Game Based Learning 10 – Teachmeet

Posted by Brian on April 7, 2010 under games based learning | 2 Comments to Read

On the evening of the first day of Games Based Learning 2010, I attended Teachmeet Game On and spoke a little about using the Lego Wedo Sensors with Scratch in relation to pupils designing and creating purpose built input devices for Scratch games.

However, the nost impressive presentation by far was by 15 yeqr old student @EdithTheGeedith, telling us how most pupils experience games in their learning. Talk about hitting the nail on the head!

Other presentations from the Teachmeet can be viewed here - well worth a look!

Game Based Learning 10 – Game Design

Posted by Brian on April 1, 2010 under games design | 4 Comments to Read

I was lucky enough to attend the Game Based Learning 10 conference at the Brewery in London and was inspired by so many wonderful speakers and met a number of fellow twitterers in real life.  I was down there as part of the Consolarium from Learning and Teaching Scotland, and along with Derek Robertson, Ollie Bray and Brian McLaren.

I gave a short presentation on the work Charlie Love and I are doing in the Consolarium in relation to Scottish education and Games Design.  Here are the slides from that presentation.

Your feedback is appreciated!

Using Text In Scratch 1.4

Posted by Brian on January 19, 2010 under games design | 14 Comments to Read

Very Quick Post!

Just discovered that Scratch has the ability to handle text!  I mat be a little behind the times on this one, but what a great potential this has to engage and motivate pupils studying Standard Grade and / or Int 2 Computing. Using a combination of the ask and answer blocks in sensing and appropriate variables, I’m positive pupils would be able to carry out the majority of coursework tasks in this freindly environment.

I have always enjoyed using Scratch in the classroom when we begin to teach programming, but the pupils were often put off when we moved from Scratch to the Xcode environment – and who can blame them?

I just recorded a very quick, not quite up to Avatar standards,   screen cast to show how Scratch can take in keyboard input and process it in a very Standard Grade Computing way.