ICT Conference – The Wii in my classroom

I did it. Having been inspired by the Teachmeet Takeovers at BETT 2010 and the support network I’ve developed over the past six months, I presented at our LEA’s ICT Conference. It might have been the evening slot, it might’ve been to a smaller group than that attending during the day, but they were my peer group; experts in the field, and I had been asked to present to them.

I had been asked to present on my experience of using the Nintendo Wii in my class. I particularly focused on the Wii Game African Safari which I used as a central plank of a series of literacy lessons with a particular focus on narrative writing.

The path which has brought me to this point began last year. I can trace it to the SWGfL Regional ICT Conference last year in Torquay; a chance conversation with a teacher on the way home who introduced me to the Primary Teachers Resource Centre which then led me to via a post on the PTRC forum to Twitter. It was good to meet up with the teacher from East Cornwall who signposted me to the PTRC..!

Twitter has grown quickly to play a major part in the way that I communicate with teaching professionals from around the world. I use Google Reader  to keep in touch with those blogs I find most useful to me.  It puts me in touch with teachers and their ideas allowing me to learn and draw on their wealth of experiences; and maybe to build on their experiences and then feed some of my experiences back into the Professional Learning Network that I am part of.  Twitter connects me from my small village school  to teaching colleagues throughout the UK and the world.

So I spoke about my experience of using African Safari, work inspired from Tom Barrett’s blog articles about using Endless Ocean.  I used the Wii game to provide a meaningful context – the game became central to what we were doing, it wasn’t a bolt on or extra, I had planned it to be central to the lessons.  The literacy lessons were organised around a set of four activities  that were rotated (a carousel) throughout the week. These included a teacher led (guided writing session using Google Earth, where we ‘visited’ the Masai Mara; animal creation and habitat investigation using switcheroo zoo; speaking and language activities using  photostory 3 and a group playing the game to explore it for themselves. The experience of Tom Barrett and Mark Warner gave me the confidence to allow children time to play the game independently and in small groups.

The work was a great success. The class were particularly motivated to write and the standard of writing improved. African Safari was central to what we were doing,  but there is so much more I can do in terms of class work and display next time as well that will go beyond the limits of the game.

The right sort of game will engage the children in your class. It is what you do with that engaged group of children that counts. We had an Ofsted inspection during the time I was using the Wii, the Inspector concluded in the report that  “… creative use of computer animations, are used successfully to develop pupils’ ideas for writing …”

I think my talk was well received, I had to smile when comment was made about my presentation and whether it had been put together using a mac (no, powerpoint 2007  – I’ve just sat through too many poor powerpoints). I left them with the words of Tom Barrett:

”The experience of using the game so far shows me that a rich, games based simulation adds an ingredient that is hard to replicate in any other way.”

I’m moving on with my Professional Learning Network. In the early days I observed, sitting on the sidelines, but as my confidence has grown so has my interaction and sharing of ideas. Who knows where it’ll lead me now!

Photostory 3

I have a confession to make. I love using Photostory 3 in my classroom. The children in my class love using Photostory 3. In this ever-changing WEB 2.0 enabled world and IPhone loving land, I find myself returning to use this essential piece of software. I don’t want to seem like some luddite fighting against the encroaching WEB 2.0 tide; my children are already using such tools like Voicethread and Wallwisher in the class. However, when I’m looking for some cross-curricular software tools, I find myself returning to Photostory again and again? Is this because I’m stuck in my ways? Maybe. Is this because I haven’t stumbled over something that works, in my opinion, just as well? Probably. Is it because my pupils find it an easy and effective learning tool? Definitely. And yet I feel a bit guilty that I’m saying this; that I use software which might not be at the ‘cutting edge’ of WEB 2.0 technology.

So, as you might have guessed (and at the risk of repeating myself) I really like using this piece of software. Why?

1. Because it is free. We are a small school with a small budget. I have many companies trying to sell me their latest ‘must have’ piece of software. As yet I haven’t seen something that replaces Photostory in my class. That’s not to say there are brilliant alternatives, but my budget is tight and Photostory has proved itself an effective classroom tool.

2. It is accessible – especially for the non-techies among us. After a short introduction the children can just get on with it. This week they’ve used it to create adverts inspired by a well-known food store advert (I know this has been done elsewhere but not by my children). It is a tool that allows the children to see, share and be inspired by each others successes. It is a tool which allows them to preview their work as they go along and so make amendments as they work. It is a tool which allows them to produce a professional-looking film as a final product; something which they can feel justly proud of.

