Posted by Brian on January 11, 2010 under games based learning | 
I just stumbled upon www.tutpup.com. It looks like a great, competition and rewards based resource for maths and spelling. Really suited to the primary school. Tutpup is affiliated to the adopt-a-monster social networking come edugaming site MoshiMonsters.
With TutPup, teachers can join for free and set up a class code. Pupils can then be given that class code and use it to join. Pupils do not sign in with their names, they choose an animal, colour and number and that becomes their TutPup ID. For example, I am RedOwl11434. Below is a creenshot of the my home page.
When a pupil joins a class you create, you can watch their progress as they compete in competition with other pupils from all over the world in Maths, Algebra, Times Tables and Spelling games. Pupils graduate from each level by correctly answering 10 questions in 3 different games. Pupils can try their best to get onto the Wall of Fame, win awards for winning game and keep a record of their wins.
The screenshot above shows me playing against someone from the USA in a Maths Mix game.
I would love to hear from anyone who is using this resource just now, or if anyone intends to use it with their classes.
Posted by Brian on January 5, 2010 under games based learning, games design |
A lot has changed for me in the past few months. Mostly due to starting my secondment with LTS as a Development Officer for the Consolarium. Since the end of November, I have been inspired by so many people working in LTS and in schools across the country. It’s a great time for Games Based Learning in Scottish Education and now that I feel a little more settled in my new position (it’s very weird not having the school bell rule your life!), I have been reflecting on my first 4 weeks and started thinking about some forthcoming projects I’ll be working on. I intend to blog regularly about each of them. My main focus in the first quarter of the year will be on …
Games Design in Education
With my colleague Charlie Love, we are planning on taking a number of Games Design tools and creating resources for them for use in schools. In particular, we will be focussing on Scratch – that much loved free MIT application. Via GLOW, we will be delivering a number of tutorial videos on how Scratch can be used to develop computer games. There will be a particular focus on the design phase. Computer game development offers a number of opportunities for pupils to engage with the experiences and outcomes of CfE across the curriculum. You can see some of my initial thoughts below.
Games Design Initial Thoughts PDF here.
Of course Scratch is not the only game design tool. We will also be working with a number of other tools including, but not limited to….
- Kodu - Creating games for the XBox
- 2DIY - Award winning software developers 2Simple’s great tool for building games
- Greenfoot - Build computer games in Java – can be used with very little knowledge of programming, but also can be used to teach object oriented programming
- GameMaker - Ever popular game creation tool
- Neverwinter Nights and Adventure Author - Dr Judy Robertson and her team at Heriot Watt really bring games design into the curriculum with this
- Warsow/GTKRadiant - Open source and cross platform 3D game creation tools, as recommended and used by Charlie Love at Cults Academy
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality has been getting a lot of press recently. I am fortunate enough to be looking after the Consolarium pilot of Second Sight with the PSP. We are hoping to use this tool initially in a primary school setting.
iPod Touch / iPhone
It seems that any app you can think of is available for the iPhone and iTouch. Do a search of the App Store for education apps and there are hundreds of them – many of the free. I will be looking at how this device and a selection of apps can be used to enhance learning.
Manga High
I have discussed this in a previous blog post on the Consolarium blog. Brian McLaren and I will will continues to work with the BlueDuck team to further our pilot of this fantastic Maths program.
Consolarium Podcast
As part of the Consolarium team, we will be delivering a bi-weekly podcast about our work here at LTS. The first one was great fun to record, and can found here. Why not subscribe and get all the news from Derek, Ollie, Brian, Charlie and myself about what we are up to with Games Based Learning?
Tags: augmented reality, CFE, consolarium, games based learning, games design, greenfoot, iphone, ipod, kodu, lts, manga high, podcast, psp, scratch
