I’ve been worrying that I’ve not got enough notes/materials behind the work I’m doing on Neverwinter Nights. The pupils are not getting notes or getting long tutorials on the application.

I started pupils off with Neverwinter Nights today by asking them what makes a good game. We talked about what was good and what was rubbish in games today. We talked about what kinds of things you get in fantasy games (wizards and castles etc). Then we went on the computers.

I treated the learning at this point like an administrative task. I gave the pupils enough knowledge to get them to create worlds with creatures and objects and different terrain, and asked them to experiment. I set up a question board using a wee bit of php, which allowed pupils to post up a question onto a projected screen. The questions will be used to build the next lesson - pupil directed learning, I think, is the best way. Why teach them how to make different levels of spells, or use keys, if they first want to do so many other things (mainly involving fire, pits, death and blood!)

It worked out well, I think. Some examples of what pupils have made so far include:

• A big dark foggy pit with a rope bridge
• An army of dragons/seagulls/chickens
• A forest fire
• Teams of dragons that fight

And they came up with doing stuff like this next week:

• Get the creatures to talk to us
• Go inside houses
• Be able to attack people and not just get killed by dragons
• How to make dragons your pet
• How to have a family in your game
• Changing the colours of the characters
• Picking stuff up

These are, I’d say, all important in creating good games. Pupils had a go at each other’s games and showed each other how to do stuff.

I’m very impressed with their work, two hours into the course! Well done S1! It’s great to see the class enjoying something like that and feeling free to take it in the direction they see fit to.
I’ll be giving a demonstration of some of the Neverwinter nights stuff at the Scottish Learning Festival in a few weeks, if anyone wants to see! Hopefully we’ll have videos of our games or maybe some demonstrators!

Sorry, it’s been ages since last update. I’ve been back at school two weeks now and it’s been great so far. I’ve started using Neverwinter Nights with the S1 aCfE class. So far so good. The kids are loving it.

More on this and other things later.

I’ve been thinking of how to use Web 2.0 to encourage personalised study. Here’s some of my ideas…

Start with for learning

Blogging as a revision and progress monitoring tool should be encouraged. Pupils could be given challenges that they respond to on their blog, as well as being encouraged to ask questions and answer comments. Encouraging pupils to post up their resources such as quizzes they have created, or presentations, could be helpful too.

Choose the best style

Pupils could choose to blog in text or in audio - whatever is best for the pupil.

Start to collaborate

Organising a collaborative project could move pupils to the next level in regards to study. Instead of having a set of class notes, pupils could add their own study notes to a large, structured site.

Pupils could summarise concepts on their blogs and recieve feedback on their explanations from teachers and pupils.

Either a wiki or a feature like Moodle’s glossary could be used to allow pupils to log multiple definitions of concepts. Comments and ratings could be used to pick the most popular definitions.

Take the work to the next level

Pupils have access to CC images. They could use these to improve their entries, illustrating their examples or could create their own diagrams.

Multimedia versions

Pupils could use podcasts, quizzes, video, animations, comic strips, games or presentations to explain their points.

Old media versions

As well as sharing and improving resources online, it would be easy for pupils to select their favourite definitions and explanations, formatting the work as they choose, for a printable set of notes. It’s  even possible for them to create their own book of notes instantly and in high quality. Having a personalised but full set of notes for their subject can only be a positive step.

Teachers and pupils together

I can provide notes for my pupils and my pupils can provide notes for me. The understanding of the concepts is shared, and improved upon.

There’s a good article on using open source tools in class on Linux News.

The voting is open for the XFM Schoolwave podcast competition! Three Scottish schools are in the final, an the winner gets a gig at their school in the last week of term!

I’m urging you to use your vote for my team, from St. Columba’s High. They tried really hard and came up with a wee show about anti-social behaviour. They rerecorded the show in XFM studios in Glasgow and a good day was had by all. They are desperate to win so please vote for them if you like their show! (And if not, vote anyway?)

You can read more at the schoolwave site or go directly to the voting area

And if you really want to help, highlight the competition in your blogs - get the blogosphere listening to Scottish schools and help raise the profile of our excellently achieving kids higher!

Next year S1 pick a “strand” to study as an enhancement course. I’m one of five teachers catering for the technology strand.

