April 11th, 2010

CPD and INSET / e-Tools — No Comments
11
Apr 10

When Becta met Delicious

Real progress. It may have taken some internet searching, emails, forums posts, Twitter posts and phone calls but we are edging closer. Late Friday afternoon, I received my first official email from Becta. Short and to the point, as late Friday afternoon emails should be.

I can help bring the right Becta people into the discussion. Can you send me any kind of outline or details of what you’ve discussed with Yahoo! So far, so that I can get people here interested?

Within hours, I had contacted Delicious (early morning), who promptly connected with Becta with a very positive opening email.

A quick introduction, I work as Project Manager for Delicious and lived in the UK up until 6-7 years ago. That being the case I have a strong interest in social bookmarking and the UK school system.

No specifics have been discussed to-date, just the concept of Delicious and UK educators working together in some capacity. Kristian has been very kind in keeping me abreast of the recent conference, BectaX and how Delicious might be able to assist. Please feel free to reach out to me once you’re ready to discuss concepts and needs. When you do I’ll ensure I have the right people at my end with me ready to listen. I look forward to hearing from you.

Becta have now been presented with a fantastic opportunity to show their commitment to those who attended, pitched and feedback to BectaX.

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Digital Learning — No Comments
11
Apr 10

Putting Chocolate on Top of Broccoli

Putting chocolate on top of broccoli.

Teaching is a craft and I continue in my efforts to refine my craft under the education principals of ‘challenge and inspire.’ More recently, I have wrestled with the learning principal of fun. Emotive and engaging, can learning be challenging, inspirational and fun? I hope so and I am actively searching out examples of edugaming or games based learning / teaching for next my teaching next year. The best examples I have encountered so far have predominantly showcased work from our Primary school colleagues (Tim Ryland, Ollie Bray, Tom Barrett) and I am looking for some more Secondary School examples for ICT, English or MFL.

Importantly, the use of games based learning must be able to sit across a faculty with a broad range of ICT skills and enthusiasm for this teaching / learning method and so we need to be considerate and start at Level 1 with opportunities to progress. Personally, For the record, I do not consider edugaming as merely ‘putting chocolate on top of broccoli’ and not the only way to make my teaching challenging, inspirational and fun.

There are numerous defences of the choc-broc / edugaming phrase dating back over 10 years and yes, there really is a recipe. ‘Children, Games, and Learning’ Roundtable discussions held on March 16, 17, and 18, 1999.

I posted these reflections late last night. This morning I read

The Game Center may be Apple’s attempt to compete with Facebook’s dominance over the hugely popular and incredibly lucrative area of social gaming. A report released this week suggested that the gaming company Zynga, maker of six of the seven most popular social games, is worth over $5 billion.

This highlighted three points, first, fun can also be profitable. Second, here is a good example of an industry that didn’t exist when its employees were in school. Can social gaming be used in school, is that the next evolution? Anyone have any ideas on the matter?

Popularity: 2% [?]