OllieBray.com

Games Based Learning is an investment in children (not computer games).

This week we will be asking other schools within East Lothian if they would like to take part in an extension of last sessions Guitar Hero Project. The project aims to  help improve the transition for children between primary and secondary school.

The scaling up of this project is starting to get quite a bit of media attention and there was fantastically well written article in the Edinburgh Evening News talking about some of the work that we have been doing so far.

You can read the article on-line over on the Edinburgh Evening News website. Unfortunately, some of the comments from people on the article are not as positive – but I think that that is mainly because they haven’t actually read it! Some of the comments are actually very derogatory towards young people and I have asked for them to be removed.

On another note, over dinner on Friday night, I was asked by a senior official who does not work in education and work in another area in Scotland, ‘why we were investing so much resource in computer games?’

I could have responded by talking about the fantastic work of the Consolarium or my own positive experiences of using games based learning in school or about East Lothians 2020 Vision or about how cheap, cost effective and robust games consoles can be compared to some other hardware platforms. But in the end, I just said,

‘We are not investing in computer games?..... We are investing in children’

He smiled and replied, ‘I think I’ll shut up now!’

If you like the sound of what we are trying to do  why don't you leave a comment here or over on the Edinburgh Evening News Site.

iPhone in Education: Using QR Code in the Classroom

I’ve had my eye on QR Code for a couple of years now since Ewan introduced me to it and got me thinking about how it might be used in the classroom.

QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code created in Japan (where it is currently the most popular type of two-dimensional code). QR stands for ‘Quick Response’ as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be downloaded at a high speed. QR Code is very popular in Japan and is starting to catch on in Europe. Some phones come with built in QR code readers and for other phones you can download QR readers for free over the Internet.

You can generate QR Code for free using a number of websites such as http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ if you took a photograph of the bit of code on the right of this screen and used a QR code reader to decode it would take you straight to the GLOW Scotland home page.

I’ve got a number of QR Code readers for my iPhone that I have downloaded from the Apps store but very few of them worked particularly well. However, I recently downloaded Neo-Reader and I have been very impressed with how it works. It has never let me down and I can take a picture of a bit of QR Code from the back of the classroom and it can still recognise and decode it.

Here’s how it works:

1) Open Neo-Reader

 

2) Take a photograph of the code.

3) If you are happy with you photo – select ‘use photo’

 

4) The phones internet browser automatically opens and takes you to the decoding site.

 

5) You then get automatically re-directed to the website that was hidden within the code.

 

Use in the Classroom

Now let’s think about the classroom application of such technology. Within QR Code you can hide Text, URL’s, Phone Numbers and SMS. At the end of the lesson the teacher wants students to record their homework.

They want to save money on expensive worksheets and we know that children do not like writing things into their homework planners. The teacher hides the homework instructions or URL inside a bit of QR code – shows the code on the interactive whiteboard or wall. The children take a photo of it with their phones, their homework gets decoded and they have and instant record of what the teacher wants them to do.

But does this work in reality? This is not a great bit of video, but it is a short bit of film that we recorded today trying to introduce the potential of such technology. The QR Code is a link to the GLOW Scotland website.

Guitar Hero World Tour

Over the next few weeks we will start the process of offering the Guitar Hero Transition Project to all of the clusters within East Lothian. The project will operate on an opt in basis and if clusters opt in, each primary seven class will be given a games console and a copy of Guitar Hero. The associated secondary school will also be given a copy of the game and software.

I learnt yesterday that we will be using the World Tour version of the game on the 360 platform. This is good news as it means that up to four children can be engaged in playing the game at any one time. The World Tour version of the game include a microphone, drum kit and guitar. You can also get a base guitar add – lets hope they have though of this at head office?

Anyway…. My copy of the game has been sat here unopened for a few weeks so….I’m off to conduct some in-depth educational research!

Google Earth Motivational Posters: Numeracy, Literacy, Place and ICT (ACE in Action)

I teach a small class on a Thursday afternoon. My brief is to teach them life skills with a particular emphasis on numeracy. I get them in a computer lab and we have done lots of interesting things over the past few months – I must get round to writing about more of them!

