I ran my hour long session twice during the day, it was titled ”Connected Classrooms“. I based my practical ideas on 4 different connections.

• Student – Student (same class)
• Students – Students (different classes, countries, cultures)
• Teacher – Student – Learning (connecting with our curriculum)
• Teacher – Teacher (using Twitter for CPD)

I tried to keep my presentation simple and coherent, with a clear message about the ways we can use technology to engage learners.

We used the Nintendo Wii and I spent some time playing Endless Ocean and talking about the ways we have used it in our recent topic. I highlighted classroom blogging as a simple means to establish meaningful connections with other classes around the world.

Drawing upon my experiences of Twitter I spoke about why it is the most important CPD I have had. The most important connection we need to facilitate is between students in our own classes. I went into detail about how Voicethread can do this, the ways we have used it in a recent sequence of writing work and why it is one of my classroom cornerstones.

I think technology has the potential to both perpetuate traditional notions of classwork and to in fact smudge the definitions of what independent work means.

If you were one of those attending the sessions, thankyou for joining me and please feel free to leave me a comment about your reactions. I really value your feedback.

Last Christmas we spent our holidays in Australia. It was an amazing trip for me and I would dearly love to return to that part of the world, perhaps on a more permanent basis. When we arrived in Sydney our apartment was not going to be open until later in the day. We had landed about 8am and the prospects of entertaining a 2 year old with all of our luggage still in tow was going to be tricky. But to our rescue came Judy O’Connell and Dean Groom, both of whom I had known from our various online networks but had never met before. Judy kindly picked us up from the airport and we went back to her house where we were able to unwind for a little bit. Dean picked us up later and took us on to our apartment in Manly. I am so grateful for that amazing gesture of kindness – it got our trip off to a great start and illustrates the trust that can be developed through online connections.

The TeachMeet community has had an incredible 2009 and I have been fortunate enough to have been to five events in person. The BETT show TeachMeet began the year and I was just amazed by the scale of things and the huge interest from the commercial sector. In May Stuart Sutherland and I organised and ran the first TeachMeet in the Midlands, hosted by the National College for School Leadership. It was incredible to be part of the full organisation and we are hoping to hold another in 2010. I was delighted to be invited to do a mini-note at TeachMeet North East London and also to organise TeachMeet Channel 4 to bookend their education conference. In September I was able to return to the Scottish Learning Festival and another TeachMeet held in the BBC Scotland building. Along with popping into various Flashmeetings I also attended Dai Barnes and Doug Belshaw’s hugely successful EdTechRoundup TeachMeet which was held online. This added another amazing dimension to this incredible professional development event. With Stuart Ridout, I am currently organising TeachMeet Bett 2010 as well as TeachMeet Takeover – it looks like it should kick off another inspiring year of grass roots professional development.

When you get an invitation from royalty to a conference in another country you can be excused for being a little sceptical. But the inaugural World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Qatar was no joke. I was delighted to be included in only 1000 of the invited delegates from all over the world. A handful of edubloggers were invited but not many actually attended. It was a privilege to represent primary school teachers from the UK and be part of the wider discussions. Although the word “innovation” was in the conference name, little was done to “walk the walk” in terms of the communication processes used. That said, I blogged and tweeted my way through the event to encourage remarks and comment from a wider audience. I hope that if there is a 2010 event that more will be done to encourage delegates to share what they experience with a world audience.

This time next year I will have spent a term in a new job! After a bit of grumbling I stumbled upon a Deputy Head Teacher job that I believed would be a great opportunity. I spent the return flight from Qatar writing the letter, which got me an interview. The day and a half interview was a great challenge and I was thrilled to be offered the job. I will be starting as Deputy Head Teacher in the Summer term. I have been in my current post for about 8 years and I have been through some great times, but it has long been time for me to move on and face a new challenge. As part of the interview I asked readers of this blog and followers on Twitter to help with some testimonials. I printed them off and found a moment in the formal interview to hand them out to the panel – it was an amazing set of references and I have no doubt helped secure the job. Thankyou to everyone who contributed to the 20,000 character job reference.

During 2009 I continued my involvement with multi-touch technology in the classroom. At BETT in January I met with representatives from SMART and organised an early trial of the SMART Table in my classroom. After working with it I felt it’s capacity to impact on learning was limited. Sadly the trial was abruptly ended, in my opinion due to an honest and frank account of my experiences I blogged about. Although critical of the SMART Table I was committed to helping SMART improve and develop it as it would directly benefit the wider multi-touch educational technology field. But, alas, they prevented that by taking it away and they did it, in my opinion, to limit the damage caused by my negative posts. I am now a member of the SynergyNet steering group at Durham University who are developing a multi-touch learning project, and met in November of this year for the first time. The developments at Durham are really exciting: multi-touch classrooms, networked tables able to pass media between them and a general focus on the pedagogies that underpin multi-touch enhanced learning.

