Nintendo DS Games Based Learning

Imagine Teacher
Fill the shoes of a promising young teacher in a brand new school and use your skills to increase your class size, develop your students and create the best learning environment.
The game begins with 4 children in the class, the player has the power to seat the children within the class and set the timetable for the week. You then have to work through a variety of mini games within each curricular subject area. As you work through the weeks, more children join the class and you must also juggle their needs and develop their skills.
Most suited to early years as all mini games are a very basic level so older children may find it too easy and become bored.

Advantages
Fine motor skills developed and good hand/eye coordination on the touch/rub the objects and expressive arts mini games.
Increasing basic maths skills. (early years)
Developing basic general knowledge within the history, science and geography mini games.
Bright, colourful graphics.
Easy to follow.
Disadvantages
Games are set at a very basic level so player may become bored easily.
In my opinion, the game is best suited for early years but there may be too much reading for them to follow.

Hotel Dusk
Take control of an interactive mystery novel and discover the secrets of Hotel Dusk. Who is Kyle Hyde - and what mysteries lie behind Room 215?
Take stylus in hand and navigate a tangled web of lies, betrayal, and murder to learn the answers.
 The game begins with a very long introduction so I quickly lost interest with it as we are working with limited time in class.

Advantages
Set out like an interactive mystery novel so encourages reading in upper stages.
Disadvantages
Slow starting due to a very long (and boring) introduction, loss of interest may occur.
Suitable for ages 12+ due to violence and bad langauge.

Crazy Talk

Crazy Talk is a program which allows you to bring your pictures to life by giving them facial movements and a voice over. The program was relatively simple to use as we followed the online tutorials and instructions set for us here. I feel, these Crazy Talk avatars would be a great engaging stimulus to use in the classroom, especially within the early years or nursery. They would make a good introductory activity to a new topic or perhaps a lesson focussed on a famous person or inventor, where said person could talk to the class. They could talk to the children and give them information about themsleves and the class could then use this information to write notes about their new topic This would also tie into the following curriculum outcomes:

As I listen or watch, I am learning to make notes under given headings and use these to understand what I have listened to or watched and create new texts.  LIT 1-05
As I listen or watch, I can make notes, organise these under suitable headings and use these to understand ideas and information and vreate new texts, using my own words as appropriate.  LIT 2-05

We used Crazy Talk to design a character relating to our Wiki topic, my groups being 'People Who Help Us'. We each took one of our 'helpers' and created an avatar related to their job. We then placed these on the relevant Wiki activity page. I feel these avatars make the information more accessable to children as they can listen to the character talking about their job, rather than having to read the information.

Games Based Learning - A Wii bit too difficult?

For our games based learning input, Keira, Gillian and I focussed on using Wii games in the classroom. Today we were looking at the dance game "Dance On Broadway" and the samba music game "Samba de Amigo".

To begin with, we had various problems setting up the hardware as the other group were using the main screens in our classroom. We were then moved to another room for an hour, which another class then required the use of. We finally ended up in a third room, by which point we only had around 20 minutes left. Although it was a hassle to keep moving around, it gave us the chance to set up the Wii using a variety of different resources. Each of us now have the skills to set up the Wii on a Smartboard, DVD player and projector - or so we hope!

We started with "Dance On Broadway" - busting a move to the 'Timewarp', 'Hairspray' and 'The Lion King'! We felt this would be a great dance lesson for the whole class to participate in as, although only four people can control the on screen characters with remotes, the other members of the class can just follow the actions without being scored. This would benefit the quieter members of the class who would like to join in, but would not usually participate were it to be in front of the whole class. Those who wanted to use the remote at the front could then take turns. This would need a lot of space in a gym hall which would also need to have a projector to ensure the whole class could follow the moves. This would be a great stimulus for a P.E. lesson as it has the ability to engage those who may not otherwise enjoy other gym lessons. However, one factor we thought may be an issue in the classroom would be engaging boys in the dance lesson. We would overcome this by initially using more male-orientated games such as "Michael Jackson: The Experience" or "Just Dance". The latter has a male and female character dancing on every song, and is filled with up to date songs that the children will have heard of.

