Spend a little time watching this inspirational video of Derek Robertson’s presentation at the Games Based Learning 2010 conference held in London last week.
Tag: games based learning
Inspire Innovate 2010: Extras You Asked For :-)
Here are the extra planning and programming bits and pieces that you asked for in the workshop yesterday:
Planning Proformas/ Grids
My wiiMusic Worksheets
My wiiSports Tennis Plan
Tennis Skills + Planning Sheet
I hope that these sheets help guide you in planning and using games consoles in your classroom.
Please link back here so we can all see what you have tried in your classroom.
Who says that learning is all not all fun and games????
If you need/want any other info or help or ideas please just leave a comment here 🙂
Inspire Innovate 2010
WHY GAMES?
- Games are a shared experience.
- Games build community – they are played socially at school.
- Meaning is constructed as a group – individuals contribute to group understandings.
- Language is played with – used in different ways to make different meanings.
- Language becomes more visible through a game – it has shared context, shared understandings and shared meanings.
- The experience, and the consequent language, is like “playdough” – it can be added to, moulded, pulled apart, re-arranged, viewed, discussed, evaluated, improved; first as a group, then individually; first orally and then written.
- Immersion in the experience is child-centred, lots of time is spent on student initiated and led exploration of the game and/ or the game world. Students become part of the experience: In the game directly: Participating in the game – manipulating the characters and events – “living the game”: As a springboard for real life, authentic learning.
- Learning outcomes are planned in detail – shared explicitly with students to support meta-language and deep knowledge.
- Learning indicators are specific and focused: one scene or setting, one character or one object.
CONTEXTS FOR LEARNING
Endless Oceans – Tom Barrett
Cooking Mama – LTS Consolarium
Nintendogs – LTS Consolarium
Samba De Amigo – LTS Consolarium
- Authentic, real world tasks
- Rich tasks
- Cross-curricula
- Creative – many ways to fulfill the assessment
- On and off the computer
- Expands across KLAs
- Whole class input
- Contract work
KLA SPECIFIC
Dolphin Island HSIE, S&T
wiiSports Maths – Tom Barrett
Drawn to Life English – Writing
Brain Training & Maths Training – LTS Consolarium
- More focused on one KLA area
- Individual, pairs, trios, smaller groups
Peter Richardson has a site that features a collaborative list of wii games and associated Year levels and activity focus.
PLANNING
Start with learning outcomes
Identify a game to support intended outcomes
Mind map, backward map, Blooms/Multiple Intelligences matrix.
Real world, authentic tasks.
We Love the wii :-)
Future Directions in Literacy Conference – Sydney University
I have used the wii in my classroom quite a lot over the past two years, here are notes on a number of games I have used with my Stage 3 (Years 5 & 6 ) class.
Pwii – Tennis
Here’s a blog post my class wrote when we used the wii for our PE lessons.
We have finally started our “PWii” lessons. We call them PWii (rather than PE – physical education) because we are using the Wii to play tennis.
Each group of students has written up a lesson on a tennis skill, and they teach the rest of the class how to do the skill. We play outside using a wide range of bats and racquets to learn the skills we need to play inside on the Wii.
Each pair plays the Wii in the classroom, and we choose the “best of 3 games” option. When everyone has had a turn we will each play other students and have a “Round Robin” tournament.
We hope to put together either a wiki of our work or at least a page to show you what we’ve been up to 
wii Tennis was the first experience I had with using the wii in the classroom. The class was really excited about using the wii as no-one had one at that time and so enthusiasm was at an all time high!
The game linked into the curriculum through English (Talking & Listening, Reading and Writing) as well as PE:
- we researched the types of PE skills necessary to play tennis
- divided these up and pairs or trios of students then devised lessons to teach the skills to the rest of the class
- together we used the internet to locate some appropriate warm ups, stretches and cool downs to use at the beginning and end of the lessons.
- we located videos of how to perform the skills in tennis so that the students knew what they were to teach
- students wrote up their notes into lesson plans
- talking and listening skills and strategies were discussed with the class and a set of “Super Speakers” and “Great Listeners” charts were constructed to remind students of the expectations of the groups when students were teaching lessons
- small groups of students taught these skills over a period of 3 weeks out in the playground
- inside, the wii was set up and groups of students rotated through it playing tennis – to get the feel for the game and the skills they were teaching
- after all the students had taught their lessons we arranged a tennis tournament inside the classroom, using the wii
Mario and Sonic at the Olympics
It was a bit of a surprise to find ourselves using this game for poetry! However, a stand out of the game were the different characters and their individual responses to winning or losing the athletic events. Each of the characters were different colours and we discussed how the colours reflected each character’s personality.
Then students thought about the colours themselves, and how each colour looked, felt, smelled, the emotions it evoked, and even the tastes it reminded us of.
