Consolarium

September 28th, 2008

Scottish Dev. Officer in running for HHL’08 award

Derek Robertson

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: Anna Rossvoll, Consolarium, HHL08, HHL2008
 : Categories Aberdeenshire

I am delighted to see that Anna Rossvoll from Aberdeenshire Council has been selected as one of the three finalists for the Primary Practitioner award at this year’s Handheld Learning Conference in London. This is truly an accolade and excellent recognition of the work that Anna does. Anna has been a particulalry strong supporter of the work of the Consolarium does and in relation to the development of Glow in her authority. Her nomination entry included this description of her:

“We need leaders in education who are prepared to take informed risks, leaders who can see the relevance of new ideas and technologies but who can embed them in sound principles for teaching and learning, leaders who can build relationships with teachers in order to take new ideas and practice forward. Anna Rossvoll is an example of this. She has proved to be a particular creative and dynamic colleague of the Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Consolarium initiative. An initiative that aims to take games based learning forward. She has been very influential in supporting and promoting this work but also has her own ideas. She approached the Consolarium to ask if we would support an idea she had to put Nintendogs in a P.2 class. We teased this out and agreed to fund this initiative. Anna put the equipment in two schools and worked with the teachers to help plan what they might do. It must be said, and Anna will say this too, that both teachers who were involved in the project did all the work but without her initial idea, her passion for teaching, the relationships that she has built with teachers in Aberdeenshire this initiative would never have started. “

If you need reminded of the Nintendogs project that Anna has been nominated for then have a look at this link.

If you wish to vote for her then text ANNAROSSVOLL to : +447786203140

Good luck Anna.

The voting for this is by text message and if

September 28th, 2008

Dr Kawashima Challenge at SLF ’08

Derek Robertson

Comments: 2 Comments » Tags: Tags: Consolarium, Nintendo, SLF08, SLF2008
 : Categories Nintendo, SLF08

To celebrate the impact that this work has had in Scottish schools and to test the ability of teachers and pupils alike we decided to have the Dr Kawashima (how fast can you do your sums) Challenge at this year’s Scottish Learning Festival? This event was supported by Nintendo and they kindly donated 30 DS plus games to us to offer as prizes in this competition. We asked the delegates at this years conference if they were the fastest sums expert in Scotland! We were unsure if teachers would avoid this because they might have felt a little compromised because they couldn’t quite remember things like 7 x 8 under pressure.

Over the course of both days the LTS stand was extremely busy with teachers undertaking the x20 challenge in the game in order to get on the leaderboard so that they had a chance of getting in the top eight that would compete at the Gamezone Challenge at the end of the day.

The final involved the top 8 teachers directly competing against each other in the x30 download challenge. The teachers that did compete did very very well and they contributed to a great session at the end of both days., The winners were:

• Wednesday: Steven Beattie, Dens Road PS, Dundee (15 DS plus games)
  
• Thursday: Vicky Mackenzie, Lairdsland PS, Kirkintilloch (15 DS plus games)

Well done to both winners and we hope that you enjoy and make good use of your newly acquired games/learning devices.

September 28th, 2008

Scottish Schools’ Sonic Olympics Champion ’08

Derek Robertson

Comments: none Tags: Tags: SLF08, SLF2008
 : Categories Dundee City, East Dunbartonshire, SLF08, South Lanarkshire

The Consolarium’s attempts to bring games based learning to the Scottish Learning Festival culminated in the final of the Sonic and Mario at the Olympics competition at the Gamezone Challenge. The past month has seen Scottish schoolchildren attempting to qualify for the finals by playing the trampolining game and their expertise left me with a little bit of egg on my face… I had thought long and hard about which game to set as the qualifier and after much deliberation I chose the trampolining because I thought it was far too difficult to get a perfect 10 and that the children’s efforts would be a real spread of scores that would allow me to get my 8 qualifiers for the final. Great thinking on my part because on the final day of qualifying no less than 19 children had registered a perfect 10 on the leaderboard! As a result of this four of the qualifying schools had their own play-offs to select the two children who would represent their school at SLF ’08.

