During the two learning with games sessions at the Games Based Learning Conference 2010 we heard from a number of great practitioners who are promoting the use of games in the classroom. All of these presentations are available to watch on video over on the Games Based Learning Channel.
My favorites included:
Gillian spoke passionately about how she has embedded games based learning in her school with a particular emphasis on the planning stage.
She also showcased a number of pieces of outstanding work that had been produced by her students which spanned across three projects the Sony Eye pet in the Early Years, Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics in Primary 4 and 5 (7 and 8 year olds) and Guitar Hero in Primary 7 (10-11 year olds).
Tim Rylands (www.timrylands.com)
As always Tim did a high energy presentation that focused on how young people could use a variety of web based tools to make games. During the course of his 20-minute presentation he also had four children make a game using 2Simples 2DIY. It was great to see their final creations showcased at the end of his presentation. Tim also covered some great tools that could be used to help develop games and other immersive environments including Microsoft Kodu and Microsoft Photosynth.
He also managed to convince me to throw a giant orange ball out into the audience (I apologize again to the lady who’s water I knocked over!)
Ewan MacIntosh (www.notosh.com)
Ewan summed up day one in his normal thought provoking way. I particularly liked his reference to Henry Jenkins' New Media Literacy's. Which he summed up as:
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Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
- Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
- Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
- Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
- Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
- Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
- Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
- Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
- Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
- Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
- Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
Dawn Hallbone and Nick Hughes (Redbridge Games Network)
Dawn and Nick gave an enthusiastic overview of the progress that have made with Games Based Learning in Redbridge over the past 12 months. In particular they have made great uses of COTS Games for a variety of projects and one off events. Dawn has also provided a comprehensive write up of the Games Based learning Conference over on her website.
Julian Barrell (Simply Efficient Software)
I was worried that Julian might give a bit of a sales pitch about Simply Efficient Software but I was more than impressed with his talk and also how he had used ICT creatively as a classroom teachers. I loved the way that he developed playful learning by getting very young children to build a cave in his classroom and then to explore it using the roamer / bee-bot attached at a digiblue camera. The software that he has developed for tracking children and to help teachers gather ICT evidence to satisfy the inspectorate was also impressive.
Jo Armitage (London Borough of Hounslow)
Jo talked about her Olympics project using the Nintendo Wii - its grown massively in scale over the last 12 months and I hope that it will continue to grow and evolve in the build up to the 2012 London event.
Glad you got a chance to post this. It makes for a good read :) Thanks!
Posted by: John McLear | May 04, 2010 at 01:49 AM