2012 HOTs Wii Project by Oak Class

 

 

 

 

The HOTs project (Hold onto Sports), originally called the Wii-lypmics is the London 2012 Inspire Project for Hounslow.

It was first started in 2009-2010 by Dr. Jo Armitage and Sarah Hoyle from Together We Create and was created to get young people involved in sport through the use of  technology. The aim of the project was to help children learn how people become top athletes, how they prepare their diet,  look after their bodies and present themselves in the media.  The children would research different areas of the athletes: life as the trainer, dietician, physiotherapist, the PR Manager and the athlete itself.  They then present to the judges their project for judging and the children also learn how to play their given sport on the Wii.

This is the third year that my class has taken part in the The HOTS project. Here is our 2010 project and our 2011 project.

This year we again focused on Darius Knight, a London born 2012 Olympic hopeful in table tennis.

We will find out in the next few weeks if we make it to the finals. Fingers crossed!

HOTs 2010 Final

The finals of the HOTs Wii Project took place on Saturday 3rd July at the Civic Centre.

Schools had already submitted their work in a variety of forms including photos, videos and websites and the day had arrived for the athletes to compete in their chosen sport (Cycling, Basketball, Bowling and Table Tennis)

Four of the seven boys from my class arrived full of excitement to take part in a number of Wii Table Tennis matches against the other schools which had also chosen this sport.

Tensions ran high as one match after another was played with some being won and some lost. It was great seeing ‘my boys’ show outstanding sportsmanship with one boy even telling his classmates to cheer his opponent as the boy didn’t have anyone with him!

After the matches there was a musical interlude while the scores were added to find the results of the days play in all the Wii Sports Resort competitions.

The organisors of the Wii HOTs project, Dr Jo Armitage and Sarah Hoyle (Together We Create) were introduced by the Borough’s Director of Education and medals and certificates were presented by the Mayor of Hounslow and a special guest.

Prizes were for both the matches on the day as well as for work done throughout the project.

Gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded for each of the roles: trainer, dietician, PR manager, physiotherapist and of course the athlete.

For the work completed by my class they won GOLD in each catagory! Loud whoops echoed through the room as time after time they went onto the stage to collect their medals!

and then the greatest surprise of the event happened. Dr Jo Armitage took to the stage again and said that there had been one group of pupils who had been outstanding in every aspect of the work both prior to as well on the day itself. She then called to the stage the four boys in my class and they were presented with an iPod nano each for their sportsmanship and great work!

It was particularly great that their moms were there to watch them collect their prizes.

I was hugely proud on two counts during the day… one for all the fabulous and hard work that the class did and also bursting with pride as it was my daughter who had been asked to present the medals as an up and coming Olympic Rowing hopeful!

There is private view at the Watermans arts centre, Brentford planned on Wednesday 21st July between 6-8pm of all the work done at the HOTS 2010 project.

A selection of the brilliant work created by the children who took part this years HOTs will go on display at the Watermans from the 21st – 24th July.

The private view will provide a great chance to talk about this years project and share ideas for next years project, over a glass of wine or orange juice and a tasty samosa !

I can’t wait to hear about the plans for next year!

Finals Day of Wii-lympics

At 10 o’clock registration opens for the schools who took place in the Wii project to meet head to head for a competition to find the top Wii Sports Resort Champion.

Four of the boys in my class will be coming.

The children from all the competing schools will play against each other on the Wii and then at 3:00 medals will be awarded for the work they have done for this project.

Click here if you’d like to see the work my class has done.
http://tinyurl.com/39e2t7s

Much of it requires you to have Flash.

I will update with the results!!!

Update on The Wii Project

If you were at Games Based Learning Conference 2010 in London you may have heard Dr Jo Armitage, adviser for e-learning in Hounslow, speak about the Hold On To Sport project (HOTs2010).  Click here to watch her presentation and  here to see the slides of her presentation.

It was in order to enter this that I first started the Wii project with my class.

