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.
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.
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.
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.
Before I was directed to the article I had never heard of Smarta before but its 60 second interview ideas seems like a great way to find out more about UK start ups.
The website also contains a wealth of information, advice and interviews for small business. There is even a section on how to do the killer pitch or presentation. This website and the resources within would be a great resource for anyone teaching business education or enterprise in schools.
Following my longest ever commute
to work. (Got up in Vienna at 4.45am, taxi to train
station, train to airport, flight to London, flight to Edinburgh, bus to car,
drive to Livingston - I finally arrived at the conference venue a whole hour
before my presentation was due to start.)
Jenny MacNair (Whitecraig Primary School) and I had been asked by Veronica Brunton (our East Lothian Curriculum
for Excellence Development Officer) to present on some of the work we had been
doing in the Musselburgh Cluster on Games Based Learning.
We concentrated on some of
the philosophy behind computer games in education, web-based computer games for
home learning and our Guitar Hero Transition Project. I also briefly spoke
about some of the work we have been doing with Nintendo DS’s in maths and
modern foreign languages.
The slides that we used in Fridays presentation are embedded below:
In
East Lothian we are rolling out this project to all P7 classes across
the county. The 2009 version of the project will use Guitar Hero World
Tour for the XBox. World Tour is particularly good as their is more
than one instrument, which provides more choice of students.
Last week I had the pleasure
of attending the Microsoft European Innovative Teachers Forum in Vienna, Austria.
More than 150 education policymakers and teachers from 40 countries across
Europe attended the Vienna event, hosted by Microsoft, to share ideas, experiences and best practices on
integrating technology and innovative teaching into the curriculum.
I had a fantastic week, I listened to some interesting presentations, I was
enthused by some great people and won
first prize for the Innovation in the Community Category.
This is a great achievement for the UK, particularly Scotland and East Lothian. I also hope that my contribution to the
forum last week will start to impact globally on the creative ways that teachers
should be using ICT to support learning and to build relationships with
children.
I was joined during the last
week by the three other winners of the UK Innovative Teachers Forum. Mandeep
Atwal (Mandeep also got a 3rd place in the Innovation in the
Community Category for her ‘Young Voices’ project), James
Kent (Wales)
and Chris
Henderson (Saltash.net). They were all fantastic company during the week.
The biggest problem is they all gave me so many ideas I don’t quite know where
to start!
The UK Contingent was also
accompanied by Kristen Weatherby and Stuart Ball, who are responsible for the Innovative Teachers programme in
the UK. They have already started to blog about the event –
I don’t quite no how they found the time? We were also joined by Sarah Payton
and Elizbeth Goodman (from Futurelab) Sarah ran an excellent workshop on the
Enquiring Minds Project – I’ll write separately about that and the work we
completed.
Finally we were joined by Dan
Roberts also from Saltash.net community
Collage who delivered an excellent keynote presentations.
I’ll write up more detailed reflection
of the event over the next few days. But I would like to publically thank everyone
for their best wishes and support over the last week and for award!
In particular, I would like to tank all of the
other teachers who were involved in the initial Musselburgh Guitar Hero Transition
Project. You were all fully
credited within the virtual classroom tour. I would also like to thank the
Musselburgh Headteachers for agreeing to take the risk and East
Lothian for having the vision to support the scaling up of the
project to all 46 schools within the Authority. I can’t wait to be involved in
the next stage of the projects evolution!
On Friday we had the second training session today with the
East Lothian Teachers who are taking part in our 2009 Guitar Hero Transition Project.
Building on the success of the pilot
project in the Musselburgh Cluster last year we are scaling the project up
to include all clusters within East Lothian.
The first part of the morning gave cluster teachers a chance
to come together to work on their project planning and to exchange ideas.
Next David Gilmore
gave a brief overview of how to use Google Sites
for education we hope that schools will think about using Google Apps, GLOW
and other Web 2.0 tools to help collaborate during the project.
Finally, I gave a short presentation on how we developed the
Secondary Transition morning and also shared some of the evaluation results
from our 2008 project. The slides I used during the presentation are embedded
below.
Below are a copy of my slides and on-line handout for the break
out session that I ran at the NAACE Strategic
Conference in Blackpool on the 4th
March 2009.
In East Lothian we are rolling out this project to all P7 classes across the county. The 2009 version of the project will use Guitar Hero World Tour for the XBox. World Tour is particularly good as their is more than one instument, which provides more choise of students.
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.
We are
currently using Buzz
the Schools Quiz and are looking forward to evaluation Buzz the Hollywood Quiz as soon as
we get a copy? I am sure that there will also be Education Version of Buzz for
the PS3 coming out at some point?
Games Design
We have a
site license for Mission
Maker and will be exploring the possibilities for using this game to develop
literacy and International links over the next 12 months.
2Simple DIY is also an excellent game for encouraging games Design in the early years. (you can see my efforts here)
Recent Comments