This academic year we have been doing shorter half-termly topics in Year 5. We have found that although shorter, they are more focused. The first one was Sealife. Built around and inspired by the Nintendo Wii game Endless Ocean. It was a pleasure to work with the children during the 7 weeks as we explored, discovered and learned together. Using an open ended game to drive a topic was amazing to work with and the children were completely engaged and enjoyed every moment.

Maths Maps has been a long time in the making. Years ago I made some Google Earth resources that used the satellite imagery to structure maths activities. With the development of Google Maps and the ability to now collaborate on a map as if it is a document, such as a Google Document, I have been able to realise what I had always imagined with these resources. Each Maths Map is a maths topic with activities located on real life objects visible in the satellite imagery layer of Google Maps. In total the 3 current maps have been viewed 85,000 times, but more importantly the idea has inspired other teachers to begin using Google Maps to produce engaging content for their learners.

This year I finally made the switch to a self hosted blog. With the nudging of Doug Belshaw I bought some space and installed Wordpress, transferred everything from my old blog and have been really happy here in my new home. The most obvious advantage is the personalisation that you can achieve with your own space. There is no limit or other person choosing what you can add or not. You are free to be as creative with your space as you are with what you write. I was pleased to have been nominated by my peers for 6 different Edublog Awards categories this year, thankyou to all those who wrote such kind words in their nomination posts.

I just tweeted about a couple of updates to two different “Interesting Ways” presentations. The IWB resource was started in November 2007 and now there are about 30 different crowd-sourced resources with a huge amount of shared expertise. I prefer not to be too tool-centric, nor do I like the formulaic “100 Awesome things to do with a Cabbage” sort of posts that have littered education blogging recently. In my opinion what sets the Interesting Ways resources apart is that (a) they all begin at zero, they are put out there not as a perfectly formed multiple of 10 lists and (b) they are built by everyone, the crowd, educators explaining and sharing their experiences. They are authored by the community and I feel lucky to be in the position to keep encouraging them along.

A memorable year in lots of different ways and Christmas at home this year has been made really special as my 3 year old son’s excitement has built to a feverish crescendo. I have been able to share in some of that too. I wonder what 2010 will bring? I am looking forward to it already. I wish you all the best for 2010 and hope you continue to join me.

In the recent few days I have come to question the terminology we use. Two things have sparked such curiosity. The first was reading Doug Belshaw’s book “Best of Belshaw” – in which he includes a blog post titled “The problem(s) of 21st century literacy/ies“. The term “literacies” intrigued me and Doug’s quote from Doyle (1994) made me think about the term “games based learning”.

In the last decade a variety of “literacies” have been proposed, including cultural, computer, scientific, technical, global and mathematical. All of these literacies focus on a compartmentalized aspect of literacy. Information literacy, on the other hand, is an inclusive term. Through information literacy, the other literacies can be achieved (Breivik, 1991). In attaining information literacy, students gain proficiency in inquiry as they learn to interpret and use information (Kuhlthau, 1987).

If we continue to use the term Games Based Learning are we just perpetuating a compartmentalised aspect of learning?

Ewan McIntosh underlined my thinking in reference to his recent blog post about the lack of mainstream attention gaming receives and how this impacts negatively upon the use of it in education:

The potential to learn in the game, as well as learn from their production, is lost to all but the most culturally open and connected of educators

In reply to a question on Twitter Ewan said we have to be careful that the terminology doesn’t compartmentalise what is going on when using a game in the classroom- in much the same way the rhetoric of “literacies” has done.

I am undecided, for two reasons.

Part of me knows that when I am explaining about gaming in the classroom to people who have no prior experience, the term “Games Based Learning” helps to succinctly phrase what I mean. It also puts the words “games” and “learning” together.

On the other hand if we set it apart from everything else, if we make the neat little (x)box for it to go in, are we missing the point? Surely it is all really just about learning, in all of its polka-dot and peanut butter flavours and forms – no matter whether it is from a game or from a film.

One day a parent comes into your class and tells you that as a punishment at home their child is banned from using their own games console. The parent knows about the work going on in your class and wants to know what you are going to do about it?

What would you do?

This interesting situation was posed to me recently (some of you might be able to figure out in which context) and is completely fictional. Nonetheless it is a very interesting point for discussion with more and more games based learning work going on in schools.