For today’s lesson I was trying to look at rounding numbers, direction and distance. As with all my lessons (must be the Geography Teacher in me!) I can never help trying to introduce place.

Here’s what we did:

Students opened Google Earth and a Word Document (technology).

In the Word Document we created a table similar to the one below. We had a discussion about famous landmarks (natural or human) and tried to get one from each continent (place). They could also pick some of their own.

The next job was to complete the table. Using The Google Earth ruler tool, the students worked independently to fly between MusselburghGrammar School and the various landmarks (place). Once the ruler line was drawn between the two points the students toggled between kilometres and miles to fill in the table (numeracy). But they had to round to the nearest number for both measurements (numeracy).

Here's a quick video showing you how to do this if you don't know how:

Next they had to zoom out of Google Earth to get a feeling of direction (place and direction), so they could fill in their third column. The fourth column was left blank for the time being.

It was fascinating to watch the class explore the various places as they completed their tables.

Next, they had to pick one of the landmarks or a landmark of their own choosing and explore it (place). The main task was to take a picture of it using the ‘print screen’ button. They were asked to record the orientation that the photograph was taken in (numeracy).

We then used the Motivational Poster Generator of Big Huge Labs (technology) to make some impressive posters (thanks to the on-line geography community for this idea).

• The main picture was their landmark screenshot.
• The title was the name of the land mark
• Line 1: A brief descriptive summary of the place (literacy)
• Line 2: the distance and direction from MGS
• Line 3: the photo credit and photograph orientation

Here is some of the work they produced:

 

 

 

 

iPhone in Education: Using Mobile Devices in Music Lessons

As always I like to pop in and out of the music department at Musselburgh Grammar School. Although, I haven’t managed to catch up with my old pal Alan Coady for far too long! My recent visits have got me thinking about the use of a mobile device in music lesson. The following are just my thoughts – I’m not and never will pretend to be a music specialist.

Maybe if all of the children had a mobile device this is how they could be used in music?

Recording Work

Using applications such as Speakeasy, children could record their own performance pieces and up-load them to their e-portfolio, blog or class website. This would allow opportunities, if appropriate, for peer observation and increasing the audience for students work.

 

Listening to Music

The iPhone (like most mobile devices these days) is also a great way to listen to music. However as the iPhone allows you to run more than one application at once. Students could be listening to a piece of music and writing comments about it on the mobile note pad at the same time.

 

Instructional Video / Podcasts

One of the great things about the iPhone / iPod Touch is its ability to play back high quality video recordings and You Tube Videos. I think there is a lot of scope for individualised learning using some of these tools. The picture below is a screen shot from the iPhone of a You Tube clip teaching guitar cords.

 

 

Digital Music

There are lots of great music applications of the iPhone / iPod Touch. I am sure that some of them would be more useful than others. Here area couple that I liked just because they are fun!

 

Ocarina

I love this (but it’s probably got no classroom application at all - apart form the link to history!). You blow into the microphone and press one or all of the four digital buttons that appear on the screen. Depending on how hard you blow and which buttons your press – depends on the quality of the digital sound that you create.

 

However, what I really like about it is how it could be used aross the curriculum to introduce place. Ocarina uses the phones GPS function to broadcast your tune live onto the Ocarina community. At anytime, when in the application you can press the globe button to see where in the world Ocarina tunes are broadcasting from. What a great context for discussion.

Guitar

I don’t know much about playing the Guitar, but the user reviews on the chords application look very promising. It’s described as a, ‘no frills guitar chord reference, that offers 28 chord types for each note.’

 

If that’s not enough you can even turn your iPhone / ipod touch into a Guitar with Frontier Designs Guitar Application (it only has 5 start reviews!).

 

There must be some education potential in here somewhere?

 

uFlute

Finally, turn your iPhone onto a flute (well uFlute) – I like the idea (for novelty value only!), but it keep crashing on me!

 

Monty Python now on You Tube

My good friends will know that I love Monty Python. Here is one of the reasons why (You Tube Video Below):

iPhone in Education: Google Gets Voice Search

Google and Search fans have been waiting for this for a few days. There have been various reports of its delay. But at some point today Google Apps for the iPhone was updated and now includes Google Earth and an impressive Voice Search.

