Consolarium

August 10th, 2011: The Land of Me at Port Ellen PS: A visit from the King of The Land of Me 2/5; Derek Robertson; Comments: noneTags: cfe, Consolarium, game based learning, games based learning, The Land of Me

The team at the Consolarium first saw The Land of Me when it was being presented at a game based learning conference in London. We were quite enchanted by the resource and felt that it could be something that, if used appropriately, could work well to support and enhance learning with younger children. We managed to meet up with James Huggins who is the CEO of Made in Me, the company that make the software and let them know that we would be interested in running pilots when the resource was ready to go…

Discussions continued with James and his team and eventually we managed to get things on the move. However, this was not where things stopped in terms of partnership with Made in Me. Very keen to see for himself how things had been going on in Scotland he asked if he could accompany us on out visit to Port Ellen PS to see for himself how his resource was being used in a teaching and learning context.

Once Janice McRae heard that James Huggins was coming to visit she began to think how she could best exploit this event to have further impact on the chidren’s learning…and in so doing she came up with an idea!

The King of the Land of Me comes to Port Ellen PS.

Janice’s idea was to ask James Huggins to act as the KIng of The Land of Me when he came to visit. That meant that the children could write letters to the King telling him what they know about his fabled land. James was in agreement and soon enough a batch of hand-written letters found their way to the King of The Land of Me’s postbox. James took time to to respond to all the children’s letters and duly sent them back with a promise that he would come to see them in the classroom.

This was the catalyst for great excitement and following on from the Royal Wedding this year plans were put in to place to ensure that things would be ready for the Royal visit.

On arrival at the school James was asked to wear a crown and a cloak so that his persona as the King of The Land of Me could be as true as possible for the excited children. He readily went along with this and was somewhat at ease in his Royal role! As he entered the class he was given a guard of honour by the children who were acting as animals from his Kingdom. A red carpet then led to his classroom throne where he was then met by his loyal and admiring subjects.

I spoke with James later that day about what he had seen and what he thought of the way that his resource was being used. His first reaction was to say that he was ‘speechless’ and that “we could not have created a better example of why it is we made The Land of Me or how we’d like it to influence learning!”

You can hear our conversation below:

The craft of the teaching and the way in which contexts can be created to help learners suspend their disbelief is clearly in evidence here. Yet again we see how young learners can respond in such a positive fashion to this methodology and how the thoughtful and imaginative teacher can create the environment in which rich learning can happen and thrive.

Categories Argyll & Bute, Early Years