I received an email earlier this week with an update on the HOTs Project.  The great news was that it was now officially a London 2012 project!

Over 20 schools from across the borough had taken part from Primary, Secondary and Special schools and submitted entries for the first stage of the HOTs competition.

The judges are now looking at the work submitted and in each category: physio, trainer, dietician and Public Relations, bronze, silver and gold prizes will be awarded.

The last part of our project will be the HOTS Big Weekend running across the 3^rd and 4^th July at the Civic Centre in central Hounslow. At the beginning of the project each school had to select a team of athletes. These athletes will compete against each other during the Big Weekend on Nintendo Wii’s to win prizes for the best virtual gamer in the Borough. As Jo has said, “It looks to be a fast, furious and fun weekend!”

If you would like to view some of the entries submitted you can see them here. You can also find out more about the competition, their partners and how you might be able to get involved next year.

If you’d like a direct link to the work my class has submitted then click here.

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)

Please don’t take my Wii away

To give the children a focus for further developing their persuasive writing skills I posted on the IWB a note which said that the head did not think using the Wii in class was a good idea and that it served very little purpose and did not provide opportunities to exercise.

All would have been fine if either 1) I had shared what I was planning with the head or 2) she had not decided to visit the class that session!

What was planned as a writing activity became a Speaking and Listening one instead and quite heavy on the Speaking side.

The poor head had no idea why she was bombarded with every argument under the sun on why the Wii was an excellent project to use in the class and how it provided not only exercise but opportunities for the children to develop their socializing skills.

I am glad that we had spent some time in a previous lesson really focussing on the need to be polite whilst trying to persuade someone to our way of thinking!

An Important Visitor

Earlier this week the creator of the Wii project, who is  the adviser for E-Learning in the Borough, came to visit the class and was very impressed with the work that she saw the children had done. Unfortunately the visitor from the Institute of Education was unable to visit on that day but may come in another time.

She is going to one of the speakers at Games Based Learning and asked if she could show some of the work we have done in class ;o) WOO HOO!!!

One of the other things we found out was that the project has gained the 2012 Olympics inspired mark which is great news!

The children enjoyed sharing the work they had done  and showed off their table tennis skills on both the real table as well as on the Wii. They were able to talk confidently about what they had been doing which can be a very difficult skill for EBD children. Often children with very poor self-esteem find it unsettling to be complimented…. sad but true.

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.

Designs and Recipes

On Monday, one of the organisers of the Wii-lympics came to work with us in class. We began to look at two of the roles which will make up the final presentation: the PR Manager and the Dietician.

The PR Manager’s job is to design an outfit for their athlete to wear when playing their sport. The outfit needs to be comfortable, safe and include the school colours. The children thought about the ways to combine the colours and materials. Using paper to represent different fabrics each child made a sample of an outfit and designed logos for it. The children will later choose one of the designs to sew into a real outfit.

The Dietician’s job is to know about the main food groups and produce a food diagram for their athlete. They also need to create two recipes for their athlete which contains the essential foods to keep them fit and healthy.

The children made posters of some of the ingredients that they might use in their recipes as well as ways to cook and prepare the food. All decided that they would not be frying the food.

Everyone enjoyed the morning; working hard, producing great work and best of all really working well together.

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More about Letters

Letters have been completed, signed, sealed and about to be posted! We have also created a secure area for Darius Knight to sign in and see the class’ page about him on the school’s Fronter MLE (Managed Learning Environment)….(what do I call this as it seems quite a mouthful at the moment!!!)

We did this because in the email Darius had originally sent me,  he had said that it might take a few weeks for him to respond as he might be competing in Table Tennis tournaments outside the UK.

The children discussed whether we should just attach the letters to an email but they came to the decision that it would be ‘Way cool to get a bunch of letters telling someone that we thought they were famous!’

By sending Darius both he will have a link to ALL their online work about him which he can see anywhere as well as getting physical copies of their letters.

Off now to post the letters and send an email to him with the instructions of how to sign in. ;o)