More information about the Voice Search Application below (You Tube Video Below):

I thought I would give it a quick try and have to admit to being very impressed. I don’t know why but I chose to search for ‘Edinburgh Scotland’ and it returned it to me straight away. In fact most of the places I tried were really accurate. Great work Google – really looking forward to this becoming more accurate and exploring its educational potential.

Here is how it works:

Open Google Apps for Mobile. Press the search button. Press the voice search button.

Follow the prompt and say what you want to search for:

The phone will detect when you move it away from your mouth / pause for to long and start the search. Your voice algorithms will appear.

Your search results are returned:

 

Then I voice searched for Hot Deserts:

Graphic Novels around the School (2): Macbeth the Comic in English

I popped into another S1 English class today to find out how they were getting on. It was great to see the class using the class set of Classical Comic Original Macbeth Texts. I think reading fairly complicated literature in comic book form definitely helps more reluctant readers.

All of the class seemed to be really engaged in the text and the artwork. The children that I spoke to also through that reading comics like this also helped them with their learning.

Great stuff!

Graphic Novels around the School (1): Comic Book Club

It’s fascinated to watch children learn and engage in learning activities that really interest them. As part of the work that we are doing with comics and graphic novels in education the Art Department at Musselburgh Grammar has started a lunchtime Comic Book club.

This week was the clubs second week and it has had so much interest it is already full of eager S1 pupils. Today, I popped I to see how they were all getting on and I was really impressed with the quality of learning and creativity that was taking place.

Over the next few weeks the club will be designing and making their own comics – and some of the club members are even keen to sell them or certainly post them on-line.

This is one of the characters that are being developed. Her name is Koyuki Misa, and she is a first year student at Shiroi Mahou Academy in Japan. Shiroi Mahou Academy is a school for magically talented children. I’m going to be really interested to watch how this character develops. The drawing has been based on Manga.

iPhone in Education: Mobile Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels is one of the areas that I have been driving forward in the school during the last few months. I am really pleased with the progress that we are making and hope that some of our Graphic Novel / Comic Book work will be truly embedded by session 2009 / 2010. I recently wrote an article on Graphic Novels in Education over on Merlin John’s Blog.

Recently, I have been exploring the use of the iPhone to look at Graphic Novels from another dimension. Some of my earlier work was centred around using .pdfs to explore Graphic Novels available in that format. I wrote about Macbeth for the iPhone a number of months ago.

However, I have been noticing a number of other graphic novels and content appearing for the iPhone / iPod Touch. Which again leads me to believe that this is a great little device with huge educational potential.

I’ll talk about some of these applications below:

Bumblebee Touchbook

This is a great little Graphic Novel / Touchbook from www.3dal.com available for the iPhone. I’m not a subject expert, but I guess it’s aimed at early primary? You can either get the book to read to you and follow the words. Or you can press the word to hear what it sounds like. As you flick through he pages, the reader has to solve some simple literacy and numeracy puzzles that reinforce the text and the story.

Professional Mobile Comics

UCLICK has got a great range of Graphic Novels available for the iPhone / iPod Touch. I’ve just finished reading one on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – a blast from my youth!

 

Unlike my .pdf viewing version. The professional mobile comics show each comic frame as a screen and then you flick through the story. Some of the more advanced versions of mobile comics that I have found such as ‘Harding was Here’ actually zooms in and out part of the comic page as you read the story. This really helps focus on the emotion of some of the comic characters and artwork.

 

Comic Zeal

ComicZeal's built-in downloader lets you browse a great collection of copyright-free Golden Age comics and download them straight to your iPhone/ iPod Touch.

Once you have bough the reader (currently £1.19) all the comics are free and you can download as many as you want to. Like many of the other mobile comics ComicZeal works in portrait and landscape mode to suit the orientation of the page or panel you're reading.

It also remembers what page you were up to for each comic in your collection and will take you straight there next time you read it.

 

Making your own comics

It’s also possible to use the iPhone /Ipod Touch to make your own comics. Using applications like Comic Touch – from the people that brought you Comic Life.

 

The Future

So… who will be the first come up with a Graphic Novel Game for the iPhone / iPod Touch? I don’t think such a concept is far away now.