learn how we do what we do.

I look forward to establishing a healthy link between LTS and the British Council in Singapore and to a relationship that both parties can benefit from and grow. I would also like to thank them for sponsoring my trip.

Tomorrow is my last day so a few more blogposts and then I’m off to Raffles for a Gin Sling.