We didn't have so much fun with "Samba de Amigo". Our initial excitement at using the big, colourful maracas quickly wore off when we discovered their design fault - no hole for the sensor. Each of the Wii's remotes have a sensor on top which transmits information to the main device. Most of the remotes accessories have a hole at the top so as not to cover the sensor but these maracas didn't. Sharon suggested we take the maraca apart and try and make a hole in the top which Gillian was very eager to try....

This wasn't successful as the beads that make the shaking sound were at the top of the maraca! If this problem were to arise in the classroom, we thought that, instead of giving up on the idea, we could use this as part of the learning experience. This would make a good problem solving activity in technology for the class, and we could ask each of them to design and make their own maracas.

We then went out to test the game using just the remotes. We did not have much success at this stage either as neither of the three of us could sync the remotes to the game! Aaarrrgh..... We spent the last 20 minutes of our lesson trying to get this to work but to no joy. When we went back to the classroom to report our problem back to Sharon, the whole class then had to use their problem solving skills to work out a solution. Finally, we worked out that the remote needed to feel your wrist twisting in order to pick up the direction you were trying to shake your maracas in. We felt that this would, again, make a good P.E. warm up that the whole class could be involved in, as it would make a good upper body workout. We also felt this would transfer over to other curricular areas such as music. All of the songs on the game have been chosen for their good beats so this would make a good lesson on practising rhythm in music.

Although we didn't get much of a chance to test out the games educational qualities, this experience has again shown me that you should always be well prepared when using ICT in the classroom. You need to test all of the equipment before use to ensure it is all working correctly and you have a sound knowledge of how it works, in order to help any of the children who are struggling. However, I do also feel that a lot of the children would probably do a better job teaching the teacher within some games based learning scenarios. They have grown up using technology such as games consoles and, on the most part, will think nothing of setting up a device and getting stuck in. As stated by Nolan (1995): "Teachers must respect students if they are truly to listen to their ideas, and if students are to respect the teacher's." (page 205) This backs up the idea that respect between teacher and pupils can be gained if the teacher is willing to take on the pupil's ideas, and they will, therefore, be more inclined to listen to their teacher's ideas too. This gives children more of an ownership of their learning, if they are to take an active role in setting up their activities and allowing the teacher and pupils to learn from each other.

Nolan, S.B. (1995) Teaching for Autonomous Learning, in C. Deforges, (Ed.) An Introduction to Teaching. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Co-operative Learning

"Students learn more effectively when they work cooperatively." (Johnson and Johnson, 1988)

As stated by Curriculum for Excellence on their views on collaborative learning:
"We no longer consider that a 'good' classroom is necessarily a quiet one; we undestand that learning is frequently most effective when the learners have the opportunity to think and talk together, to discuss ideas, question, analyse and solve problems, without the constant mediation of the teacher."
They also state that this view heavily derives from the work of Lev Vygotsky and his theories of learning as a social process. This links in with Johnson and Johnson's view above. By working together, I believe that both adults and children can share ideas and learn from one another. This was certainly the case within our co-operative learning group.

As previously blogged upon, I believe Keira, Caroline and I worked very well together throughout this project. We each took an active role in every stage of the development of our team work and, thus, produced some great results of which we were all very proud - especially our movie! As stated by Johnson and Johnson (1989), collaborative learning has advantages of:
- Higher achievement and greater productivity are obtained.
-More caring, supportive and committed relationships are formed.
- Greater psychological health, social competence and self esteem.
Each of these traits was reflected within our collaborative practice as, I feel, we have all bonded over the highs and lows of the experience and achieved a much better result incorporating everyone's ideas, than we would have done had this been an individual task.

Our changing society means that, as well as teaching children the social skills of physical collaboration (sharing, turn taking, communication etc.), we also need to introduce them to the key concept of effective online collaboration. As stated by Donelan, Kear and Ramage (2010): "Skills in online communication and collaboration are particularly important for the modern workplace, where teams may include people in different offices, different sites or even different countries." They then go on to further discuss effective online communication and collaboration which I am eager to learn more about with further reading of their text.

Donelan, H., Kear, K. and Ramage, M. (2010) Online Communication and Collaboration. Milton Keynes: Routledge.
Johnson, R. and Johnson, D. (1988) Cooperative Learning. Available: www.context.org/ICLIB/IC18/Johnson.htm

Our Winning Movie!

The postie is running a little late with my invitation to the Oscars...

