OllieBray.com

East Lothian Success at Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Education Forum – Brazil 2009

I’ve been back from Brazil now for about 24 hours –I have to admit trying to think at work today was a little bit taxing at times. I will be posting my observations and thoughts on the conference over the next week or two as well as trying to up-date a back log of promised blog posts.

But in the meantime I was delighted that East Lothian (particularly Musselburgh Grammar) was recognized during the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teaching Awards ceremony and that we were able to pick up second place in the Innovation for Building Community Category.

We were 1st in this same category in the European Awards earlier this year. The project is about using computer games to help children learn and to also provide a context for social interaction as children move between primary to secondary school.

I had a great time in Brazil and met loads of interesting, inspiring and motivated teachers from all around the world.

Merlin John has written about the UK success here.

Digital Games in Schools: a handbook for teachers

European Schoolnet has recently undertaking a major study sponsored by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe on the use of games in schools in Europe. The study included the use of computer games and any online games that run on consoles, computers, handhelds or mobile phones.

As part of the project a book by Dr Patrick Felicia, a researcher at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland has also been bublished.

You can find out more about the book here and also download a copy as a .pdf.

Its full of lots of pictures from Scottish Schools using computer games in the classroom.

Learn Geography for the Nintendo DS

Dreamcatcher Interactive has recently announced ‘Learn Geography’ an educational title for the Nintendo DS. According to the press release it aimed at students between 3rd and 4th Grade in the USA – it doesn’t look like there is a UK version of the game yet?

The game includes the following features:

• Jigsaws - piece together parts of a world map and learn to identify the countries within each continent. There are a number of jigsaw puzzles available for each region.

• Lessons – to help you learn about world geography.

• Timed quizzes and mini games – to test your geographical knowledge.

• Training Mode - to help you practice identifying country names and locations on a world map.

Apparently you work through the lessons as a little green vampire. I think I’ll need to see it before I really pass comment!

(Thanks to the future making serious games blog for the heads up)

Tim Rylands – HHL09 and African Safari

(photo: James Clay)

I’ve heard lots about Tim Rylands and have followed his blog for a long time. Tim is the king of education web links, a clearly a talented teacher, fantastic presenter, PowerPoint Jedi and knowledgeable education consultant. I was lucky enough to meet Tim at Handheld Learning 2009 – I just wish we had more time to chat?

Unfortunately I missed his presentation but I did get a chance to watch the re-run on the Handheld Learning Blip TV channel. The main focus of Tim’s presentation was on the work that he has been doing with the Wii game Wild Earth: African Safari. If you have not played African Safari then it is defiantly worth a look as the education potential of such a resource is outstanding.

Brian McLaren who works as one of our development officers at the Consolarium in Scotland is doing some work with this title at the moment and with time we will get this written up over on the Learning and Teaching Scotland Games Based Learning website.

African Safari is a unique simulation for the Wii based on the PC game from Super X Studios. It is your task to take award-winning pictures of exotic animals in their natural habitats without disturbing them. This includes running with herds of zebra to following hunting lions and scavenging vultures.

The main features of the game include:

• 11 picture-taking missions with both primary and secondary objectives. Inclusding, nvestigating the hyena during a midday thunderstorm, observing giraffes in a hidden valley from a helicopter and meeting a family of elephants as they take care of their young.

• The Wii lets you use the Wii Remote to play from the animal’s perspective in the different games.

• You can come across more than 30 African animals including: cheetah, crocodile, crowned crane, elephant, flamingo, frog, bat, gazelle, giraffe, hippo, hyrax, leopard, lion, ostrich, oxpecker, pangolin, rhinoceros, meerkat, tortoise, trout, vulture, warthog, wildebeest and zebra.

• Multiplayer mode gives players the choice to drive the vehicle or snap photos while playing with anywhere from 1 to 3 friends.

• Photos collected are placed into an animated slide show presentation of informative articles. Players can select their own favorite photos to keep in their portfolio.

• An Impact Meter tracks how much of a disturbance you are to the natural habitat. If you disturb too many animals or get to close to them, your Wii Remote will rumble at varying degrees, making it harder to take a steady picture. If the Impact Meter becomes completely depleted, you fail the mission.

