OllieBray.com

SLF09 - Computer Games Based Learning in Secondary Schools

Over the next week I hope to post up my thoughts, presentation slides and reflections from this years Scottish Learning Festival.

To start with here are my presentation slides and links from my session on Computer Games Based learning in Secondary Schools

Games Based Learning in Secondary Schools

View more presentations from Learning and Teaching Scotland.

The links that I referred to in my presentation are as follows:

• Wordle – Create fantastic Word Clouds to brighten up your lessons and also analise important documents.

Some examples of web based games that can be used for home learning:

• Classic Sim City – Useful for teaching about towns, cities and settlement.
• Ordnance Survey Map Games – Good for homework.
• Fantasy Famer – Manage a farm for a year
• Stop Disasters Simulator – Can you protect the world against floods, volcanoes, earthquakes and other nasty stuff?
• Sim Sweat Shop – What is it really like working in a sweat shop in a less economically developed country?
• An idea for setting web based games for homework activities

 

Games Based Learning to help Transition between Primary to Secondary Education:

• 

  The Musselburgh Grammar School Guitar Hero Transition Project – Background Information and Timeline
• MGS Guitar Hero Transition Project – Part Two: The Virtual Battle of the Bands
• Guitar Hero Showcase: I love it when a plan comes together!
• Musselburgh Guitar Hero Project Features in the Times Educational Supplement
• Cluster Project that plays to all talents.
• SLF 2008: Enriched Assessment for Enriched Enquiry

In East Lothian we are rolled out this project to all P7 classes across the county. The 2009 version of the project will used Guitar Hero World Tour for the XBox. World Tour is particularly good as there is more than one instument, which provides more choise of students.

Partnership with Parents:

• Internet Safety and Responsible Use: How to set family settings on games consoles

 

The Use of the Nintendo DS

Some of the titles mentioned:

• Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?
• Big Brain Academy
• My Word Coach
• Maths Training
• My French Coach
• Hotel Dusk - A good narative driven game to encorage reading and provide a context for other work
• Nintendogs - A great game to provide a context for learning (Aberdeenshire have been doing some fantastic work using this game in P2)
• Drawn to Life - Being used in P3 to develop writing and storytelling skills

The Use of the Sony PSP

Lots of good information on how the PSP can be used for education on the ConnectEd website. Hot Brain for the PSP is a similar to lots of the Brain Training title you can get for the DS.

Also have a look at SUMS Online - they make great software for computers and other handheld devicces includeing the PSP.

Storage Solutions for Games Consoles

ConnectEd have made a fantastic storage solution for the PSP – hopefully they will also soon have one on the market for the Nintendo DS.

The Use of the Nintendo Wii

Some of the titles mentioned:

• Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (currently being used in SfL)
• Endless Ocean (A great game to provide a context for learning)
• Wii Sports
• Mario and Sonic at the Olympics (A great game to provide a context for learning)
• Dancing Stage
• My French Coach

Graphic Novels

• Classical Comics
• Manga Shakespeare

 

Games Design

• Mission Maker
  
• 2Simple DIY is also an excellent game for encouraging games Design in the early years. (you can see my efforts here)

Exergaming:

• Wii Sports
• Dance Mats (Zig Zag Dance Mats)
• EA Active Sports

Other Links:

• Learning and Teaching Scotland Consolarium
• Learning and Teaching Scotland
• Ideas Network Scotland: Innovation and Development in Education

Tynecastle High School – Staff CPD / Residential

As a teacher is not often that you get enthusiastic about the thought of getting up early on a Saturday morning to go to work!

However, yesterday I was asked to go along and present the early morning 09.30 opening presentation at Tynecastle High Schools annual staff CPD event. The difference between the Tynecastle event and most other staff CPD events that I’m asked to go and present at is simple.

The staff had already been at the CPD event for the last 18 hours which had included an overnight stay. Over half of the Tynecastle staff had volunteered to take part in this event which included teaching staff, support staff and two Dutch teachers that the school is twinned with.

This was the fifth time the school had organized such an event and I was delighted to be asked along to contribute.

One of the nice things about Tyncastle is that its about to move into a brand new school. This combined with a committed staff and a new headteacher (only been in post for 6 weeks) means that there really are exciting times ahead for Tynecasle. I really wish them the best of luck in the future and thank them for making me feel so welcome on Saturday morning.

Anyway, I focus of my presentation was on New Tools for Teachers. I won’t post the slides (although I have emailed a copy to the school) as they are similar to recent presentations. However, the links that I mentioned are below:

1. The use of ICT

Generators Use generators to liven up your lessons and to set learning / home learning objectives in a more creative way. Some good examples include:

• Fodey – Includes the famous wizard text and the newspaper generator
• Wordle – Turn paragraphs of text into beautiful work clouds (try it with your exam syllabus departmental development plan or anything else you can think of!)
• Smoke Signal Generator - Make smoke signals come out of your location.

