I attended four sessions which I was particularly interested in because of the the convergent and up-and-coming technologies.
After dodging through outbound traffic, it took me an hour and a quarter to get to Mahoneys Rd Forest Hill. I made it just in time! Phil Callil from Xavier College welcomed the morning and even though he considered himself a "non-gamer", expressed much interest in what some schools were offering at all levels with regards to games, whether on the iTouch iPod to the XBox and Wii consoles. The Keynote speaker Richard Olsen from the IdeasLAB got us thinking about games as he introduced the concept of collaborative, collective knowledge building through programming. He shared how his work encouraged students from Broadmeadows Secondary to delve into unknown territory and engage into an area which most students are interested and spend countless hours doing. Gaming. Using a project from Microsoft called Kodu Game lab, students become engaged into creating games which last for up to 15 minutes. Now the interesting part is that this software comes to the XBox 360 and it is aimed at primary kids and middle school kids. It all began when a Microsoft researcher was looking at how her daughter was using her computer and wondered if he could teach her programming. He came up with Kodu Game lab where students string together icons to control a character. This was certainly an eye opener, especially when he said that preps could do this.
My next session was centered around creating games for the Mac, PC and iPhone and iTouch. The software used was Torque 2D and Conor O'Kane from RMIT showed us how easy it was to use this software in order to create games for the iPhone the Mac and PC. The software is quite simple to use but the work in creating the environments takes a little while since the programmer must use Photoshop to create clouds, objects, explosions, etc. It is quite involved but quite easy to program because, like Kodu Game Lab, it is a graphical interface. Nevertheless, it also gives the students a chance to get really involved in coding. Check out cokane.com to play some free games. I would ideally deploy this kind of programming at Senior levels.
Next, I had the opportunity to play some DS games. Blake Curran from Roxburgh Rise Primary School gave us first hand experience at how he uses the Nintendo Wii and DS game consoles to get kids involved in PE activities to Maths and language at junior levels. I found that there was so much potential in using this technology to get kids up to speed in Maths, English and general knowledge. He shared that the biggest plus in using games was an increase in attendance and kids coming to school early wanting to use the DSs. He displayed data that showed an increase in reading and maths skills. VITTA has 16 DS units which may be borrowed for a term to use in classrooms.
I created half a game in 30 minutes using Game Maker. This software is certainly going into the curriculum for a couple of levels at Chairo Pakenham. It teaches problem solving, programming, resourcefulness, etc, etc. It has been run as an elective at Drouin previously by Steve Reiher and I am certainly keen to run it here. Click on the link to see some examples.
Finally, as I succumb into information overload, I meet Cecile murray from Delphian who runs App-titude, a software company concentrating in creating education games for the iTouch, iPhone and upcoming iPad. Research shows that kids are engaged when they learn using something they are familiar with. My brain started working overtime at this stage and had thoughts of having DSs and iTouches to get kids interested in Maths, learning times tables, etc. I put my name down to be part of the input team and testing games for Science and Maths. So, we may have a few iTouches coming around for kids to play with. Exciting stuff! Visit App-titude and get a free $10 iTunes card as you submit your interest in this exciting new technology. Some schools are buying x number of iTouches to use in classrooms and there was mention of a school purchasing 1800 iPads!
To sum up. There is much interest in meeting students needs by using technology that they are familiar with and extending the boundaries to apply Maths, English, Science and many other subjects by playing games. Obviously not every area of the curriculum will entail game playing but surely it is exciting for a student to expect some kind of gaming in English and in the meantime he/she does not even know that they are actually LEARNING.