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.

That is basically what this blog post is proposing, you can read on and find out why I think that, but that is it in a nutshell. You could stop reading right now, but please take away that first sentence, those first 9 words and consider them carefully if you do.

I have made the most of games based learning in my classes over the last 3 years and I passionately believe in the impact on learning it has. We have explored the world of Myst, done stealth written subtraction using Wii Sports Golf and even driven a whole curriculum topic with the sheer joy that is Endless Ocean. I have seen our whole Year 4 year group working with their Nintendo DS consoles and using Maths Training everyday. Besides my own use I am always amazed and inspired by the cadre of great innovators using games based learning.

The children become excited, engaged and wrapped up in their learning. They want to do well, they want to find out more, sometimes they don’t even realise the learning that is taking place because they are so immersed in the places we can take them. They invest in the learning that is going on because the return is something they understand and appreciate.

Radio Daze by Ian Hayhurst
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Gaming on consoles falls into the “Home” bracket and not in the “School” bracket. For some people those brackets need to be separate. Boundaries never to cross. In my opinion, as educators, we need to open our eyes to the potential gaming can have and merge these two realms. We need to leverage the children’s natural engagement and use it to their learning advantage.

Six years ago we installed SMARTBoards throughout the school and I also installed video players. In those six years DVD players have plummeted in price. We wouldn’t be without access to a DVD player now. Broadband in UK schools has become a standard, cheaper, faster and for some countries a basic human right. We wouldn’t be without internet access.

The internet, the DVD player, the class computer are all platforms to deliver content that makes learning fun or more engaging. So why do we not consider a console in that same bracket? They often do a better job.

In many ways I think that console games like Endless Ocean deliver even richer content because it provides a space that can be defined by the learner. The platform that they are delivered on is cheaper – a class Nintendo Wii can be less than £150 (with games). I think it provides amazing value for money in the right hands.

I hope that the Building Schools of the Future project in the UK has found that small amount of money to equip classrooms with consoles. Seems a small drop in the millions that have been invested. Yet that small drop can lead to an endless ocean (sic) of learning. (I nearly deleted that one but it is so cheesy it is staying in!)

Is it suddenly some big surprise that games based learning is engaging our learners? Not to me. If not then why is this type of learning still such a niche. I am going to say it again, I think that every classroom should have a console.

You can take away the first 9 words or the last 3, it is up to you.

Consoles For Classrooms

This main tank, the ‘Kuroshio Sea’, holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and is the largest in the world. Beautiful footage.

After a few weeks of working with the Wii game Endless Ocean in our literacy unit I planned for a descriptive writing task using an “Aquarium View” of one species. Here is what I did to set it up.

(I have the Wii projected onto our SMARTBoard, audio through speakers etc)

1. When the children discover a new or interesting species that would make a good written piece of description, make a note of where it is on your map. Press 1 on the remote to call up the map. I used the Lionfish and the Red Stingray.
2. For your writing task move the boat back to the exact spot of the species you are interested in and dive down.
3. Set up the task by swimming to the creature, highlighting and selecting it using the A button. In Endless Ocean when you selected a creature in this way you zoom into a first person view and focus on it wherever it moves. You don’t have to control the view it will stay locked on until you manually move away by pressing B on the remote.
4. This is our “Aquarium View” the fish moves around and we can remain watching and exploring everything to do with it, without the distraction of moving the diver or trying to follow it.
5. Once we had our “Aquarium View” ready I worked with a small literacy group and spent some time encouraging to the children to just quietly watch the creature move and begin to think of words that might describe it’s behaviour. “Ripples” was a lovely one for the Red Stingray. We gathered these ideas on small pieces of card and had them scattered on the carpet in front of the IWB.
6. In addition to the creature’s movement we described the general physical appearance and also more descriptive words for it’s movement – so the Red Stingray “elegantly ripples“. Reading the factfile for the creature in the game also allowed us to glean some more ideas. (Click on the name once in “Aquarium View”)
7. After some teacher led vocabulary work I set the children off to independently create some short sentences describing the creature. I supported some individuals in this small group at the point of writing.

The children enjoyed writing in this way, they were regularly looking up at the creature in front of them and then returning to their description. It is not surprising really because we saw the same reaction to writing when we used Google Earth to offer children a visual map for their writing.

Controlling the diver and playing the game has been a great motivator and way to engage the children, but this more passive use of the media is equally effective. Due to the accurate, high quality representation of the sealife in the game we were able to just sit back and watch – our very own class aquarium.

