Consolarium

March 30th, 2009

Scottish teacher wins award for pioneering work using computer games

Anne Macleod

Comments: none Tags:  : Categories Added Value, East Lothian, Nintendo, rich tasks

Ollie Bray, depute headteacher of Musselbrough Grammar School, East Lothian, took first place in the Innovation in Community section for his presentation of ‘Thinking out of the XBOX’ at the Innovative Teachers Forum 2009 in Vienna. He is currently on secondment to Learning and Teaching Scotland as a National Adviser for Emerging Technologies in Learning.

Inspired by a project initiated by Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Consolarium initiative he organised an extension of this innovative idea and organised a transition project for the associate Primary schools of Musselburgh GS using Guitar Hero. This approach proved to be a great success and the Guitar Hero transition project will now be rolled out across East Lothian schools within weeks. Schools all over Scotland are already using this resource. Schools in England and even as far afield as Hong Kong and Australia, are interested in the project. Mr Bray devised a three-step process of ‘learning, social interaction and reflection and moving on’ as children change.

The Scotsman article: Teacher who inspires pupils with rock ‘n’ roll wins top award

Merlin John’s blog: Ollie Bray takes gaming to international stage

Ollie Bray’s blog: Microsoft 2009 European Innovative Teachers Forum

February 5th, 2008

Sony PSP project: an update from Campie PS

Derek Robertson

Comments: 2 Comments » Tags: Tags: Handheld learning, PSP, Sony
 : Categories East Lothian, Sony PSP

The Sony PSP project in the P.7 class in Campie P.S. in Musselburgh is well under way. The children have all been given their PSPs and are getting in to the habit of using it as part of their everyday learning. I must say that it seemed kind of incongruous to see the PSP sitting alongside some of the children’s pencil cases but the children looked at me quizzically when I suggested this idea to them-“What’s strange about the PSP in class? It’s a great way to learn!” I was quickly informed!

We have provided the children with a game for the PSP called Hot Brain. The idea behind this was to try to create a similar experience as to the one that we created with our Nintendo DS DR. Dr Kawashima in Dundee, one that presents the children with a series of challenging numeracy, literacy and puzzle games that they can play for the first 15-20 minutes of the school day. The children are keeping a log of their progress in the game on paper (as well as within the game) and they are all very keen to reach the level of excellence in Hot Brain - reaching the brain temperature of 55 degrees! If you reach this then you have a Hot Brain!

I had a chat with the children about the game and the response was an overwhelmingly positive one. They thought it was ‘brilliant’ to have the PSP in their class and that Hot Brain was a great way to ‘get the day started at school.’ The class teacher, Alicia Macfarlane, said that they although her class have always been well-behaved she has noticed that they are even more settled and focused first thing as they get stuck in to their Hot Brain games.I then observed a lesson that involved the children editing movies that they had shot on their PSPs. We have provided a camera for each PSP and this enables all the children to capture movies for their project work with ease. Campie PS use Macs and has meant that there are some challenges in relation to transference of data/assets from the PSP to the Mac. The PSP records the movie file as an .avi and although it squirts across to the Mac quickly via USB it is taking as bit of time to load up into imovie. However, once the movies were uploaded the children took their video-editing session really well. This kind of challenge will no doubt be presented to us on this pilot but it’s all learning as they say. Mrs Macfarlane also told me how she is beginning to integrate the wireless browser capability of the PSP into the teaching and learning in her class. The children are studying WW2 at present and they managed to access and download images of ration books to help them with a particular aspect of their project. This means that each child is free to browse the web on their own, at their desk with their individual handheld device.A class blog has been established so you can keep up-to-date of what’s happening with the PSPs in class. Great progress so far at Campie P.S and a big well done to Mrs Macfarlane and all the children of P.6/7.

December 11th, 2007

Sony PSP project in East Lothian

Derek Robertson

Comments: 5 Comments » Tags: Tags: Consolarium, Glow, LTS
 : Categories East Lothian, Sony PSP

Most, if not all the handheld games device projects that have emanated from the Consolarium have so far been based on the Nintendo DS platform. We have for some time been looking at the Sony PSP as a learning tool and after much deliberation and discussion we eventually managed to initiate a project that will explore the potential of this platform as a learning tool.

I have been in discussions with Connected Education, who are educational resellers for the Sony PSP, for some time now but I was always doubtful about exploring this device due to the fact that I was not greatly convinced of the educational application of the range of games that were available. However, I met with Mark Stimpfig and Andrew Goff from Connected a few months ago and during this meeting my attitude towards the PSP changed. I was shown a number of applications that I felt added that extra dimension ands accessibility to making the PSP a worthwhile device that could play a significant role in out classrooms. These applications allow content to be created away from the PSP but then played, shared and enjoyed via the PSP. The applications that we looked at included:

• Crazy Talk
• Vlog
• Lecturnity

The PSP plays video, audio, images, it has a wireless browser built in and it plays games. There is also a camera that fits on to the PSP and this offers the chance of a wireless and mobile video-conferencing device. There are also applications such as GoEdit that allow you to create content on the PSP and we are looking at those too.

One local authority had expressed a real interest in looking at this device and so after a meeting with Karen Robertson and the team at East Lothian it was decided that we would host the project in P.6/7 in Campie PS in Musselburgh.

Yesterday we held our first meeting with the school staff, technical support, ICT development team and LTS representatives. Tony Giddings from Connected Education gave us a tutorial about how to use all the features within the PSP. It was great to see how easy it was to access the web via the wireless network in the school via the PSP. The screen on the device is really quite large and it was simple enough to navigate through a series of web pages using the PSP interface.

Ollie Bray and Tess Watson were very keen to see how the Glow portal would look on the PSP and when it cam through it really looked good. Compact, accessible and there! This does ask questions and opens doors for pupil accessibility to Glow as it becomes more widely available. Logging in to your work or your own personal space in Glow via a games device seems quite an exciting prospect to me. On another note we are also looking at making Glow available through the Sony PS3 but more of that later.

Today we met with the class teacher, Alicia Macfarlane and the PT Steven Woods where we initiated discussions about appropriate areas of next terms curriculum that would best suit the application of the software and their devices that we are giving the children. Their topic is WW2 and already we have developed a range of ideas that would allow the gradual integration of the PSP as something that will become integral to the teaching and learning experience within the class.

Amongst other things that are currently in the planning stages this is another interesting games based learning project from LTS that will hopefully continue to contribute to the evolving body of evidence about the successful application of handheld gaming devices in teaching and learning.