- Regulars
- Peer-to-peer
More than child's play- An enterprising approach
- Always the best policy
- Using technology in teaching
- Coaching tips
- Sharing the seeds of knowledge
- Professional practice under the spotlight
- Learning from the experience of others
- Revitalise your career
- Honesty and integrity
- Our pivotal responsibility
- Research and develop
- A very professional culture
Advertising feature: More than child's play
Issue 33
In association with Microsoft
Microsoft
Learning through play is an age-old concept, but teacher Ollie Bray has taken it to a new level with a project that uses the Guitar Hero game to deliver an array of teaching and social interaction activities for children leaving primary education.
Called "Thinking Outside the Xbox", the programme has been a runaway success since it was piloted in Musselburgh in 2008, and in November it won Ollie a prize at the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Education Forum.
Ollie - currently on secondment to Learning and Teaching Scotland as an advisor on emerging technology - said Guitar Hero was first used by a school in Aberdeenshire a couple of years ago and his work grew from that project.The first stage, in 2008, saw all the primary schools in Musselburgh using the game as a contextual hub for learning, with the whole structure of the curriculum based around it.
"For example, children might do creative writing exercises, pretending they were at a rock concert," Ollie said. "Instead of doing character studies from books they do character studies on characters from the game, there are obvious links to music, there's choreography for dance routines in PE, there's art work that can be done, and there are links to performance. One project saw children plan their own world tour, deciding which cities they would play in and that linked in to maths in terms of plotting distance, direction and scale. There was budgeting involved and they had to calculate their environmental footprint."
Ollie said the aim was to make sure children had a really positive end to primary school and start to secondary. At secondary level, the emphasis switched from learning to social interaction. "Because games provide a non-threatening but competitive environment, what we got was a lot of coaching, empathy, and conversation going on among the children.
"We also asked our sixth-year pupils to provide workshops for the younger children on the theme of rock music."
The project proved such a success that East Lothian Council invested in it for each of its six secondary schools and their clusters, a total of 46 schools in 2009.
The material that has been developed has been put online and Ollie said it is being used in various guises around Scotland.
Ollie's innovation takes on the world
Ollie was one of two UK prize winners at the Microsoft Worldwide Innovation Forum, which is part of the company's Partners in Learning programme.
This follows an appearance at the European event, held in Vienna in April. There, Thinking Outside the Xbox won first place in the innovation in the community section, earning Ollie a place at the world finals in Brazil.
"In Brazil there were more than 100 teachers from more than 40 countries, all wanting to swap ideas," Ollie said.
"I was particularly humbled by some of the teachers who had come from less economically developed countries who were really sharing their passion and hope for education.
"In lots of ways the event has re-enthused me about Scottish education and made me realise how much we are getting right, compared to other parts of the world."
Want to receive a sneak preview of Teaching Scotland before it's published? Subscribe to our newsletter now.
Have your say
Latest comment...
Global citizenship opens up a world of exploration. It allows children to experience first- hand culture and heritage across the globe. Lin...
Add your comment