Winter Olympics 2010 Teaching Ideas and Resources: Introduction

I’ve never really understood why schools don’t capitalize on the media, real-time and international events more within their curriculum planning?

For example why do some schools teach Fairtrade in June when UK Fairtrade Fortnight is normally the last week in February and the first week in March? Or why do we teach children about HIV and Aids in October when World Aids Day is always the 1st December? Don’t get me started on Pi Day (14th March 2010), World Water Day (22nd March 2010) and World Health Day (7th April 2010).

Anyway the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, Canada provides a great opportunity to capitalize on a high profile sporting and media event.

Over the next week I’m going to share some resources that I have found which might be useful for teachers wanting to teach about the Winter Olympics. Or better still use the Games as a contextual hub for learning and act as a springboard to introduce and teach about other aspects of the curriculum.

I’ll also be telling you a little more about a Consolarium Games Based Learning project that I’m working on with Gavinburn Primary School.

If your starting to think about your Curriculum planning for 2010 / 2011 don’t forget to try and link in long standing national and international events. Learning at Teaching Scotland produces a useful calendar of these over on the Enterprise in Education website.

Comments

[Rina Liddle]

Send your video clips, taken by your cell phones or any other video device, of the Olympic, Paralympic, Torch Relay and Celebrations to weRwatching2010 [at] gmail.com to participate in my video art installation. Video clips will be projected onto the side of a building in downtown Vancouver during the games. See details at www.liddlethought.blogspot.com
Thanks, and pass it on!

[Dawn Hallybone]

I agree Ollie - the day that the Winter Olympics starts the whole school is having an Olympics day with related activities as well as using the Wii.
We also have a link school in Vancouver and have set up a blog so that both schools can add to and share what they are doing now and also for us in 2012.
Great post!

[Alan Parkinson]

Given the current weather I think there'll be more of an interest in winter sports this time round. We'll be adding some links to Planet Sport on the GA website too:
http://geography.org.uk/projects/planetsport

Just been looking at iPhone APP Store and, as you'd expect, there's already a few on there related to the Winter Olympics...

Bit of a thaw here in Norfolk today, so working on a few things related. Have you seen Tony Cassidy's latest iPhone app idea - nice !