In this edition: I report back from my trip to the World Innovation Summit for Education in Qatar; Rick, my Year 5 colleague, explains about how we use Voicethread; you canbecome a 1930’s newsreader; I share an online tool for making GIANT postersand be sure to check out the debate about whether technology is in fact making children better writers, not worse.
I have been lucky enough to have developed the use of the Nintendo Wii and DS consoles in our school. We have used the Wiis in our year group in a number of different ways across the curriculum. However the use of Endless Ocean as an integral part of our Sealife curriculum unit has really helped me better understand the role consoles can play in the classroom.
As you may have read in my call for Consoles for Classrooms, I believe that the console should have a well deserved place in the primary classroom as a media platform. But it is as much about seeing potential beyond the games. As soon as you get beyond the “console games engage kids” you start to explore ways to take the game out of the console. Make the most of the potential it has in the wider curriculum, in the unit or topic and in your classroom.
Endless Ocean was central to what we were doing, it wasn’t a bolt on or extra, we had planned for it to be a driving force. But I think what made it so successful and the unit to be so “joined-up” was the thought we gave to what we would do in addition to the game. You can see from the images of sealife work and our loooong display board that we fully embraced the opportunities Endless Ocean and Sealife offered.
The right sort of game will engage the children in your class – in my opinion you have to take that as a given. It is what you do with that engaged group of children that counts. Here are some take-aways:
Games can be used in isolation – they can be just as effective in single lessons.
Don’t dwell on just the game – think beyond it, how can you leverage that enthusiasm.
Make time for your own play. Set up a different save profile, that way you can stay one step ahead.
Plan ahead, but also decide not to plan! Discovery in gaming is an important part of the experience – sharing the unexpected with your class is amazing.
Mimic the immersive nature of the gaming environment in your classroom.
Build displays that develop with time as the unit/game progresses.
Allow the children to play independently as well as in small groups.
I suppose the clearest message from my experiences I can give is to leverage the children’s enthusiasm in other learning opportunities and as the blog title suggests take the game out of the console.
UPDATE: I have had an email from a teacher in Melbourne, Australia who has explained that it was her students who messed up the Paris map. It was by accident and not at all malicious, they were trying to create a Maths Map of their own for Melbourne. I am relieved to hear that it was non-malicious, but it has highlighted some important issues for me.
Last night I checked in with the Shapes in Paris Maths Map to check to see if others had added any other placemarks or activities. Initially I couldn’t find the map – only “Maths in Melbourne” which I hadn’t created. This is when I uncovered the sabotage.
Unfortunately “medg” (from their Google profile – last edited by…) had moved all of the Paris placemarks to Melbourne in Australia. They were able to do this because I set the maps to be (a) Public and (b) Open to editing. As the placemarks are location specific it was a long process to find the exact points the activities referred to.
I have managed to recover the map and even add some new placemark activities about Shape and Space to extend the ideas to “51 Shape Activities”. I suppose I should have seen something like this coming, but never expected someone to go to so much trouble to disrupt the resource. As John Johnston remarked maybe not naive of me just “uncynical“.
The Maths Maps have been getting a huge amount of traffic. They are in the public domain and I presume that they can be found in searches of user generated Google maps. The three maps have had over 60,000 hits combined and the Paris map over 25,000. Unlike the “Interesting Ways” series the maps are discoverable and openly public. I think that explains the traffic (which I know is not teachers) and also the higher risk of someone messing them up for a laugh.
I still subscribe to the powerful process of crowd-sourcing to generate resources but will be closing the maps to open collaboration because of the higher traffic and higher risk. If anyone wants to contribute some ideas, and I really encourage you to help, then please just send me your GMail and I will add you as an editor. I think this is the right thing to do rather than always backing up and leaving it open to anyone to mess around with – after all I think that the bulk of the traffic is the public, and not educators.
Unfortunately sometimes you have to be honest and admit that some ideas will remain just ideas. I have decided to step away from the online reporting project using Google Docs as I just can’t find the time I want to give it.
It is not about the validity of the idea of using Google Docs for reporting to parents it is just about time. Our first half term was a great unit of work on Sealife and just the normal routine and timetable of things took over.
I understand that my blogposts have suggested I was starting it this year, and although I have support from school about the concept I have had no extra time to get it started. The discussions and research over the last year have been hugely interesting as to the place of cloud computing applications in school administrative tasks. It does make me think about how schools will need to better support teachers in the new roll out of online reporting that will take place in the next few years. The processes will need to be looked at closely.
I believe Simon Widdowson (@porchester) is going forward with the idea and it will be worth following his future exploits.
For me, perhaps another year, perhaps at another school.
Our current curriculum theme is Health and Fitness, which has naturally been led by Science and PE. This week you would have delighted in the image of me attempting the double cross skip!
It comes with a pretty high difficulty rating! We were all outside doing a big year group skipping session which has proven a lot of fun over the last few years.
I did manage it though and along with some of the children I think I am getting better each week. It is all part of our efforts to get the children enjoying exercise and keeping active.
We have been learning about food groups today and also different fruit for healthy smoothies we are designing. Our specialist art teacher is covering the design of packaging and we are looking at the smoothie ingredients.
To assist with this we have been doing fruit tasting and exploring the various nutritional value of fruit. Smoothie Operatoris a lovely little smoothie simulation tool that we have had fun using. From the Science Year website (which is well worth exploring), it allows you to create a smoothie from all sorts of different ingredients from the different food groups.
We challenged our children to make the most UNHEALTHY smoothie they could. Once blended (and we have done the little blending dance, play the game you’ll see!) you can then find out about the various levels of SALT, SUGAR, FATS etc. Useful for the children to see the colour coding as it is the same on most food packaging in the UK. We then tried to make a super HEALTHY smoothie as well.
Today we looked at the food pyramid and the children made their own using SMART Notebook. We reinforced this with a couple of little games that they really enjoyed. The first wasMonster Nutritionfrom the Nutrition Explorations site run by the US Dairy Council. It is a bright and fun site, and the Monster Nutrition game has more depth than most.
You have to grab different food from the conveyor belt in the foreground and fire it at Mungo the nutrition monster! When he gobbles it up it gives you information about the food group and then some further multiple choice questions. The kids enjoyed this one and had to choose something from each part of the food pyramid to progress.
Another US site we have used is MyPyramid.gov and the Blast Off game which asks the children to plan a whole day of meals and exercise in order to fuel a rocket to Planet Power. There is great depth and detail in the information provided in the game. It is engaging and reinforces: food groups; nutritional values; balanced diets and the need for the right sorts of food throughout the whole day.
I like the fact the children need to consider the different amounts from each food group and strike a balance with them all. They can also choose from a range of exercises to go along with their meals. As the children add their food items the game alerts them to alternatives to butter for example, or congratulates them for choosing whole grain. All good messages provided in a very good little game.
I just thought I should share these with you as they are new on my radar for this year. Don’t worry, more skipping updates soon!