Whilst I was gathering ideas for our Sealife unit (centred around the use of Endless Ocean on the Nintendo Wii) I began to think about the use of John Davitt’s Learning Event Generator or LEG for short. Essentially this is a crowd sourced list of learning topics – the DO pile and a list of styles or outcomes – the AS pile.

If you take a look at his site you will see the LEG creates a random combination from these two burgeoning lists – I just generated DO “Glaciation” AS “A Mini Opera” ! John explains:

The idea for the LEG came out of desire to nudge learners (and teachers)  and also to give them permission to move beyond the “comfort zone” of talk-look-listen-write and allow them instead to move across a whole chessboard of learning opportunities.

I decided to adjust the different sets of ideas to suit our sealife topic. Although the full list of outcomes from the AS pile is great, I needed to edit it down to just those which are manageable and clear enough for our Year 5s (9 and 10 year olds)to complete in a single session.

I created a list of sealife that the children have had some experience of or learned about during the last 5 weeks and combined it with the outcomes list in Richard Clarke’s excellent Excel version.

The class were split into groups of 3s and a couple of pairs. Each group had access to a laptop if they needed it. I spent time explaining that today’s session would challenge them and make them scratch their heads. I outlined what we were doing and it helped to just run through the different outcomes from the AS pile – they loved the idea of a finger puppet show.

I then generated the different Fish Friday Challenges – I think in the other class they even had a drum roll for this bit for added tension! I added to the Excel sheet the sentence “Show me what you know, have learned or can find out about…” which helped them to focus. Some of the combinations included:

• A Killer Whale as a 5 slide Photostory.
• A Puffer fish as a heated dialogue between enemies (good to highlight the predators!).
• A dolphin as a cartoon.
• A lionfish in the style of a weather forecast.
• A manta ray as a mime.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the children rise to the challenge of the different tasks – each one requiring a different approach. The children really got into it and took to it with energy and enthusiasm. One girl said 5 minutes in:

Can we do this every week! I love it!

The children were engaged and the anticipation and unexpectedness of the task really helped. The outcomes reflected their commitment and this enthusiasm. I wasn’t necessarily that interested in the outcome as I was keen to see the children work in their group to solve the challenge. But it just blew me away.

This style of activity puts the children on their toes and makes them think laterally about presenting information. As John said we were well out of our “comfort zone” but it is good to know what that other place is like. We need children to face new unexpected challenges and to learn not just from the process but also from the accomplishment of completing it too.

One of the highlights for me was the mime about the manta ray between two children who probably had the biggest challenge. They did an amazing job and I was so proud of them – I asked the rest of the class what they just learned from the mime and they just reeled off facts about what the manta ray eats, how big it is and how wide – even how it moves.

In total we spent about 45 minutes preparing the outcome and then half an hour celebrating their work. Sometimes you spend days or weeks on pieces of work, we busted this out in an hour and it was great. I am sure you can see from some of the examples in the slideshow. (Some of the children had to do video interviews with an expert – hence the Flip cams in the slideshow.)

I hope you can see the potential for any unit of work in school for this sort of approach and urge you to consider including it in your work, why not try it next week?!

The unknown direction we were taking as a class, in terms of our learning, brought about a real energy in the room which pervaded the quality of work too. A great day!

After doing some recapping of the compact method of written subtraction we worked as a whole class with the game. Each child was at their tables with a whiteboard and pen.

• Start by making a note of the length of the hole you are about to play (A). This appears at the top right hand corner when you are teeing off. Get the class to write this down.
• We had a 4 player round to generate lots of questions to practice.
• Choose someone to come out and tee off. When their ball comes to a rest it will show how far to the hole (B). It does not show the length of their shot – so complete the subtraction with the class A – B = C (shot length)
• We repeated this for the other three players.
• As you get your different shot lengths (4 in our case) you are presented with lots of opportunities, such as ordering the shots from longest to shortest, how much further was ? then ? – we used some of these with the whole class after the first group of shots were made.
• With the longer holes you may be able to get another calculation from the 2nd shot – but most of the time the second shot will sail over the hole. This makes it a bit tricky to calculate shot length.

Another direction you could take the game in a maths lesson is to plan for ordering decimals. When the ball lands on the green the game displays how many metres/yards to the pin (hole). It will show it to one decimal place. With four players hitting the green then you have the option of trying to order 4 different distances.

