Consolarium

May 27th, 2010

EyePet as CfE

bmclaren

Comments: 2 Comments » Tags: Tags: andrea reid, cathkin, cfe, eyepet, hmie, liz mercer, nursery, South Lanarkshire
 : Categories Added Value, Consolarium, Consolarium visits, Games we have, Literacy, Multi-player games, Numeracy, Parents, South Lanarkshire, cross-curricular, game based learning, rich tasks

For a number of months I have been doing some work in and around South Lanarkshire authority, first of all with Aubrey Taylor from the Advisory Service running staff development and latterly with the support of Andrea Reid QIO in a number of primary and nursery schools. It’s really great seeing so many forward thinking folks in education in such close proximity to each other. A good number of schools are running their own GBL topics with and really staring to get great results from their work.

Cathkin Community Nursery

In particular I enjoyed visiting Cathkin Community Nursery which , with the support of Andrea Reid, has been undertaking a topic on pets which has included input from a special pet called “Eyepet” which comes as software on the PS3. Check the video below for a wee flavour of the kinds of things he can do..

The steps shown in the video are only a small part of how the nursery went about planning and implementing a project with Eyepet, but a case study exemplification will be produced and shared over the next couple of months.

I had never seen a GBL topic wholly undertaken in the nursery setting so I was intrigued to find out how they had gone about it. Liz Mercer the Head of Nursery was delighted with the way the project worked and how well it involved the children and their families.

“We are thoroughly enjoying our eyepets. They are part of our family now and the children have taken to them so well. Each group had adopted an eyepet, where they nurture and care for him/her. Some children have also created their own eyepet using a variety of materials. They are fab and on display in the room where eyepet lives and breathes.”

Open Doors Event

Cathkin Community Nursery then took the expertise they had gained from running Eyepet as part of their project and held an open doors event where the Early Years workers shared their experience of using Eyepet and how it tied to the curriculum with colleagues from South Lanarkshire. There were also a number of other brilliant presentations on involving parents and involving children in the planning process and digital learning books. The evaluations from this event were wholly positive and it was great to see CPD opportunities like this being provided by practitioners for practitioners. Liz and the team are real advocates of CfE, and you can see from the slideshow below how that looks in practice when undertaking the Eyepet project.

HMIE

You may also be interested in reading the thoughts of HMIE about this nursery. Their report was published today and all areas of their work were graded as Excellent and HMIE thought their work with Eyepet was wonderful.

“Staff provide a very well-balanced curriculum firmly based on play, active learning and enjoyment. High quality staff interaction, a stimulating environment and very well planned use of resources support children’s progress most effectively”

We currently have a number of Eyepets out on loan across Scotland at the moment, some as transition projects and some as literacy focus work and the pictures below are of some of the reactions of children watching their Eyepet hatch and some of the work that has come out of looking after their Eyepet.

Home School Partnership

As a follow on to that I attended a couple of parent workshops run by Colin Venters from South Lanarkshire’s Home School Partnership, encouraging parents to see the potential of their child’s use of gaming consoles as a positive chance for meaningful interaction between themselves and their child. Hear below what Colin and some of the parents who visited had to say about these sessions.

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!)

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.