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Let's Tap: Good, good, good, good vibrations

Sometimes your best ideas for classroom practice can be found in the most unlikeliest of places. Well just the other day I think I stumbled upon another excellent opportunity for learning via a COTS game. I had heard about a game called Let's Tapfrom the Nintendo Wii and that the gameplay involved tapping the desk in order for the Wiimote to pick up the vibrations. Said vibrations would then control what happened in the game. Well. the most certainly do and I found myself playing this game for about an hour on Tuesday afternoon with my Development Officer at the Consolarium Brian McLaren. What larks we had and after an hour of mirth, discussion and competition the ladies in the main office in LTSDundee said that we were, "squealing like a couple of lassies!" (No sexist inference from me...just reporting what was said.)

Well what is Let's Tap? Have a look:

The game involved include:

Tap Runner: Sprint for the finish line in over 16 courses while avoiding obstacles including hurdles, ice wall and electric fields. (1-4 players)

Rhythm Tap: There are a wide range of songs to master in Rhythm Tap. Feel the beat and tap light, medium, hard in sync with the on-screen tap indicators. (1-4 players)

Silent Blocks: Different modes using light and hard taps to strategically remove blocks one at a time from the column without causing it to topple over. (1-4 players)

Bubble Voyager: Clad in a space suit, solo players tap to keep their character afloat through many levels filled with dangerous objects; a double tap will launch a missile. In multiplayer matches, you will shoot each other a number of times to win. (1-4 players)

Visualizer: Everyone will take their turn with several unique stages including Fireworks, Paint, River, Gem Game and Ink. Tapping with light, medium and hard strokes produces on-screen effects ranging from a fireworks display to undersea bubbles. In special tap sequences, various sea animals will appear. (1 player)

I feel that there is scope for the incorporation of all of the games in to the classroom in one way or another but the one that has really resonated with me is the Visualiser and the possibilities that this may have in the ASN context. Brian and I were lost in this part of the game and found ourselves orchestrating the most vivid and wildly beautiful firework displays, causing consternation in the coy pool or creating random Jackson Pollockesque canvases (ok maybe pushing it a little) by by tapping and banging on the table. The impact on a large projection screen within this game as a result of a simple tap or bang is just simply wonderful.

I'd very much like to see what this game could bring to the experiences of learners in the ASN context because of the simple way that players can engage with the game and the incredible return they get from a simple tap on a desk. I hope to report back on ways in which it has been put to use in schools very soon. I wholeheartedly recommend this game just for the fun aspect but yet again within a game designed for entertainment we see great educational potential.

Islay High School: a model for us all?

As you will have seen from the date of my last post I have been a bit busy of late. Or lazy as may be the case! Never quite finding the time to get online what I have been thinking or finding out about in my work and play time. However, my experience at the Education 2020 Unconference in Islay last week was soooo good that I just had to share my thoughts about it.

I first had the pleasure of meeting Ian Stuart from Islay High School a couple of years back when he presented at HHL07 (he also won a Wii in the prize draw). I learned all about how they had been looking to integrate ICT into the life of the school by virtue of the umpc and One Note amongst other things. So after hearing all about this it wasn't too long before I had managed to make my way to Islay to visit Ian and the school, a visit that left me truly impressed with the school's set-up, vision and ethos.

So after this initial visit it was with great pleasure that I received the opportunity of visiting Islay again last week to attend the Education 2020 Unconference. This unconference was a focal point for a group of educators from all aspects of the Scottish (and further afield) Educational landscape who use a range of online technologies to collaborate with professional colleagues in order to develop their own professional practice but also to contribute to their peers development. It must be said that I am less than prolific contributior to this community but to be part of it is something that I greatly value and feel confidence in. I can honestly say that I am a better profesional person for being a part of this community.

The chats we had were excellent, the high jinx and singing in the pub on Friday night just superb but the thing that impressed me the most about my time on Islay was my experience with the young people from Islay High School who presented to the conference delegates on ther Friday morning and then interviewed us on the Friday evening. Here we saw a group of articulate, confident, self-aware and mature individuals who presented a quite analytical yet wholly positive view of how the the opportunities afforded to them by the school had increased their self-confidence and enhanced their levels of attainment in whatever path they chose to take. The interviewers in the evening were also delightfully impressive and more than willing to ask for clarification if they did not understand one of my obscure mutlisyllabic references on innovation or if they felt they need to ask a probing supplementary question. What a credit you were to your school and if this is the kind of student that Islay High School turns out then I hope to send my girls there one day.

There were also interesting contributions to the conference that seemed out of kilter with the general consensus of opinion of the delegates but is it not the case that this debate is one that still needs to be argued? I'm sure that the tipping point is on its way and that the idea that interaction with online technologies offers so much more than just 'staring at a computer screen' will become stronger and will eventually become the norm. Education 2020 and the learners of Islay High School have given me even greater confidence in what I am doing in order to help contribute to the continued evolution of young learners' experiences in school. I am delighted to be in a position to do so.