WiiMaths is created by Tristan Methers with funding from the Victorian Dept of Education and Early Childhood Development as part of the Knowledge Bank Next Generation Research Projects. Tristan outlines the investigation into positive and negative numbers in the game of golf and explains:

In Golf names are given for the  number of strokes taken on each hole. If you score the expected amount for a hole that is called a Par. If you get a stroke over the expected amount that is called a Bogey and one stroke under the expected amount is called a Birdie. The number of  strokes under and over and their names are in the table below:

• ALBATROSS  -3
• EAGLE  -2
• BIRDIE  -1
• PAR 0
• BOGEY +1
• DOUBLE BOGEY +2
• TRIPLE BOGEY +3

The students are then given a verbal 9/18 hole golf course to solve and come up with a final score, linking the naming of the strokes to the total score:

Example:

• Hole 1  - Eagle
• Hole 2 – Bogey
• Hole 3 – Par

I think that this is a good example of explaining the maths behind the scoring system itself and would allow a class or small group to practice +ve and -ve numbers in an engaging way.

Why bother?

This games based approach to maths engages the children. It certainly engages my class. They asked me to do some more in the afternoon. More written subtraction! They are switched on by the use of the game and enjoy the challenge of the maths that we packaged up within it. With some successful baseball addition earlier this week too, it is proving effective to use Wii games in this single lesson role.

Are the children better at subtraction because of the game?

Crucially we were able to practice and refine our calculations over a more sustained period in the lesson due to the game. The same occurred with the baseball addition earlier this week. Children were happy to work hard on the maths for longer due to the involvement of the game. If use of the game is combined with solid, clear and supported teaching of the written methods beforehand then it can raise the standard of work in the classroom.

Please share with me any other ways you have used Wii games in support of your maths lessons, as I am always on the look out for more ideas.

(Pic “dangerous walk“ by cinocino)

Manta Ray by Kawa0310
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Lic

The game has been perfect for our work in class as it is so open ended. There is no specific path or “levels” that need to be completed in a certain order. Once you are through the brief tutorial, which covers some of the basic controls, you are free to explore the ocean depths.

These open ended, sand box style simulations provide great learning opportunities for classes.

The currency of progress comes in the form of fish of course, or indeed any marine life you encounter. During our first week we organised a set of 5 activities in our literacy lessons that were rotated (a carousel) throughout the week. These included a teacher led (guided) reading session, some online research on the species we had already found and a group playing the game to explore it for themselves. It is important to allow children time to play it independently or in a small group.

I provided a simple factfile template (differentiated for a couple of levels) that gives the children some structure to their research and has proven useful for them to collate notes from the game. Here is a little video of some of the gameplay you would experience in Endless Ocean.

Each species that is found is recorded in the game’s Marine Encyclopedia (See 2:05 in the film above) which is proving a useful record. I also have lots of fish shaped card and written the names of what we find for display in the classroom. Children can then choose something from the display to go away and research without being tied to the game. I think it is useful to display your progress of discovery in this way. Taking the game out of the console into your room continues the engagement.

When you find a fish in the game you have to interact with it to learn something about it. In the film you will see each species has 3 facts to discover. The longer you interact with the fish and the more frequently you discover them, the more facts are revealed.

The children have been very engaged with the topic so far – we were using the Wii in our first literacy lesson in Year 5. A pretty interesting start to the year for them, not what they were expecting perhaps.

Gigantus and Sphyrnie by
BrittneyBush
Attrib-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Lic

Many of the children have discovered fish during their time playing the game – you may have seen from our class Tweets of our dives we have been excited to find, amongst others, the Japanese Bullhead Shark, a Red Stingray and the Leopard Whipray. The children take great ownership of these discoveries. After I remarked on a certain type of fish I had not seen before, a boy proudly turned to me and stated, “I found that yesterday!”

Their engagement goes beyond the discovery. It continues onto trying to find out about the species in more detail. I think they make a connection between their simulated experience in the game and the desire to find out more. They want to find out more as they have invested something. With a trip to an aquarium planned for later in the term we will hopefully close this loop of experience with real life examples.

The experience of using the game so far shows me that a rich, games based simulation adds an ingredient that is hard to replicate in any other way.

I said in my last post I wanted an edge to our learning that provided moments of shared discovery and we have had many of those. For example, as a group has found a species like the Scalloped Hammerhead or the first sighting of a dolphin we have all downed tools and just enjoyed that moment.

In one shared dive with the whole class we swam away from the coral reef (which we have been learning about too) and in the murky depths I could see a large grey and white tail swishing away from us. We began to realise what it could be and I had to swim to catch up with it…suddenly we were surrounded by a group of Indo Pacific Sailfish. We thought it was a shark. It was a lovely moment of discovery we shared as a class and one that captures what is possible with these games.

You can probably see that these moments offer some excellent opportunities for narrative or recount writing which we have been exploring in the last few days. There be a story in them murky depths…