Consolarium

February 2nd, 2010

Wild Earth African (and Alloa and Aberdeen) Safari

bmclaren

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: African, Park, Tullos, Wii, Wild Earth African Safari
 : Categories Aberdeen, Added Value, Clackmannanshire, Games we have, Literacy, Numeracy, cross-curricular, game based learning

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…..

January 19th, 2010

Get Involved!

bmclaren

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: community, Glow, involvement
 : Categories Added Value, Clackmannanshire, Consolarium, Glow, South Lanarkshire

A busy time over the last week or so since my last post. As Ollie mentioned in a previous post I have been toiling away updating our Consolarium Glow Group. In the past this group hasn’t been as successful as we had hoped and it was beginning to get a bit tired looking. I have tried to restructure the way the group works so that you can more easily navigate your way around and find interesting and useful resources. It is still very much a work in progress and you should see it develop over the coming weeks and months particularly with the addition of the Games Design section which will be forming a large part of the work of the Consolarium in 2010. (I am sure that you are going to hear some very interesting things from Brian Clark in the not too distant future about this…)

In order for the Glow Group to be as successful as possible though we really need community involvement. There is so much good practice going on in schools all over Scotland that should be shared and celebrated and Glow will provide an ideal vehicle for this. Join in the discussions, add your own paperwork and weblinks and encourage others to do the same. Let us know what you think about the group, about GBL in general and perhaps some topics you would like to see covered in a Glowmeet.

Other things on the go this week include a visit to Lourdes Secondary to see them using MangaHigh and hearing what staff and pupils think of it and if you follow me on Twitter (@BrianMcL) you will know that I was in Park Primary in Alloa watching some wonderful children drum their African rhythms with an energy and enthusiasm that would have made a Masai warrior proud. I’ll be heading off to Fairview school in Perth and Loch and Calderwood Primaries in South Lanarkshire to discuss the use of GBL as well as a million other things including the next humiliation of the Wii fit weight loss challenge (I am away now to start looking out my lightest clothes to wear for the next weigh in!)

October 14th, 2009

Hand Held Learning 09

bmclaren

Comments: none Tags: Tags: Clackmannanshire, Derek Robertson, games based learning, Handheld learning, london, Professor Layton
 : Categories Clackmannanshire, Conferences

Having just returned from the Handheld Learning Festival I thought I would share some thoughts about what I saw and what we brought to the festival.

There was a range of thought provoking and interesting speakers from Professor James Paul Gee, author of “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”(2003) and “Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays” (2007)

Through personal reflections on education by Zenna Atkins, the Non-Executive Chairman of Ofsted, to Malcolm McLaren, artist and pop culture icon, as well as a host of others.

As well as these keynotes I also managed to hear John Davitt talk of the tools and technology available to teachers and his desire that we use these tools more productively. I was also delighted to see Tim Rylands, he of MYST fame, show work he has been undertaking with children using Wild Earth:African Safari.

Perhaps the highlight, for me anyway, was to be involved with the Spotlight Scotland Breakout, hosted by Learning and Teaching Scotland. It was standing room only for a series of 30 minute bursts of great practice and innovation in Scottish Education. Katie Barrowman gave a great presentation on GLOW which highlighted GLOW meet and the power of sharing, Derek Robertson introduced CANVAS (Children’s Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland) to the appreciative audience. My presentation was on the work undertaken by children in Clackmannan Primary and their teacher Morag Clark. You can watch a version of this below.

After a short break Lisa Sorbie from Perth High School showcased work an S1 class had undertaken with Hotel Dusk:Room 215, some great writing in the noir genre. Anna Rossvoll from Aberdeenshire showed the power of GLOW meet and Wii music introducing, live, a class from Peterhead who spoke to and performed for the audience in London. Ollie Bray concluded the session with a great presentation on the power of free tools for teachers. You can click this link for more on Ollie’s presentation.