2. 21st Century Students

21st century students are a new bread of student. They exist in a high tech, multimedia and glamorized world. We need to be prepared for this in our classrooms.

Tips:

• Think about your own on-line presence (social networking, ex-directory in the phonebook, be carful what you post etc…)

• Make sure you know what resources your students have at home. For example how many of them have a computer with Internet access? How many have the capacity to play an mp3 file? How many have a games consol? If you don’t know this information how will you set appropriate and imaginative home learning tasks and get a real understanding of prior learning?

• Knowing your students also means you can set appropriate assessment tasks.

3. The Basic Tools Search Tips and good search engines:

• Use the Advanced Google Search – remember you can use this to get specific file type returns such as just PowerPoint or shockwave flash (animation) files.

• Quintura provides a really good visual search – excellent to use with children on project work.

• Google News – searches the most up-to-date news web sites

Images

• Don't forget Advanced Google Image Search

• Flickr can often provide really good and powerful images that can be used in education without breach of copyright.

• BigHugeLabs lets you do all sorts of things with images such as make motivational posters.

• The BBC Day in Pictures – great starter or discussion activity.

• The BBC 3 minute news bulletin – children like to watch the news if you give them the chance!

3. The audience tools

• Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, podcasts and wikis allow you to quickly publish information to the Internet.
  
• Most importantly they can be used as an alternative to traditional assessment and give the children a real sense of audience.
  
• Use these tools to make your own World Wide Wall Display. Some Good Blogging Tools include wordpress, blogger and typepad.
  
• Audacity is a free audio editing piece of software that will also w you to edit voice and audio recordings. It is also available as a Portable App – which means you can run it off a memory stick.
  
• Think about getting your students to write Wikipedia articles.

4. On line CPD

• Find on-line CPD Opertunities - CPD Find
• Record your CPD - CPD Reflect
• Dowload CPD - LTS iTunesU
• Drip Feed CPD - ICT in Education (part of the LTS online service)

5. Finally

Please leave any comments and feedback from the presentation below.

I also presented a workshop to a small group of staff on Personal Learning Networks. This was basically a repeat of my presentation at the Scottish Leadership Summer School and you can find the slides and links here.

After I had finished my input I stayed on to listen to a presentation from Professor Brian Boyd on A Curriculum for Excellence – more on this later…

BrainPop Teachmeet Movie

As many of you know, Moby is a personal friend of mine and I get on alright with Tim as well (although he can be a bit boring!). So, when I asked them if they would consider making short movie to explain exactly what Teachmeet was all about I was delighted when they agreed. We premiered it at Teachmeet SLF09.

The Teachmeet movie is available on YouTube to embed in blogs and on other websites. It will also be available for other Teachmeets and the nice guys at Brainpop have agreed to change the logo at the end for future events.



I received a preview of the movie halfway down my epic cycle of the USA and Canada this summer and was laughing out loud when I noticed it was my name at the bottom of the letter! I’ve also been struggling to keep it a secret ever since.

Teachmeet SLF09 – update and arrangements

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past few weeks then you will know that this week is the Scottish Learning Festival (SLF). Over the past few years Teachmeet has become the most popular fringe event associated with the SLF and this year promises to be another great evening.

Importantly, Teachmeet is organized by teachers for Teachers and is about what goes on in the classroom.

Although I have always been an active member of the Teachmet Community this year I’ve had a bit more of a roll in organizing the event and this is quick blog post just to go over some of the last minute arrangements. Please share and reproduce  this blog post with your personal learning network.

Teachmeet SLF09 up-Date

1. Teachmeet is Full

Teachmeet is now full – we can no longer accept any more people to the Teahmeet Event.

2. Venue

Teachmeet will be taking place at the BBC just over the road from the SECC. We are very grateful to the BBC for sponsoring the venue and also the AV equipment. This has been a huge help and if you have not been to the BBC Scotland buildings before, when you arrive I’m sure that you will agree that this is an impressive venue.

3. Security

Security at the BBC is tight – they have the list of names from the Wiki as of 9am on Monday 21st September. If you have added your name after this time then you are to late to attend – if your name is not on the list then you will not be able to get access to Teachmeet. Sorry about that. Please do not waste everyone’s time coming to the BBC and trying to get into the venue.