Thanks to all at Islay High School (and the various distelleries) for a great time on your beautiful island.

Games encourage exercise: The Wii Fit Pentathlon!!!

I am currenrtly involved in the Games in Schools community of practice that is being managed by European Schoolnet. The idea behind this is to share the practice, expertise, experience and thoughts about games based learning in schools across Europe. The community is steadily growing and is proving to be quite enlightening in relation to what's happening in schools from Scotland to Denmark.

A colleague from Aberdeenshire, Jonathan Cordiner, who is heavily involved in all things ICT in schools up in that fine part of Scotland has been working with Wii Fit. I had doubts about how this might be used in schools due to only one board being able to be hooked up to the Wii but look at what Jonathan has organised...the Wii Fit pentathlon!

Find more videos like this on Games in schools

I'm off to meet with Jonathan tomorrow to find out just how he managed this project and what the impact on the children was...and maybe I'll have a go at the ski jumping game. I find that the use of jazz hands helps me keep my balance. ;-)

Is he really playing a PS3? I don't think so....

Have a close look at this picture. It looks like a young boy about 6 years old who appears to be playing a computer game using the sixaxis controller for the PS3. Take a closer look and maybe, like me, you'll begin to think that something's not quite right here...

First of all, look at his face: does that look like the face that children make when they are lost in a game? His bored and indifferent look suggests that maybe the computer game is not switched on at the wall!

Also, look at his posture. Again it shouts out that there is a clear lack of engagement and disinterest in what he is playing.

What on esrth is going with this young man I ask? Does he really have a PS3 that works?!!! I don't think so and neither do I think do Sony! Well this picture was taken from a short video clip that is currently being used in a new campaign by the Department of Health via their Change4Life initiative.

Take a look at the short clip from which this photo was taken and try not to feel the presence of the director at the side asking the young lad to look unhappy and unhealthy.

"That's it son, give me a big sigh, yeah, bored, that's it, you really want to be out playing football don't you son!"

I have recent experience of this attempt to reinforce uninformed and unhelpful stereotypes of game players when I accompanied a BBC crew to a school in Scotland to investigate our use of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training in schools. The editorial take was such that they wanted to show the transition form 'old school' to 'new school' by taking a shot of the kids using pencil and paper and looking 'glum' as they did this. Happy faces would then return when the DS came out! Needless to say we intervened to ask this not to happen because it's not the message that we want to give nor is it the ethos that we aim to nurture. It does look like we still have to fully address the easy negative image that has been associated with computer games. I bet the production team all went home to play with their Wii that's in the living room though ;-)

A tip for Director's who want to construct an appropriately negative image of children and games in future. Get real! Children do not look like that when they are challenged, excited and engaged by the complex environments that games can offer them. Maybe eventually the message will get through...

Consolarium blogposts...

Just in case you don't subscribe to the Consolarium's blog (the blog that allows me to share my day job work investigating classroom practice with games based learning) here are links to two new blogposts:

BBC Newsround comes to Fraserburgh South Park PS
A summary of the BBC's visit to a P.7 class who have been doing work with Dr Kawashima's Brain Training. Some great stuff on display with a link to a video of the the children talking about their experiences in learning with the game.

More Nintendogs and a Podcast!
I met a probationer teacher who was using Nintendogs with her P.2 class. An account of how she has used this game to help develop learning in Art & Design as well as podcast about my visit to Fraserburgh South Park PS is available here.

Enjoy.

When the going gets tough the tough get traditional!

My profesional career has seen me devote my time, thoughts, ideas and energy into making the classroom experience for schoolchildren as worthwhile, dynamic and memorable an experience as possible. I like to think that I have a growth mind-set and that I will continue to evolve as a professional so that I can always look at new ideas and approaches with a critical eye but where I am always prepared to take informed risks. As Ken Robinson states, "If you're not prepared to be wrong then you'll never come up with anything original!"

Now up until now the work that I have done with teachers across schools in Scotland in the field of games based learning has received a pretty good press. In fact, that fact is mentioned by me whenever I deliver presentations. It seems though that I'll have to make a slight amendment to my presentations now after an article in today's Scotsman.

