Update on our Wii Project.

QUICK UPDATE: Darius Knight sent an email to say he was stuck in Spain due to the volcano disruption to flights and that he will get in touch when back in London. Woo Hoo! Hope he gets back safely.

Work for the competition needed to be submitted at the end of last term so it was a busy time pulling everything together.

When it came time to organise the work for submission I was truly impressed with the work the boys had done!

We had used a variety of online and purchased software and it was interesting how different children worked with different software.

Some found searching the internet suited their style of learning and became the researches for the whole class.

As YouTube is blocked at our school (shame) I used Zamzar to convert the videos. One boy has now used this to add video clips to his MLE page (and has remembered to put a note that they came from YouTube).

After BETT 2010 I was able to get the school to purchase the fabulous 2 Create A Superstory from 2Simple. We used this to create various non-fiction books. Due to the simplicity of its design the children were writing without any real complaints!… and the results looked quite professional.

The boys really enjoyed using Flip camcorders and became quite amazing in their ability to direct and film by the end.

We used a number of programmes from Mr Microsoft such as PowerPoint, Word, and Publisher as well as a fabulous free programme called Cute PDF Writer which lets you change any document into a pdf file by just choosing it in the print option.

We used PowerPoint templates from Communication 4 All – Thanks Bev ;o) to organise the report writing.

The videos we created were uploaded onto Vimeo and then embedded onto the class’s MLE page. I started with a free account but then decided it would be better to pay the smallish charge.

The children really enjoyed the project and surprisingly they say they enjoyed playing real table tennis more than that on the Wii…. funny not what I would have expected.

Jo Armitage, Advisor for eLearning for the Borough and Project co-ordinator presented at  Games Based Learning 2010 and her presentation was well received with great comments on Twitter. Click here to see her presentation (our class’s work starts at 20 minutes in)

At the beginning of the topic I had asked the children, individually, what they thought of when they heard the words non-fiction and put these into a Wordle. I did this again at the end and I was quite pleased with the results.

This was the first time that I truly had embraced Games Based Learning in my teaching and I was hugely impressed with the effect it had on the children’s motivation as well as how I could see the children making links as we covered the topic through a number of different subjects. I have definitely become a convert to this style of teaching and thank all those fabulous people on my Twitter and PTRC PLN who helped and encouraged me on the way!

I look forward to hearing whether the class has got through to the next stage of the competition though truthfully it was so much fun and useful that I think of them as winners already ;o)

We have been busy…

Over the past month things have been moving on with the Wii Literacy work.

On the 8th February the support organiser for the Wii-limpics Project came back and with her help the children researched various exercises and stretches for the ‘trainer’ role. We videod and photographed the exercises and these will be added to a PhotoStory soon.

The following week (12th February) we focussed on revising instructional text and the need for sentences to be clear and precise.

The children picked up quickly that each step began with a sequence word (first, next, then, after that and finally) or an imperative (bossy) verb (mix, cut, stir, chop).

What is nice to see is that they are showing a far better knowledge of the various non-fiction types than they did at the beginning. Hurrah!!!

We researched the five food groups and combined a variety of foods to create a nutritious and healthy menu that our athlete might eat.

It is great, that at our school we have a good sized kitchen for the children to practice cooking and hygiene which is such an important life skill.

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Every Friday we spend a lesson practising and playing Table Tennis both on the Wii and in ‘real’ life. We are enjoying taking turns, practicing and improving our skills and learning the rules of Table Tennis.

We are going to start graphing the results of each child to see their individual improvement as well as making it easier to choose the ‘athlete’ we will put forward for the final competition.

This week we have been focusing on Report Writing and the structure they need to follow for this text type. We have used the non-fiction writing frames provided by the fab Bev Evans on her site Communication 4 All.

These PowerPoint templates give the children an excellent structure for their writing.

Some of the children have chosen to use Comic Life to create their information page. This is another greatly motivating piece of software which is very popular with my class of EBD boys. They love how easy it is to quickly produce a high quality looking comic.

The plan is for the children to each write a page of text for an information book which they will create using  2Create a Super Story from 2Simple.

The class’ audience will be the rest of the children throughout the school and this will also be a good way to show off this new piece of software we purchased after 2Simple so kindly let me sample after BETT2010.

Tomorrow is an exciting day as we are having two important visitors come to see the children working on the project and asking them questions. I am sure they will be quite impressed with the work the children have done as I certainly am.