4. Timing

It’s a un-conference so everything is subject to change. But a rough timetable might look something like this:

• Arrive at BBC and networking18.00h
• Introduction 18.20h – 18.30h
• Presentations (part 1) 18.30h – 19.30h
• Break / round tables / learning conversations etc… 19.30h – 20.00h
• Presentations (part 2) 20.00h – 21.00h
• Depart BBC for TeachEat

5. Presenters

We have a fine line up of potential presenters at this years Teachmeet SLF – remember you might not get asked to present. Presenters are picked at random from a giant fruit machine!

If you are picked to present then it is up to you how you present to the audience and its also up to audience if they decide to listen or not! You can use PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, just speak, sing a song or show something that you have made / done.

Remember there will be in Internet Connection – but if things are not working on the night be prepared to wing it.

If you are using presentation software eg PowerPoint or Keynote if you email me your presentation before Wednesday morning we can make sure it is pre-loaded on the laptop to save set up time. email presenation to olliebray (at) gmail (dot) com


6. Active Participation

If you are attending teachmeet you have to be prepared to contribute. This doesn’t mean present BUT you must be prepared to network and engage in conversations.

You may also be picked to complete a challenge in a group of five – you will find out more about this on the night.

Finally, be prepared to make a pledge – more information on the Wiki.

7. WiFi

We are having some problems with WiFi that the BBC are working hard to get sorted out before the evening. But this might mean that we only have a limited number of network passes. 3G Coverage is good in the BBC so if you have a dongle, iPhone etc… bring it along as this might really help out.

8. Filming

Filming is not allowed inside the BBC. However the evening will be captured by an official BBC camera person and there will be a flashmeeting of the event. We will also capture the audio of each presenation.


9. Hospitality

There will be drinks and nibbles at the BBC that have been sponsored by a wide variety of sponsors – thank you very much! There will also be a TeachEat after the event at The Koh-I-Noor.

Taxi’s will leave the BBC at 09.10 to take us to the Teacheat Venue.

If you have put your name down for TeachEat BUT you will be no longer attending then please take your name off the TeachEat list on the wiki.

Hospitality at the BBC has been covered by the Teachmeet Sponsors but you may need to make a donation towards TeachEat.

10. Conference Tag’s etc

The Teachmeet tag for the Scottish learning Festival is #TMSLF09 – please make sure that you tag all photographs, blog posts and tweets.

As well as this helping us capture the event we want to use these crowd sourced comments to produce an on-line newspaper of Teachmeet shortly after the event.

There will be a Twitter Back Channel during the event.

11.Finally

What have I missed?

Please re-tweet and re-blog this post to get the message out!

See you Wednesday!

cartoonster.com – a great website to introduce animation to children

Cartoonster is a great little website that I found out about recently on how to create simple animations.

Its fun to use and talks about creating storyboards, perspective, flip book animation and lots more. I think it would be a great classroom resource for anyone wishing to introduce animation to a class of children.

Would love to know if anyone has used this with a class?

'Bing and Ping' - useful or not?

I have to admit to being a bit of a Google fan I use gmail, google docs and google reader extensively. I love Google Earth and Google tends to be my search engine of choice.

However, I have been impressed with Bing (the Microsoft Search engine) and was interested to read that they are planning to add a feature that will quickly allow you to share your search results with others via Twitter, facebook or email. I have no idea why they haven’t included MSN or Windows Live status up-date in the list. The new feature is called ‘Bing and ping’.

I think this has got some potential - I wonder how long it will be until Google do a similar thing.

New iPod Nano – huge classroom potential

To be honest I was a little bit disappointed with the Apple announcements on the 9th September. I wasn’t expecting to see the Apple Tablet but I was expecting the new iPod Touch to have a camera. Gizmodo offers some suggestions for this – what do you think?

However, I really like the new version of iTunes, particularly the App management feature and I love the look of the new iPod Nano. I think it’s got a huge amount of potential in the classroom.

So, in case you have been sleeping under a rock for the last few days. Here is a bit of an overview of the new features of the nano

Video: the new iPod nano now has a built-in video camera that lets you record video and to share it with people though iTunes to the internet via a number of social networking platforms including YouTube and Facebook. One disadvantage for schools is that the new nano does not take stills. I think this is a bit of a shame?

Pedometer: the new iPod nano now doubles as a Pedometer. It uses the built-in accelerometer to keep track of your steps and help you meet your fitness goals. The built in software allows you to create a daily step goal or you can set it to ‘Always On’ so it counts all the steps you take, all the time. This could be great for health and wellbeing and collecting real data in schools.

Voice notes: the new iPod nano has a built-in microphone that lets you capture an audio recording. Think about the possibilities for recording thoughts, learning, achievements or even a traditional classroom lecture

FM Radio: the new iPod nano includes an FM radio.