In Cash-strapped schools urged to spend on games consoles a rather disappointing attack is made on an offer recently made by LTS to local authorities to be able to buy Nintendo DSs for their schools at a discounted price, much less than what is quoted in the article. This, as I understand was a one-off offer to meet demand from schools that have had their interest in this educational resource raised mainly by the work of the Consoalrium but also because of some evidence based research that was carried out by LTS and the University of Dundee. This first research article is about to be featured in the British Journal of Education in the next month and if you are interested the reference is:

Miller, D.J. & Robertson, D.P. (in press) Using a games console in the
primary classroom: Effects of ‘Brain Training’ programme on
computation and self-esteem. British Journal of Educational Technology

Dr David Miller and I are curently working on the paper that details the finding of our extended research study that was partnered by HMIe in the summer term of last year. This work has led to requests to share our innovative work with audiences throughout the school community in Scotland, England (BECTa, Futurelab & Stephen Heppell's Be Very Afraid), and further afield-Singapore, Germany, Denmark, Australia, USA. I have also just finished, today, writing the UK case study for a forthcoming paper for European Schoolnet with a request to share our work in Strasbourg in May.

The Scotsman article mentions research by Professor Alain Lieury but fails to go into detail about research done in Scotland. Now I recently put my thoughts about Profesor Lieury's work down in print on the Games based Learning discussion forum but here's what I had to say about that:

I, on behalf of LTS, carried out the first small scale research initiative in Scotland. This is really what made people sit up and take notice of this application of a commercially available game. If you haven't seen the case study then have a look:
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/ictineducation/gamesbasedlearning/sharingpractice/braintraining/introduction.asp
As a result of this study and the many questions that we felt were raised by it, LTS funded an extended study http://ltsblogs.org.uk/consolarium/2008/09/25/dr-kawashima-extended-trial-summary-results/last year that saw the same methodology compared with only a control group this time. This was done in 32 schools across Scotland. The results we found were very similar to our initial study. The first study has been peer reviewed and accepted for academic publication and the second one hopefully will too.

I read the headlines about the Rennes study and was at first a little bit apprehensive about what their findings meant for the work that I have led. As a result I have taken my time to reflect on things...

There are questions that I'd like answered before I make a definitive comment about the Rennes research but as there is little available to read (but you'll get it in a forthcoming book ) so I don't feel that I can do that. What I can do though is ask some questions:

• Where did they carry out the research, was it in school setting?
• What was the social setting for this research?
• Was it contextualised within a setting that the children understood, could relate to, that was natural for them?
• Why did he test for memory?
• What were the tests that he used?
• What can schools learn from this research, how does it take things forward?
• Could they not target the use of the device in a much more learner focused way than they appear to have done?
• Who in their right mind, who has maybe worked in some of the more challenging schools in the UK, can honestly say that they'd be prepared to put down pencil and paper questions for the whole class to do independently for 25 minutes a day for 10 weeks? Whatv reaction would we get? I know that I would not.
• Also, how do we then explain what we have found in our sample that was 10 times the size of this research activity?

I do think that they have missed the point here. Come to Scotland, see the children work with Dr Kawashima, listen to them talking about how they are better at maths, challenge them to the x20 test and watch their faces give you total respect when you do it in 10 seconds 

Also come and talk to our teachers who continually talk of improved performance in mental maths, self-esteem gains, social dynamic enhancements, improved time-keeping, metacognitive activity and much much more. Also, teachers don't worry about the tech here, they can focus on supporting the learning. There is so much good that has come out of this initial idea that I devised whilst playing this game nearly two years that I find it hard to take in a piece of work that appears to be so detached from the real world of classroom practice that I like to think that I inhabit.

Finally, with a little help from Dr Kawashima I believe we have made it a valued aspiration for our schoolchildren to be red hot at mental maths. Can you really tell me that pencil and paper does that? I look forward to reading a fuller account of what was carried out in Rennes but I have faith and confidence in what LTS, the University of Dundee and Scottish teachers and children did. It worked an absolute treat.

I was also not convinced that Ken Cunningham's, the general secretary of School Leaders Scotland and Frank Gerstenberg's, the former head of George Watson's College, apparent scepticism was really about the value of the games and what we argue it can bring to the classroom. It was more about school budgets in particular. No it took Nick Seaton, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education to really get the traditional mobs 16 hole Dr Marten boots on when he said: "It's absolutely crazy and a poor use of taxpayers' money for schools to be spending on things like Nintendos when there isn't sufficient money to pay good teachers and buy school books." Now I know that we are in a difficult climate at the moment and that money must be spent wisely but I do believe that schools who have chosen to spend some valued cash on this offer are doing right here...at least this ICT spend has some evidence to base the spend on! This appears to me to be a clear case of when the going gets tought the tough get traditional. Come on, who in their right mind thinks that pencil and paper, alone, is going to do it for the very many school kids who are not and will not connect with a school experience that does not move with the times, evolve and position itself in the cultural framework from in which it's client group comes from?

