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More Learning with the Nintendo Wii

Royd Nursery and Infants visited on the 29th June and 1st July to take part in a similar day to Nook Lane Juniors.

The aim of the day was to explore how schools could embed games technology in teaching and learning and an opportunity for the Y2 pupils to try out a number of different activities using ICT.

The day was a resounding success and both teaching staff and pupils enjoyed it thoroughly. Based around the theme ‘Under the Sea’ which the Y2 pupils had been studying in school, a number of different activities were set up around the room. These included virtual ‘diving’ using the Wii and

keeping a tally of different creatures encountered, data handling – sorting creatures using an interactive white board, creating storyboards using kar2ouche, taking photos and making a short news story interviewing the divers using Digital Blue cameras and software.

Pupils were also encouraged to create and add to concept maps throughout the day to keep a record of what they had learnt and understood about ‘Under the Sea’.

So why use games technology in the classroom?

A number of recent reports published by BECTA (2005), Futurelabs (2005, 2006) and ELSPA (2006) provide evidence that suggests that using computer games in the classroom can acieve the following:

•Motivating learners to succeed and to continually improve •Fostering self-esteem, self-determination and enhancing self-image •Facilitating collaborative learning •Implicitly develop learners ability to observe, question, hypothesise and test •facilitate metacognitive reflection •Develop complex problem-solving skills •Make school an exciting place to be •Offering inroads into other curricular areas.

The aim of the project now is to move it forwards across the partnership of primaries. This will start with bringing a cross partnership group of G & T pupils together in October drawn from Y2 and Y5 who will carry out a similar activity.

Teaching staff are welcome to attend and take part and take the new skills and ideas back into school to try there.

We will also have a Nintendo Wii plus titles to loan out to schools who wish to follow up the work back in school with support.

Intersted in trying out computer games technology in your teaching?

Check out the following sites:

Consolarium – Scottish Centre for Games and Learning

Hot Milky Drink – Derek Robertson’s Blog on Games and Learning

Tim Rylands – Using Myst in the Classroom

Learning Using Nintendo Wii

Yesterday we had year 6 pupil’s from Nook Lane Junior School visiting the CLC to take part in an exciting project using games technology in learning.

The theme for the day was ‘Oceans’ and the pupils took part in a number of cross curricular activities based around the game ‘Endless Ocean’ using the Nintendo Wii games platform. This was based on a project originally run in Primary Schools in Stirling and led by Margaret Cassidy who works in e-learning for Stirling. I was also influenced by Derek Robertson – a proponent of teaching using games through his blog ‘hotmilkydrink’. He talks about the potential of Endless Ocean as a classroom tool on his fantastic games in the classroom blog here.

We have three height adjustable  interactive whiteboards in our new 99 metre square learning space. On two of the whiteboards pupils used the Nintendo Wii and were tasked with diving in the fictional Maurai Sea to look for rare and exotic sea creatures. The pupils were very excited to discover a humped back whale and hammer head sharks as well as befriending bottle nosed dolphins and african penguins!

But they weren’t just playing games – they had the opportunity to write an interview script, interview deep sea ‘divers’  and appear in their own chat show, interpret data from the dives, create informative presentations about different species of sea creatures and carry out important research.

We had an interesting video conference with pupils from three primary schools in Scotland who have been using Nintendo Wii’s in the classroom and used Endless Ocean as the basis of a whole terms topic for cross curricular learning. The pupils had a chance to share tips and tricks for playing the game as well as asking questions about what they’d learnt. Cowie primary were very helpful in exaplining the difference between vertebrates and invertebrates.

The pupils also had an opportunity to contribute to the ‘wonder wall’ – based on an idea in Futurelabs ‘Enquiring Minds’ project using the idea of student based open enquiry. This was an interactive whiteboard with flipchart software where they could come and write any questions they had about ‘oceans’. Pupils were also encouraged to contribute to the answers too.

All in all, it was a very successful day and the pupils and teachers reported that they really enjoyed the activities. We will be repeating it on 29th June and 1st july with year 2 pupils and then the hope is that we can look to rolling it out (using other ‘educational’ titles) across the partnership schools who express interest.

Exciting Wii Games Project

We will shortly be running a series of days for primary schools based around the game ‘Endless Ocean’ on the Nintendo Wii. Stirling Council and Stirling Grid for Learning have been very helpful as has the Teacher who originally led the project in Meldrum Primary School reported here on Derek Robertson’s blog.

Margaret Cassidy of Stirling Grid for Learning very kindly sent us the planning and other materials that were used in the pilot project. We are planning to run a day long experience for primary KS2 pupils that will exploit the learning opportunities of the Nintendo Wii and Endless Ocean as well as the fantastic new flexible learning space.

The first school to take part in the week of 15th June is Nook Lane Juniors. The day will consist of deep sea ‘dives’ plus opportunities for cross curricular learning using new technologies.

If you are one of our partnership primaries and are interested in getting involved please contact Sarah on 0114 2855586 or email me sarah(@)nwsclc.net.