Lastly we put both aspects together and wrote poems that showed how the colour and the character linked together to really show what the characters were like.
My colour jumps with joy and relief!
My colour sounds like a creaky hall way.
My colour feels optimistic.
My colour feels like the mysterious night sky
My colour is dark as the night sky.
My colour sounds like storms on a rainy day.
My colour is as evil as the grim reaper.
My colour feels like a touch of death.
My colour is the colour of horror.
My colour tastes like a shadow waiting to be unleashed.
My colour smells like darkness.
My colour is mysterious.
My colour is black.
My character is Shadow.
My colour feels like the mysterious night sky
Easter Carmuirs – Ready for Action!
Next stop was just down the road to visit Rich Olyott and his P7 class at Easter Carmuirs Primary School.
Rich and his class are yet more blogging friends, and we had lots to catch up on when we made it into the classroom.
A solid bank of interesting and thoughtful questions were fired at us – and this time it was MrsP who was having trouble with accents ;-I.
I think we all came to realize that both countries and kids have a lot in common, although it was the differences in scary creatures and climate that caused the most “oohing and ahhing” from the kids.
Spiders, sharks, snakes, stingrays and other assorted deadly creatures were very popular topics and promises of some scary creatures to be sent over from Australia were made.
After a tour of the school by some very capable and talkative tour guides, we returned to the P7 room to be shown the many ways the class uses games in their learning.
We saw dance mats being used for gross-motor skill development,
Buzz questions for general knowledge, and wii sports for addition and subtraction games. Everyone was positive and enthusiastic about how games were being used and could articulate the why and how games helped/supported learning.
Whew! I love being part of a busy, enthusiastic and engaged classroom! A big thank you to Rich, P7 and Margaret for a fun filled visit!
Here is a slide show Mrs Vass made……. thank you :_)
East Lothian Inspiration
A HUGE thank you to Ollie Bray who organized a busy and information packed Wednesday that took us to Wallyford Primary and Musselburgh Grammar to see Games -Based Learning in action in a variety of classes and age groups.
Gail and I were accompanied by Margaret and led out by Ollie to see a range of game platforms being used by great teachers, enthusiastic students and a proud & passionate Mr Bray.
Without exception, students from the two schools were engaged and enthusiastic about the use of games in their classrooms. Whether the games were being used for skills practice, skill speed improvement, concept development, or as a context for learning new skills – students responded to the playfulness and fun of the games.
This allowed teachers to harness and support this enthusiasm into meaningful learning experiences for their students. Maths drill and practise became purposeful and competitive; story writing was embedded in a shared context; and dance and movement was personally challenging with goals and targets to keep on track.
It was interesting to see how the teachers “unpacked” the learning taking place with their students. Discussions, suggestions, strategies and rules could be seen in charts and on walls of the classrooms that indicated the learning that was taking place was deeper than the skills emphasized in the games themselves.
Problem solving strategies were listed and articulated, child protection issues were talked about and solutions offered, management routines were developed with and by the students. All of which engendered ownership of the learning that was taking place, and the strategies and routines that students could use to confidently use and make the most of the games and learning they were involved with.
All in all a wonderfully fun and enlightening day in many ways. Thanks to the teachers who were so willing to share their classes and teaching with us.
Permission to Adventure
Snug and warm in a tiny café off the Royal Mile, we met up with the Adventure Author team: Judy, Cathrin and Keiron, to catch up and to discover what everyone had been up to since we last met.
The Adventure Author Project has finished, and the intrepid three are moving on so it was a good time to recap and talk about what they had found out and where they might go next.
Judy shared some of the newer features of the Adventure Author software:
1. Comment Cards – which allow comments to be made and shared between students and the teacher
2. Evaluation Page – specific criteria to be evaluated
– star rating
– attach evidence option
3. To Do List – to keep track of what has been done and what needs to be done next
And we discussed how they have been used by students how they might be used by teachers to scaffold and support writing (as well as game making).
Judy and her team insist that students are at the centre of their learning – that students need to drive their own learning, work together to explore and discover and then share what they have found out.
This approach seems to give students the permission to take responsibility for their actions/plans, gives them the structures to develop their learning around and the confidence, time and expectation that they will then share and evaluate what they have done or discovered.
We discussed how this approach works in various settings (with undergraduates and Primary students) and all felt that an unexpected bonus was the creative way students could (and did) respond to the challenge of being in control of the what and how of their learning.
As always, some wonderful and thought provoking ideas about creativity ensued – eg does one create and then find a purpose for the creation or does one create for a purpose or does one create because they can?????? (Maybe all at different times).
Thanks team for a great afternoon and night of interesting, provoking and thoughtful discussions and sharing. Looking forward to hooking up with something new in the not-too-distant-future.