3. It promotes speaking and listening. Enough said? As part of our literacy unit using the Wii game African Safari, I loaded up some screenshots of the game into a Photostory file and then asked the children to imagine that they were on safari and to record a description of what they experienced. The results were brilliant. It was great to share these descriptions with the class and, once the children had got over any initial embarrassment, their self-esteem was certainly heightened when they heard the positive comments of their peers. This was particularly evident with my weaker writers whose narrative writing improved greatly as a result.

4. It is cross-curricular. Although I have predominantly used it in literacy, we have used it in a variety of other areas of learning whether this is talking about a particular science experiment, discussing their findings after a geography based school trip or explaining about a concept in maths.

So there you have it. Is it an archaic piece of software in this WEB 2.0 world?  I would say no and at the moment Photostory remains an important part in my learning tool armoury.  Whether it will be there in a years time I don’t know, but in my classroom at the moment it remains alongside the Wii, Wallwisher, Wordle and (increasingly) Voicethread.

Wallwisher

One of the outcomes from our recent successful Ofsted inspection is the need to improve “improve community cohesion by linking the school with schools in other parts of the country and the wider world so that pupils develop a greater awareness of multicultural Britain”. Given the nature of our school – a small village school in Cornwall – this was something we were already very aware of and so putting in measures to address. To help with this we have linked up with Uphall Primary School in Ilford, Essex; a school very different to ours in lots of different ways. When the children at Uphall were looking at our school website one did ask “Where are all the black children?” which was a very interesting conversation starter here. It is early days but both schools have already used Google Earth to explore the locations of the schools. We also had the benefit of Google Earth’s Street View option to gain a clear idea about Uphall School’s surroundings; the photos were so clear that one child commented that ‘it is like actually standing there’. Unfortunately the Street View cameras haven’t made it down our country lanes yet! 

I have found Wallwisher really useful as a means of communication between the children. After setting up the ‘Wall’ with the class (which is very straight forward) and exploring with Google Earth, the children were tasked to come up with questions to ask the children at Uphall Primary. They loved the idea of working at their own laptops and then seeing their posts appear on the IWB via my laptop. The whole class responded well and despite a few teething problems (overcome by refreshing both my laptop and theirs), they were all able to successfully contribute to the ‘Question Wall’ and are already looking forward to seeing the replies of the children in Uphall School.  http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/ladockquestions 

I can see Wallwisher having lots of different uses in the classroom, this is just one. In the future I hope that its’ use will become more pupil-initiated as their confidence grows.

BETT 2010

Now I know much has already been blogged about BETT 2010 but I might as well add my thoughts. I attended BETT on the Friday, my first visit since I’d been a student teacher (so a while ago). It was a great day and I came away inspired, with my head full of practical ideas for my classroom. Yet the vast majority of these didn’t come from the trade stands. I thought that lots of these were providing expensive solutions to simple problems, or were selling products beyond the budget of a small school like mine. No, my inspiration came from the chance to attend several of the Teachmeet Takeovers where practical ideas and resources, which actually are proven to work in real classrooms, were demonstrated and shared.  Despite being disappointed to be unable to attend the evening Teachmeet, it was good to meet so many of my Twitter colleagues and to come away with so many good ideas. My first target is to use Voicethread and Wallwisher in the next couple of weeks; the results of which will appear here in the next couple of weeks.

Inspired to do this

So finally I’ve dipped my toe into the deep water of blogging. After reading the thoughts, ideas, experiences and advice of other teachers who blog I’ve decided to have a go myself. My motivation? Nothing egotistical (I hope). But since setting up a PLN through Twitter, I have learnt so much from other teachers about using ICT, computer games and WEB 2.0 tools within the classroom, within my classroom. And despite being a ‘relative newcomer’ to the Twitter/PLN world, I already find myself sharing my experiences, some new, some built on the ideas of ”greater’ experts than me, with teachers I meet and work with. Hence this blog; a slight extension of this world of communication. I have no idea where this blogging journey will take me, but as my school continues to develop its’ creative curriculum I hope to make even greater use of ICT in my class, ruminating and cogitating on these future experiences through the pages of this blog.