Following the success of making the Active Learning resources available to bid in Glow, we decided to follow a similar strategy for the gaming resources. An inventory was created and made available in the Dundee Gaming Glow Group so practitioners from all sectors (nursery, primary, secondary) had access to this information.  A CPD twilight was run to raise awareness of how games-based learning has impacted on the classroom practice of real teachers in the authority, how it has effected the learning of their youngsters and how this all links to the curriculum for excellence. The session was well attended with over 45 practitioners across the authority. Using a discussions web part in Glow, everyone was  encouraged to place a bid on a “first come, first served basis” .

All the units have been issued and we are looking forward to seeing the feedback. Hopefully I will be able to post up some examples of the youngsters’ work in the near future.

The two Playstation3 consoles will be going out later this term with the Little Big Planet Game. This will be a pilot to show how this fantastic game can be used as a wonderful context for cross-curricular work. Again I look forward to posting soon about the activities that have been completed by the two classes.

Glow is also being used to share all the examples of good practice.  The idea is for teachers using these resources to sumbmit lesson plans, topic webs, examples of work etc. they have used during the project.  This should provide an excellent resource for teachers and educators wishing to use games-based learning in their classroom practice in the  future.

Dundee practitioners will be able to use this link to access to the group.

Ian Cameron

I finally have the Wii Remote working as an improvised interactive whiteboard! I was concerned that it might not live up to my expectations…….but I was wrong. The interface is very responsive and accurate and the calibration of the light pen was as easy as calibrating a Promethean or Smart board. The beauty of using the Wii Remote is it can be positioned wherever it can get a good line of site of the working space and there is no need for a special board, just about any clear space on a wall will do. A slightly reflective surface does help as the remote is sensing the light from the pen bouncing off whatever surface you are using. This means that you could have your projector pointing at a floor, wall or drywipe board and have almost any size of interactive area you want.

There is also an added bonus. If you don’t have a projector  or free wall you can turn your PC Screen interactive. This would be a great asset in an infant class where youngsters could use drawing/painting packages (Tux Paint, Clicker, Microsoft Paint ect) with pen control rather than a mouse.

There are many pieces of software that you can use. Blue Soleil Bluetooth software costs approx £20 and is a must. I also used two free peices of software. Smoothboard (Google it!) lets you callibrate and use your light pen as a mouse. It was really easy to set up. The second piece was GlovePie, Google this also. This was a little trickier, but it alows you to use the Wii Remote to control a number of different applications including Google Earth. Once installed and callibrated you can use the tilt on the remote to turn the world left, right, up and down and use the buttons to grab and zoom in and out. It is worth noting that these two pieces of software will not run side by side and Smoothboard will close when you open GlovePie.

For an Art Department the Smoothboard software could be used as a cheap replacement to a graphics tablet by pointing the remote at the desktop and calibrating there and using the usual software. An A3 graphics tablet is approximately £500. The total cost of a Wii setup is £45 for remote + £30 for bluetooth +£20 for comercial ir light pen=under £100!!! A fith of the cost.

Overall I am mightly impressed. The next step will be to see if we can install a Bluetooth Dongle on a networked machine and assess any security/software issues there might be on the network.

As with the last post, please feel free to ask any questions relating to this project in the comments below and I will try to help out as much as I can.

Ian Cameron

Discovery Film Festival – The festival runs from the Oct 21-Nov 02, with free transport to and from the DCA for Dundee Schools. There is a list of films for Early Years, Primary and Secondary pupils on the website. The website will also contain downloadable resources and content to use within the classroom setting.

Endless Ocean – Derek introduced the topic of sandbox games. These are console games which are more open-ended than the usual challenge based games, focusing on exploration, interaction and play. One such game is Endless Ocean, available on the Wii console. In this game you are a diver with the whole ocean at your disposal. You guide your diver around the reef and open ocean exploring the virtual environment and interacting with the inhabitants of the water. As you meet and interact with new animals, information about your new watery playmates is added to your journal. The idea behind using games like these in the classroom is to create a context for the delivery of a range of curricular areas, giving the pupils learning a relevance and focus. Using off-the-shelf games, Derek suggest, blurs the edges of a pupil’s home and school experiences creating “stealth learning” opportunities. He showcased an example of the software being used in this way by a primary school in Aberdeen. The teacher had successfully set a range of curriculum activities within this context. There is a copy in EDS which will be made available to anyone that would like to implement it.

MIE (Moving Image Education) – Andrew Gallagher presented some of the key concepts that came from the Moving Image Education Angus project that he was involved with. he also considered the implications for a Curriculum for Excellence and the impact on the classroom. Andrew is now back in the authority and the conditions of Angus contract mean that he can now share the resources developed over the four year project. Margaret Foley (QIO Literacy) is to make this available for inclusion in the MIE box. This guarantees to be an invaluable addition to the box.