The virtual gym is not a new idea. Take a barely used classroom, add game devices and active game titles. Think competitive rowing, dance mats, cycle races, and just you wait to see what the Kinect brings this year. Add to this a very simple 3 statement campaign and solution from Anthony David King.

1. Simple universally recognisable truth = Kids love playing video games.

2. Irrefutable fact = Exercise improves health.

3. Strikingly simple idea = Connect exercise equipment to video games consoles. When students exercise, the game plays, when they stop exercising, the game stops. Thus encouraging them to exercise more.

So, there you have it, some of my most favourite things, Physical Education, gaming and technology. I really like the active = lights on controller and the device that pauses the game. Could “Games Club” be “Active Games Club.” All things considered, number of active participants, 4x consoles, monitirs, peripherals and its not a cheap option.

http://anthonydavidking.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/video-games-in-education/

@TeachersJourney:

“All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.”- John Gardne

http://twitter.com/TeachersJourney/status/165862105935921153

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@mashable:

This mind-blowing video shows the future possibilities of touchscreen technology – http://t.co/EnS6rU74

http://twitter.com/mashable/status/165714968774316032

Proximity, NFC, toughen glass and a good cosh of innovation.

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So, two points to pick up here. At the end of the PSRE lesson I was able to push the student responses to Wordle. This automatically gave me an overview of the lesson, warts and all. To be fair, a very use summary. I am sure if the Wordles was projected onto a whiteboard you could then use it in your plenary. Discussing words, differences between words and striking through words. Any other ideas?

Parent Evening

Second, we posted the Textwall number and email on our main hall screen during parents evening last night, giving our parent and carers the opportunity to feedback. Now, in this instance textwall was ‘unsupervised’ and we obivously did not display the textwall. More importantly we were able to get instant feedback on the night. When I checked in this morning, we had recevied six responses providing some very usable feedback such as ‘not enough seats available,’ and ‘the keeping up with allocated times could be improved.’ This type of advice is invaluable in a school and to improving both our systems and relationships. In the spirit of reports and parents evening….

Textwall B+, works extremely well in the classroom and even when unsupervised at parents evening. Textwalls contribution to whole school discussion could prove invaluable, certainly its avoids any perceived awkwardness when parents wish to give open and honest feedback. A little polish on some of the voting features could really make Textwall standout from the crowd. We look forward to next term.

This afternoon I had a very positive conversation with Lilian Soon from textwall.co.uk. In a nutshell textwall.co.uk it’s a response system where responders text, email, webpost their responses. Think Twitterfall for texting. Lilian gave me access to a sandbox account and I had a really good nose round. I was pleasantly surprised.

There are three main flavours, a single textwall £30, very useful for the individual teacher or trainer. Two versions of textwallplus, 10 textwalls @ £200 or 25 textwalls @ £400. Now, in my opinion that’s great value, considering there’s a hatful of functionality to muse over. Auto refresh control, RSS, questions, bad word filters, wordle integrations, text size, export and more.

 Of course it goes without saying that you, the host, are not charged for messages you receive but it does costs the learner their standard sms charge to text the system. But with unlimited text message plans seemingly the norm in my school, the cost of a texting for learning, may be soon an issue of the past? What is it like in your school? Of course, students could choose not to response or you could choose a non-tech voting method. I am a big fan of the mini whiteboard and Caesar’s thumb. But for £30 for you, or maybe £20 for each member of the department it seems good value to me. A simple code protects from SPAM texts. Simple.

Next step – try out the sandbox with a class. I will most certainly be able to demonstrate progress in my lessons, that is for sure.

I could not hold back. I just let it all out…

Tom Whitby offers educators really great discussion. This afternoon I got caught up in ‘Can technology change teacher practice. When it comes to technology enhanced learning, I love the gadgets but I am only interested in the learning. Do we really need to force feed it upon the profession? Here is my comment to Tom Connell’s guest post. If I was a little heavy handed, I apologise.

Learning. Passionate about my profession, I am focused on challenging and inspiring young people. With or without technology, though I am not one to ignore technology. If technology accelerates learning, count me in. If tech gets in the way, I am as happy to ignore it. And of course, there is still plenty of room and opportunity to improvement good old fashioned ‘regular’ teaching.

Let me share a few teaching and learning experiences from an exciting week to colour in or enhance that statement.

On Tuesday I watched a live theatre performance brought to our school by a local drama company. Simply amazing, I mo-blogged as I watched and tweeted to other teacher colleagues. Back in class ‘we’ ipadio’d the students opinions and published straight to blog via a phone. The students loved that to.

Wednesday I presented and shared IF (interactive fiction) for creative writing and coding. Almost all ‘old’ technology, well retro, as a motivation to stimulate students writing.

On Friday I explored shoeless teaching with three very different groups (11-16, low ability, mixed ability and middle set) and today I explored how hexagons are better than squares (http://chrisharte.typepad.com/learner_evolution_chris_h/2011/04/solo-im-ridin-solo.html) for consolidating learning / thinking. Neither are technology enhanced, both were accessed through online professional platforms and RSS.

It is short sighted to assume that technology enhanced teaching makes for better learning. That this mode is somehow preferential because learners are digital immersed. Yes learning is opening up, yes, students are creating or finding their own learning pathways. Yes, we should celebrate it. As we should celebrate those wonderful relationships created and forged between student and teacher. Let’s not down play the flexibility of regular teaching, many of my most effective teaching memories have been as of a result of student curiousity and questioning leading us astray. Where the value of abondoning the lesson plan has been greater than the value of sticking to it. Show me AI that can make that distinction.

“You don’t learn because your engaged. You’re engaged because you’re learning.” With or without tech. I have little preference.Thank you for the opportunity to comment, John Connell’s thought really got me thinking.