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doug woods

ICT in Education Consultant and Trainer

Archive for the ‘games based learning’ Category

Handheld Learning Conference 2009

Friday, June 25th, 2010

136307935 0a3e869412 m Handheld Learning Conference 2009In an early post, http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog/handheld-learning/ I mentioned that I was attending the 2009 Handheld Learning Conference in London. I also mentioned that I was looking for four things;

  • the chance to see new ideas and innovations
  • opportunities to meet with people using technology in interesting and successful ways
  • information to assess the future potential of handheld devices in education
  • some fun, well why not!

    • So how did the conference measure up and did I meet my four goals?

    Let me start by saying that this was one of themost interesting conferences I have been to in the field of education. It was spread over 3 days; the first day being taken up by a Handheld Festival showcasing some of the work people and schools have been doing. For me, the best part of the day was the Learners Y factor session hosted by Jason Bradbury, he of the Gadget Show fame and also dot Robot (which sadly we didn’t get to see). This session showcased the work of several schools in using handheld technologies and was presented by the pupils themselves. It would be true to say that each of the schools were interesting and inspiring in what they demonstrated.

    Earlier on the Monday, I had the priviledge of listening to a presentation given by Dawn Hallybone about her work using Nintendo handhelds and Wii devices. Dawn is well known for her work and rightly so for she has done some fantastic work using handheld devices in education. I however was particularly interestedwhen she mentioned some new work in the pipeline using the Wii with dyspraxic learners.

    I attended only part of the session organised by Mirandanet. The problem was that there were so many sessions running in parallel, that it was impossible to attend to all the sessions I wanted to. This was a fascinating sesion and it is a shame that I missed the drawing up of the mind-map but was able to listen in to the discussion afterwards. Thankfully the mind-map has been posted on the web and should be found by following the above link. There was one aspect of the discussion afterwards which was perhaps more depressing than anything; there was a small group of student teachers who were saying that their exposure to ICT in their teacher training was very limited andd, they felt, did not fully prepare them for teaching modern learners.

    Sessions clashing and missing speakers I would have liked to see, was a factor on the second day. I managed to attend an inspiring session by Ollie Bray , who has posted his presentation online, but this meant, unfortunately, that I had to miss a fascinating session by John Davitt. I also missed Tim Ryland’s sesion, which was a great shame. I was, however, able to catch the session from Tony Vincent, whose session came at the end of the day and after a few poorly presented sessions. Which is a great shame for I feel that many more could have benefited from his session.

    The final day, Wednesday, was a packed day with 3 strands and various breakout sessions planned. The highlight of the day was probably the final speech by Ray Kurzweil at the end of the conference. He is an influential thinker, who I had only come across before as a result of his work in speech synthesis and recognition. His work, though goes a lot deeper and this session he chose to focus upon his work into the exponential development of technology. This work, I feel has a major importance for those of us in educational ICT. We often complaiabout how slow the world of educationchanges whereas the world of ICT changes rapidly, well Kurzweil’s work suggests that the ICT world will continue to change even more rapidly as it changes exponentially, rather than linearly. So in the future can we expect to see more of a gap between the technology and the pedagogy?

    So did the conference help me achieve the four goals I set out before attending? I would say it did. I certainly had many opprotunities to see some new ideas and also to meet people. I certainly also got a lot of information bout how handheld technologies might be used in future education but any assessment of this will have to wait for a while! and was there any fun? yep!

    As an addendum to this post. I am am planning to attend the 2010 Games Based learning conference in London. Hopefully, this will further develop my enthusiasm for handheld devices in education and also allow me to discover ways in which computer games can be used to support learning.

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    Put your iPad on Your Desk

    Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

    I don’t have an iPad

    Steve Jobs while presenting the iPad in San Fr...

    Image via Wikipedia

    But I have seen people using them and the first thing that strikes me is just how awkward and cumbersome they seem to be.

    I daresay that when people first used a mobile phone or a video camera, they may have felt that it was cumbersome but soon got used to it. The iPad is slightly different, though, because it seems cumbersome and awkward when you finish using it.

    Just what do you do with it when you’ve finished using it? Yes, I know, some of you have probably not got to that stage as you’ve been using it constantly, like a junkie, since you first got it and others will respond that the time to finish using it is when the battery needs recharging!