The event itself was brilliant. Children from Lairdsland PS & Woodhill PS (East Dunbartonshire), Clepington PS (Dundee City) and Cathkin HS (South Lanarkshire) came to compete and compete they did. A large crowd had gathered to see the competition and they gave superb backing to all the competitors with Simon Tait from Cathkin HS just taking the title in the last game. Simon won an Xbox 360 with Guitar Hero plus a Nintendo Wii with Mario Kart and a Wii Fit for his school.

The Gamezone Challenge proved to be a real hit and hopefully it will become a fixture of the Scottish Learning Festival in years to come. Well done to all who participated.

September 25th, 2008

Dr Kawashima extended trial summary results

Derek Robertson

Comments: 7 Comments » Tags: Tags: Consolarium, Derek Robertson, games based learning, LTS, Nintendo, SLF2008
 : Categories Nintendo

LTS Dr Kawashima Summary Report

As a result of a small scale intervention that we carried out in some classrooms last year we managed to fund an extended study to explore further the findings that we identified in relation to mental maths attainment and academic self-concept as a result of playing Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training for the Nintendo DS in the primary school.

As a result of this extended study, carried out by Learning and Teaching Scotland in partnership with the University of Dundee and HMIE, we now have some concrete evidence of learning gains that can be attributed to the use of a games console in the primary classroom. But it has also raised a series of questions in our minds; there is a lot more we need to learn…

Although our research does indicate significant gains by the Nintendo group we feel that two things are particularly important for those with an interest in Scottish education. The first is that even the control group children showed measurable improvements in performance; this reflects very well on hard-working Scottish class teachers. The second point is important when thinking about the implications of our findings: because of the research design, we can feel confident that these findings are likely to be typical of what we can realistically expect across the board in Scotland.

We attach a summary paper that gives an outline of what we have found. We intend to submit a fuller paper for full academic review hence the summary nature of the information that we are sharing with you. The results will be discussed and shared with a wider audience for the first time at the Scottish Learning Festival in Glasgow.

September 25th, 2008

Scottish Schools Guitar Hero ’08 Champion

Derek Robertson

Comments: 2 Comments » Tags: Tags: Consolarium, Guitar Hero, LTS, SLF08, SLF2008
 : Categories SLF08

Congratulations to David Whyte from Baldragon Academy in Dundee who yesterday swept all challengers aside to become the Scottish Schools Guitar Hero for 2008. Congratulations also to Craig Davidson, Shaun Caldwell and Lewis Bayne for making it to the semi-finals and for giving such a spirited and skilled performance at the Gamezone Challenge.

David thoroughly impressed the viewing delegates at the conference with his expertise at the game. Whilst playing the song: When We Were Young by The Killers he managed to hit a 500 note streak on expert level. Superb!!!

Thanks to all who supported this event by either participating over the course of the last month or by coming along to the venue to support the boys and to support the unusual addition of something like the Gamezone Challenge at an educational conference.

Thanks also to Microsoft and Nintendo for the donation of prizes for the competitions that we are running in the Gamezone Challenge.

September 24th, 2008

Dr Kawashima Challenge at SLF’08

Derek Robertson

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: Consolarium, LTS, SLF08, SLF2008
 : Categories Glow, Nintendo, SLF08

As part of this year’s Consolarium inspired Gamezone Challenge at this year’s SLF we have the DR Kawashima Challenge: How fast can you do your sums? Delegates are invited to take the x20 challenge within this game and see if their score gets on the leaderboard! If a score features in the top eight by 3:30pm on the Wednesday or 2:30pm on the Thursday then the talented delegate will be invited to take part in the x30 download challenge to see if they are the fastest sums expert in Scotland! This title will come with 15, yes I said 15 Nintendo DS plus Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training for the DS.