There are still a lot of people asking ‘why would Apple put an FM tuner into an iPod?’ After all they could have done this years ago – but have always refused to? The answer it appears comes from iTunes-Tagging. As well as being able to live pause a radio stream you can also tag tracks that you are listening to on the radio by hitting the center button.

Why is this important? Well, if the radio station supports tagging, the information about the song will be saved and you can see the list of songs that you have tagged on iTunes. Guess what! There is then also an option to buy these songs! Very clever Apple.

For me one of the most powerful things about the new nano is that after Christmas 2009 there will literally be 1000’s of these little devices in school classrooms. How can we support teachers, give them ideas and encourage them to use the technology that will soon be in the pockets of a lots of children?

Anyone got plans to use the new iPod Nano with a class?

Wall Wisher: as a home learning activity

I really like reading Kenny O'Donnell blog about what he gets up to in his geography classroom. If I was still teaching geography I think this would be my number one resource to help me gather ideas and practice on teaching geography in Scottish schools. If you’re a Scottish Geography teacher and you don’t follow Kenny’s blog then get it in your RSS feed and subscribe to up-dates on Twitter.

One of the nice things that Kenny has done recently is use Wallwisher as a form of home learning for his students.  It’s a very powerful and very simple idea and that is what makes it so effective.

Wall Wisher is a website that allows you to leave virtual ‘post it’ notes in one place on the web. As well as text you can also embed hyperlnks, pictures and video.

Kenny set his class the following task,

"You are allowed ten minutes research time. After this, share one fact (or more) with the class about the Amazon rainforest that you didn't know before. Credit your sources (e.g. Found in wikipedia)"

Students then had to post their fact on the class wall wisher site as homework and credit the source where the fact had been obtained from.

Even though this is a very simple idea it encompasses so many key and important skills for children. First of all they have to find the information (search), then they have to read the information from a variety of sources (research), then they have to pick an interesting fact (moderation) and then they have to post what they have found (technological competence). All of these key skills are combined with the fact that wall wisher aggregates all of the class finding into one place. This turns this activity into a social and therefore highly engaging activity for children.

The final result is a beautiful wall of interesting facts and figures that can now easily be manipulated and sorted on a computer screen or Interactive Whiteboard. As well as being worthwhile in itself the activity also provides a good place to start the next lesson (progression anyone?).

A great piece of work where the idea could be transferred to a number of other areas of the curriculum. I have embedded the class wall below.

Microsoft Songsmith: now free for UK Teachers

The UK Microsoft Innovative Teacher Blog celebrated its first birthday today and as a reward it looks like Kristen and Stuart are going to be giving away free stuff to members of the Innovative Teachers Network (ITN). Anyone can join the ITN you just have to register on the website to gain access to the resources and discussion forums.

Today they announced that they will be giving away Microsoft Songsmith. If you have not seen Songsmith before it’s a clever little product from Microsoft labs.It didn’t get off to a great start in the UK because it was launched with a pretty awful television / web commercial. But now I’ve had a look at songsmith I think it’s got some potential – particularly now it’s free!

Basically, you (or your students!) sing into your PC and and Songsmith adds a background track of your choosing to create your own song. The songs are produced as .MP3 files, and could be used in a number of ways.

Stuart Ball wrote about possible uses for Microsoft Labs Songsmith here.

To download your free copy of Songsmith, go to the UK Innovative Teachers Network. (You’ll need to register and log in with a free username and password if you don’t have one already.) You’ll see an announcement about Songsmith on the home page and a link for further information and download instructions.

Here is a nice little Songsmith song created by my friend Dan Roberts and his class at Saltash.net community school. Its on Magnets – more songs from Dan’s class here.

If you use Songsmith in your school I would love to hear from you.

You can also download Auto Collage for free from the ITN

Melting men: a nice little lesson starter on climate change

I can’t remember who I picked this link up from (probably @geoblogs?) but I really liked these pictures and the on-line article in the Daily Mail over the weekend. The pictures could easily be used in class as a good starter activity or geographical mystery.

A bit of information about the project below:

A thousand miniature people have slowly melted away in a Berlin square in an effort to draw attention to melting ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica.

Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo carved the figures out of ice and placed them on steps in the central Gendarmenmarkt square where they began to melt within about half an hour.

The installation, Melting Men, was meant to spotlight the World Wildlife Fund's warning that melting ice could possibly cause levels to rise more than 3.3 ft by 2100.

The group warns that the warming of the Arctic will change weather in different parts of the world and increase the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Since 2005, Azevedo has been setting up her Melting Men in various countries around the world. Although originally intended as a critic of the role of monuments in cities, environmentalists around the world are adopting her work as climate change art.

Read more full article here.