• There are terrific photo opportunities due to the accurately presented flora and terrain from the Serengeti National Park in Africa. This includes shrubs, flowers, kopjes (rocky outcroppings), streams and lakes. The weather also changes through the day

You can view a trailer for the game below (You Tube):

During his presentation Tim games lots of ideas about how he has used African Safari with classes all over the UK. I have embedded the video of Tim speaking at HHL below:

During his talk he mentions the following links, software and web based tools:

• African Safari – for the Nintento Wii (more details here)

• PowerPoint – In particular Tim mentioned how you can write in PowerPoint slides in the 2007 edition, which is useful for note taking within presenations.

• Quotepad - A great tool to take / aggregate  notes from the web or your computer (from anywhere!).

• Vocab Grabber - A great visual thesaurus to get children to experiment with worlds and to improve their language

• Ether Pad - Online collaborative documents – not normally blocked by school firewalls.

• Switheroozoo - A great little website for learning about animals and even creating some of your own – what do you think of my ElicheetaZeb?

• Fighting Maleria - A good website for learning about Malaria and a good example of how very serious citizenship issues can be talked through the medium of computer games.

• Wordle - An old classic but Tim uses it in an interesting way to analyze note taking – watch the video to see how.

The video is well worth 30mins of your time.

Climate Change Resources for Schools - Blog Action Day 2009

 
Today is Blog Action Day.

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance.

First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. Bloggers are asked to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue. By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the Web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action.

More information about Blog Action Day in this YouTube Video below:

As this years themes is climate change and to show my support I thought I would post five of my favorite climate change resources that should be being used in schools.

1. Google Climate Change Resources

Google has produced a great set of on-line resources in the build up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. This includes a series of YouTube videos and Google earth files.

Have look at this youtube video below to find out more:

This is Google maps mash up for sea level change is also a good old favorite of mine!

2. ZeroFootprint - Kids calculator

A great carbon footprint calculator aimed at children - thanks to Mr Evans for showing me this on his excellent blog.

3. The Climate Mystery

The climate mystery from Microsoft and the Discovery Channel is a great resource and set of mini games. But I can’t quite believe how few schools are using it in the build up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

More information here (you tube video):

Also see my previous blog post for links to resources.

4. LogiCity

LogiCity is a game produced by Logicom and The National Energy Foundation. The game set in a 3D virtual city where players are set the task of reducing the carbon footprint of an average resident. As players work their way through the game they will pick up information about Climate Change, and some of the main ways in which everyone is currently contributing to the emissions of the main greenhouse gas (CO2) that causes Climate Change.

It places students in a virtual environment and lets them experiment and experience the potential effect that individual actions can have on the planet before it's too late. Users can travel to the future to see the direct results of their actions in real time by quickly fast forwarding to the year 2066.

Thanks to the serious games blog for the heads up and original post on this.

5. Learning and Teaching Scotland Climate Change Website

There are some great resources on the LTS Climate Change website that are specifically aimed at Scottish Schools.

Finally, don't forget my melting men idea and what is your favorite resource to teach about climate change in schools?

WallE – Using robots as a contextual hub for learning in schools

My friend and colleague Lynne Lewis who is Principal Teacher at Athelstaneford Primary School in East Lothian has been doing a unit of work on robots with her class. Due to the small rural nature of the school Lynn has a composite class of 6, 7 and 8 year old children.

For the first part of the term Lynn has structured her curriculum around robots in particular WallE and used this as a contextual hub for learning. It looks like her class have been learning loads and having great fun.

Lynne sent me this Animoto Video of the class in action which also shows some of the learning activities that the class have been taking part in. I was going to show it at Teachmeet SLF09 but Lynn’s name didn’t get picked from the fruit machine. Luckily she (and her class) have agreed for me to post it up here – I think its excellent!

K-12 On-Line Conference

The K-12 International On-line Conference is now in its forth year and it’s a great example of the concept of drip feed CPD that I was mentioning in a recent post.

All of the conference presentations are available on-line and are released over a series of two weeks while the conference in live. Participants are encouraged to collaborate with the conference presenter by leaving comments, emailing or participating in illuminate sessions.