    Seriously, though, unlike the iPod Touch which you can switch off and slip back into your pocket, the iPad is not so easy. I have seen some slip it into their laptop bag or into a briefcase. I guess many at home or at work may just put it down on a table or desk. I have even seen some who carry it around in their hand or even hold it in place under their arm or elbow; which doesn’t seem a very secure place to hold an expensive piece of technology.

    Seeing this, my mind began to wander as to how the iPad might be used in schools. We couldn’t expect schoolchildren to carry their iPad under their arm or walk around with them in their hand all day. I guess they might keep them in their school bag or a satchel … (waits for fashion police to come and arrest him for suggesting people should go back to having satchels) … or would a teacher simply say ‘ right, children,’  (it’s a primary school!) ‘ put your iPads on your desk and look at me.’ ?

    Put your iPad on your desk …

    now that seems to conjure up new possibilities. With just one iPad face up on a desk or table (I’m referring to desks in deference to present government thinking!), you can have 1, 2 or up to 4 pupils working together with the one device. This is something that perhaps was not so easy with desktop computers, laptops, netbooks or even the iPod Touch (owing to its smaller screen). We could now have a small number of pupils working cooperatively together via the single device, the iPad.

    I wonder, could the iPad bring about a re-emergence of board games? I know, we’ve all seen Scrabble (r) and Monopoly (r) software but, let’s be honest, they’re not quite the same when you’re playing by yourself or against the machine. Maybe, the format of the iPad could add an extra dimension to interactive boardgames?

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    Thoughts on Game Based Learning

    Thursday, April 1st, 2010

    3290801664 ca54f382ed m Thoughts on Game Based Learning

    There was a lot to inspire at the 2010 Game Based Learning Conference, it was a shame it was only 2 days as I would have loved to have heard more from many of the presenters.

    GBL

    The above is just a short clip of some of the presenters at the conference, my apologies for the poor quality but I had to compress it a lot to get it to upload onto my server successfully.

    I take the view that games have always had a place in learning, so why not computer games? I guess too many people, when they think of a computer game, think of the violent war-like games that proliferate. However, as this conference showed, there is a far wider range of computer game available, many of which are suitable for education. For me, though, the bottom line comes down to having trust and faith in the teacher, can we simply not trust the teacher not to include an ‘unsuitable’ game in their teaching?

    The term ‘game’ covers a wide multitude of genres from simple noughts and crosses type games (tic-tac-toe) through to complex simulations. There is clearly a wide variety of games which can be considered for their educational use. A further point that came across in the conference is that we should not just consider ‘educational’ games or games written especially for the educational market; commercial games too must be considered. The commercial game often has power to engage users in exciting storylines and game play that draws the learner in.

    However, we should always remember that engagement is not the same as learning. A pupils may be engaged in a game or activity but they may not necessarily be learning from it. Engagement is, however, often a pre-requisite or pre-cursor to learning and anything such as computer games that bring about engagement should be welcomed. I feel the work of Dawn Hallybone and Derek Robertson demonstrate quite clearly how games can be used to generate learning and how that learning is taken away from the computer screen and into the classroom or other learning environments.

    I was intrigued by the presentation by Massimilliano Andreoletti in which he showed the different way in which young learners and adults engage in game play. The young learners adopted a more collaborative and participatory style while the adults adopted a more autonomous and individualistic style. This was intriguing and could have implications for web2.0 learning in general and , perhaps, shows the discrepancy between adult and young person learning. It is unclear, though, whether this is a difference between the generations or a maturational factor. However, it would seem to suggest that success for young learners comes about more through collaboration and sharing than through competition.

    Overall, I found all the presenters at the conference had something significant to say or offer to the delegates, true, some presenters were better at presenting than others. I wouldn’t like to pick out one presenter more than others but as well as those I have already mentioned, I must make mention of Gill Penny who demonstrated the work her pupils had been doing, Tim Rylands for his usual excellence in engaging the audience, Ollie Bray, Derek Robertson and all from the Consolarium team for demonsdtrating how Scotland is leading the field in this area, and Jesse Schell for his uplifting closing speech.

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