I’ve got a few things I’ll be doing and I know the other teachers have ideas too, but am interested to hear what the blogosphere thinks!

 If you had an afternoon a week to work on any Curriculum for Excellence-based project with a new S1, what would it be?

1. LTScotland’s games design course was excellent. Everyone there was excited and learning. I think games design is going to be well supported in schools over the next few years. Hurrah! Thanks to Derek for organising an excellent 3 days and to Judy and Cathrin for the excellent training in Neverwinter Nights. I am looking forward to getting this on the go with S1 classes next term.

2. Scratch made it onto the main page of BBC news’s tech section! This is great news - it’s an excellent piece of software that I hope will be adopted by many teachers. If you’ve not seen it yet, download and use it - you’ll enjoy yourself and see instantly how kids could use it as a way to learn programming, increase problem solving ability, create interactive art, and make presentations that go beyond PowerPoint!

3. Through the same story, I found out that Ruby legend _why has created a teenager’s programming environment. It allows kids to learn Ruby through interactive tutorials, and gives them access to easy to understand methods. And the best thing is the name: it’s called Hackety Hack! Well worth a look. I can see this also developing into a popular tool.

It helps that the tutorials are funny too! There’s definitely something to be said about making programming fun again - it can be fun but it’s not, for the vast majority of kids sitting Computing..  but that can change.

4. S1 should also be doing podcasting next year. And the school is celebrating reaching the final of the XFM schoolwave competition! Well done to the pupils involved.

If anything really explains how subjects can go 2.0 it is Scratch, a programming tool from MIT.

Scratch is free, open source and produced by a well respected Computing institution. It works on Windows and Macs. It is a visual tool that lets kids create programs with coloured blocks. It is multimedia because it supports graphics, sounds and music.

And then, once the kids have made their projects, they can set up an account on Scratch’s web site and upload their games which can be played online in any web browser. The games are rated and comments can be left. Kids can organise other kids’ games into groups. They can also download the source for the games and modify it for their own games. Kids can learn from freely downloadable information sheets. Educators are invited to discuss Scratch in a forum.
Scratch is the best educational tool I’ve seen. The downside? Even with permission to run it on the computers (if/when it arrives), the safety proxies block the uploading of the files to Scratch, so work can’t be shared. The security-mad installation of IE won’t allow the Java applets to run to display games on the web page. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I shall endeavour to find solutions to this, but aargh!

For after the holidays, I feel.

1. Lesson summaries at the end of each lesson

2. Summarise a concept and write a post about it

3. Post up a question (in the “I’ve got a question” category) to be picked up by other pupils.

4. Post up finished work, to be commented on

5. Posting up quizzes, for others to answer in comments

6. Post up a list of links to web sites related to the current topic

7. Photo blog today’s work

8. Pick two other pupils in the class and ask them a question (the other pupils will have to find this through the aggregation)

9. Keep a progress diary during a project

10. Post up an audio summary (or podcast)

11. Post up a list of topics to revise at home

12. Write study notes into your blog for each subject (using categories to split them up)

13. Keep a record of the running of a club, enterprise group or sports league

14. Use a blog to count down to exams, doing a bit of work online each day.
15. Use your blog as a study monitor, recording the time online, studying, watching tv, going out, each night.

16. Write an entry every day about “what I learned” - one thing you remember from each subject

17. Use your blog to measure healthy study-friendly activity such as sports, healthy eating etc.

18. Use blog entries to show parents, friends and family what you did today.

19. Assess yourself on the last unit of work by checking your knowledge against a checklist, and ask your teacher to comment on your progress

20. Be positive and write about the best thing that happened today.

Haven’t blogged with classes for a while but discovered this today:

http://www.21classes.com/

It’s an educational version of the web site I was using, hurrah! Better approval for articles etc. Looks great.

Only downside is the adverts but these should at least be edu-safe (theoretically?)

I’ve got notes for 21publish so should be an easy change for this. Providing the council WebSense filter doesn’t ban it!

This is a really great resource for teachers wanting to try blogging. It needs no installation, it’s free, and it supports up to 50 pupils in a blog group. It’s easy to set up, it offers full moderation, and pupils can customise their blogs easily!

Please pass this on to teachers up for a bit o blogging

P.S. I’ll try and fix the slash problem with comments at some point soon.