I will be presenting on our East Lothian Games Based Learning Guitar Hero Project during the ‘kicking it up a notch’ strand of the conference during the final week.

More details about the conference can be found here.

The Changing Learning Landscape

Last week I was involved with a forward thinking professional development event with all the headteachers in East Ayrshire (primary and secondary). The event was based on the ‘Building Windmills Model’ that was developed by Con Morris from the National CPD Team.

The title of the event gets its name from the old Chineas proberb:

‘When the winds of change come, some build walls, others build windmills”

As well as facilitating, I was asked to deliver a couple of sessions on new technology and education. One of the sessions was titled ‘the changing learning landscape’ where I tried to get the audience to think a little differently about new technology, education and schooling.

My message was basically in three parts:

1. How technology and youth culture is changing (linked to recent research)
2. Examples of effective learning due to sound pedagogy and student engagement (linked to the LTScotland Consolarium Project)
3. The notion of digital entitlement and other critical questions for school leaders

The slides that I used during the presentation are embedded below:
 

The Changing Learning Landscape: Building Windmills Ayrshire 2009

View more presentations from Learning and Teaching Scotland.

I also delivered a session on Personal Learning Networks. This was basically a re-run of my workshop at the Scottish International Summer School on School Leadership. You can access resources about personal learning networks for school leaders here.

Andrew Brown was also presenting at the conference and you can find copies of his slides and observations from day one over on his personal website.

Also, if you were one of the headteachers present at the workshop remember you can continue with the discussion via the South Ayrshire Building Windmills GLOW Group – or just send me an email.

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

PGDE Geography Workshop at the University of Strathclyde (September 2009)

Today I was asked to present to the PGDE students at the University of Strathclyde on ICT in Geography. I’ve done these presentations at Edinburgh and Strathclyde for the past few years and really enjoy doing them. It’s a great opportunity to get back and think about the subject that I trained in as a teacher.

I’m not going to post the slides from the talk as they are really a mix of slides from other recent presentations but I have posted the links that I referred to below. If you were in the audience today I would welcome feedback on the workshop either via the comments below or by email (contact details top right).

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.

• The generator blog – thousands of generators
  

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…)

• Take some time to look at the excellent Think U Know website to get yourself up to speed on Internet Safety and Responsible Use. Digital literacy should be the responsibility for all teachers and school staff. 

• More Internet Safety and Responsible Use training information here from a recent talk in East Lothian.
  

• 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.

• Flickr Vision – a great Flickr / Yahoo Maps Mashup that gives s sense of place to images around the world.

• 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!

• Microsoft Deep Zoom - more information here

PowerPoint or PowerPointless

• Seek advice from the children on the design of your slides.

• Highlight key words

• Think about hyper linking keywords to on-line dictionaries (often on-line dictionaries also allow children the opportunity to ‘play’ the word to them)

• Put in catch up slides and consider using PowerPoint as a simple form of differentiation.

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 allow 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.

My Higher Geography MP4 and MP3 revision files are available here.

Think about getting your students to write Wikipedia articles.

5. The Creative Tools

Comic Brush – On-line comic book creator (a bit like Comic Life – but free!)

Pixton – Sophisticated on-line comic book creator

Go Animate – Robust on-line combined on-line / animation software

Movie Maker - Free video editing software for the PC

6. Cross Curricular Tools

Google Earth – Watch my 15 minute mini-note from Teachmeet NorthEast on how to use Google Earth in the Classroom here.


7. EDUtainment (learning through play)

Good case studies of games based learning available on the LTS Consolarium website:
here are 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

 

8. Don't stop learning

The future of CPD is on-line:

• Find CPD opertunities using CPD Find

• Record your CPD using CPD reflect

• Download CPD from LTS iTunes U

• Take part in a CPD event in GLOW (eg: Glowing Thursday’s?)

Develop your personal learning network by finding out more about:

• Teachers TV – good classroom and professional development resources

• Slideshare – A place to up-load and view PowerPoint and other presentations

• Microsoft Innovative Teachers Network – join and collaborate with teachers globally

• Twitter –

  A micro blogging service. You can follow me here.

9. Finally

Please leave any comments and feedback from the presentation below.