Have I got it so horribly wrong. Have I imagined the raise in attainment that our data has shown? Am I strong-arming the very, very, very many teachers across Scotland that I am working with to come on board with this? Am I not seeing happy, challenged and interested faces on school children in the classes that I work in with some of the most thoughtful and objectively critical teachers that I have met? I can assure that the answer to all these questions is no.

Maybe it is the turn of games based learning to have its bad press day but I will debate the merits of gbl with anyone. It works, it's right and this backward and traditional view is one that, in my opinion, will fail our schoolchildren...or do we never want them to come up with anything original?

Korg DS-10 to be discontinued! Grrrrrrrr!!!

Just I was getting in to my Korg DS-10 for the Nintendo DS in order to support a possible trial in schools I find out that it's to be discontinued. Sheesh! What can a man interested in games based learning do when he see something a little bit special albeit it seems with minimal mass market appeal (look at Electroplankton), and then it gets pulled. There is an issue here in terms of people working to support schools and make recommendations for software to use when there is the distinct chance that what you find of great use may not be available after a certain date. What use is that?

I fear that wonderful titles such as Endless Ocean may also go this way. It seems such a pity when it is clearly a superb teaching and learning resource. What, if anything, can be done to ensure that schools can still access these resources?

Well, for those of you who missed it here's what you could have done with it. Ryuchi Sakamoto eat your heart out!

Neil Gaiman's Coraline: a new narrative driven game for learning?

I was spending some time today finalising some of my new projects at the Consolarium for this year when I decided to have a final look at recent and forthcoming releases for all major games consoles. Lots of great stuff coming up but one title that really caught my imagination is the game of the film of the book by Neil Gaiman called Coraline. Now, For those of you into your graphic novels then you'll recognise Gaiman's name from Sandman. I've also read another of his books called Neverwhere which was bizarre and surreal but eminently readable so Coraline is now on my list for purchase this Saturday.

Anyway, although the release date is January 2009 it seems that it just can't be got yet! No sign of it at all on any of the major retailers sites. AS soon as it comes out a copy will be in my hands because I think that this has potential. Have a look and check out the black button eyes in the 'other people'...

In terms of bridging that gap between games and quality narrative I feel that this title might have something real to offer. It might be the case that the game and the book could be studied in tandem? Is this an approach that might work and even bring a new dimension into understanding and relating to the characters and plot? There is also the aesthetic of the stop-motion nature of the movie and the beautiful design which is most similar to The Nightmare before Christmas. Just think what something like I Can Animate by Kudlian could offer learnrs here: making their very own Coraline-esque short movie stop-motion animations. So much to offer here I think that this could be a new must try for schools.

The clips available so far online really look stunning and the short snippets, as well as the game trailer video clip, that I've seen have really made me want to stray into and getv lost in the narrative and mystery of Coraline's 'other world'. This short clip is quite disconcerting, particulalry when you're the last one downstairs and it makes me think that ther suspense that this book/game presents might just give it that edge for it work within an S1/S2 scenario! Will be more sure once I've read the book.

I think there is real scope for suspending learners disbelief with this resource and for taking them to this 'other world' when in class..where their creativity can be inspired by both the story/writing and the aesthetic of the movie adaptation. I'm sure the game will also help encourage and excite those involved. Looking forward to getting my eyes and hands on it.

Professor Layton in the classroom

Please have a look at this post on my work blog about the project that I have been supporting in a school in the Orkney Islands. They have been using Professor Layton for the DS. Enjoy...

BETT '09: 2Simple do it again with 2DIY

It's that time of year again when we get a chance to see the range of wonderful (and not so wonderful) educational resources on show at BETT. This years's event is as huge as ever but with the noteable exceptions of the BBC and Apple it appears. Drat, I always like to use their electric guitars with Garageband!

Anyway, I'm here with Kim Aplin (the teacher who set the standard for using Guitar Hero in school) my new colleague. She is the Consolarium's new Development Officer and we have been busy milling about the exhibition to see what their is that we could use in out work at the Consolarium.

First shout must go out to the team at 2Simple Software. We had the pleasure of meeting up with our ex-LTS colleague Alan Yeoman who now works as an educational consultant with 2Simple. In his usual ebullient , enthusiastic and educationally focused manner he took us on a tour of 2 Do It Yourself. This lovely little application has the potential to introduce the concept of game design to very young children. Simple menus, simple ideas, simple interface but in depth and quality learning will, I believe, come out of pupil interaction with this app. We watched as he very quickly and very easily created a few games that I'm sure P.2 child and above could cope with. They could very easily create their own games that their peers could play. This type of low technology skill threshold software is what can work in class in my opinion. Teachers would get success with this quite quickly and they could then use this to engage their children in rich and purposeful learning with ICT where they are the creator and not just the consumer of digital media.

I suggest you take a look at this excellent addition to the range of resources that can be used to help deliver the design aspect og games based learning.