All of our hard work was finally rewarded this week at the unveiling of our final movies - and not a moment too soon! I have found the movie making process to be quite stressful, as we seem to have stumbled across problems at every step of the way. Firstly, we experienced a multitude of problems with the filming devices, we then discovered the software we used to convert our files had left them corrupted and we had yet more trouble during the editing process - nightmare!

We used Windows Movie Maker to edit our movies which I felt required a lot of time and patience. However, after the initial frustration whilst we worked out how to use its features, I found it to be a relatively straight forward program, with a wide capacity of choice in terms of putting together and customizing our movies, in order to personalize them and make them our own. Each member of our group (Keira, Caroline and I) worked together throughout each stage of the process, on the most part, completing the tasks as a group rather than delegating. This ensured that each of us not only had an opportunity to input our ideas into our movie, but we also now all have a full understanding of each feature of Windows Movie Maker. I feel this was the most beneficial solution for us all because, as developing professionals, we are working to broaden and deepen our skills in each area of ICT. Upon reflection, all three of us now feel more confidant in using this within school, as opposed to if we only had a chance to work with one aspect of the program.

Reflecting upon our movie making fortnight overall, I feel very proud and have a real sense of achievement when watching our final movie. We worked well as a group, with each individual fully engaged and contributing with each stage of the task. Although we have experienced a multitude of problems, I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience and feel I have benefited greatly from it.

iPads - How exciting!

Last week, Sharon had an exciting surprise in store for our class as she gave us the opportunity to test the educational value of (play with) the iPads and iPod Touches. This resulted in great excitement for the class, and very jealous flatmates at home!















As well as being very happy showing off my brand new toy, I also wanted to look further into the educational aspects of the iPad. As stated by the Apple In Education site: "iPad apps are expanding the learning experience both inside and outside the classroom. From interactive lessons to study aids to productivity tools, there's something for everyone." There are a variety of features on the iPad, designed in order to aid the learning process. For example, iWork, a productivity application, which includes: Pages the word processor, Keynote (which allows you to create presentations) and Numbers, the spreadsheet tool. These can also be printed out directly from the iPad.


I was sceptical about how the device could be used in the classroom, in order to improve the learning experience rather than just as a fancy gadget the children could play games on. However, after reading through each of it's educational features and watching the video clip (showing how the iPad is transforming teaching and learning at all levels), I now believe that, with the suitable research, funding and training, the iPad could be a very valuable resource within the primary classroom.


This is demonstrated in Chicago Public Schools as the iPad, as stated by John Connolly (Technology Director, Chicago Public Schools), has generated 'excitement and enthusiasim' within the classroom, which is apparent during the example teacher lesson. The children all appear to be engage in the tool and eager to answer the teacher's questions. As Stacey Boyd (Kindergarten teacher) explains, the apps available for the iPad are really helping the children with their letter formation and sounds, through repitition in the fun, engaging games (although I keep rewinding the clip to hear what she says I just can't catch it but I think it is the 'Super Eye' or 'Super Y' they are using in the classroom). Ben Grimley (Senior Director, PBS Kids) also talks about the benefits of this app by explaining that it is both engaging and educational, therefore, helping the children learn how to read, write and get engaged in their learning. The other apps in this video also demonstrate it's ability to include all learners as it's apps can be audio, visual and kinesthetic.


Links to other popular education apps can be found here. Unfortunately, we didn't have access to Sharon's password in order to try out any of the free apps from this list, however, she has now given us the information needed - so hopefully I get another chance to have a play around with the iPad again!


I think that the idea of using these in class could really benefit a lot of the learning which takes place in the classroom. However, putting this ideal into practice is more difficult as funding would be the biggest issue for schools. In an ideal world we would all have an iPad sat in front of us, like in Seton Hill University, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, where the lecturer adds notes to the lectures as she goes along and each student receives these straight to their device. It is also used to bring up relevant articles or book chapters which the lecturer can be talking about. If you could get that sorted for us Sharon, you would definitely be the best lecturer ever!!




P.S. I tried various times to embed the video to my blog as I found it very informative but it just wasn't having any of it. I have included links to the website where it can be found instead.


Apple in Education (2010) Learning With iPad.
Available: www.apple.com/education/ipad/ [accessed 4.2.11]