Thunder

I need to get a Glow account so I can get extra levels and points….

Last weekend I purchased Wii Fit for Steph, since returning from our weekend away we have had a great time using it.  The balance board measures your bmi, weight and centre of gravity to produce your Wii Fit Age.

Once you have set your profile up on the game you set a target weight and timescale, the game then keeps a daily record of your progress.  This works for me, I can see my target and get a graphical representation of the progress, or lack thereof, I am making towards it.

So after your body test, you can then do some training (notice the similarity to brain training etc).  There are 4 types of training - Yoga, Muscle Workout, Aerobic Exercise and Balance Games.  After making a set amount of progress or have banked FitCash (time training) more exercises are unlocked.

I am finding the game really motivational and have done at least a 30 minute workout every day, according to the game I have lost 4lbs since Sunday.

Apart from the cost (£70) I can see great potential for this in schools, health education and PE look out.

More information about Wii Fit can be found here.

Today I was down in Norwich giving a talk on the use of web 2.0 applications for learning. On arrival at the John Innes Centre I sparked up firefox to check what sites I would be able to use, and what sites I would have to use screen shots for.

To my surprise my own blog was blocked, see image, it looks like my excessive use of the word ‘game’ lead to a high DDR score Why do educationalists still treat games as ‘bad things’?

After getting over this shock, it wasn’t a surprise to find that You Tube, Flickr and Second Life were also blocked. I was at the time sitting next to the Securus stand and I noticed an article about proxy bypass websites and it gave me an idea…. I typed ’school unblocker’ into Google and tried the first website - it didn’t work, not to be put off I tried the next site and it worked. I was now able to view the sites previously blocked. I did inform Paul from Norfolk CC about this and he said he would have that site blocked at the end of the day.

Anyway, I wonder how many other people can not see my blog at the moment due to its high DDR score. Leave me a comment if your filter now blocks my blog

I started writing this post a long time ago and haven’t got around to completing it, so here is the first instalment and if there is any interest I will write some more.

It is strange that despite one of my main passions being for the use of computer games in education that I have not written a post about it on my blog. I have plenty of conversations with people about what I believe and what I have done, but for some reason I have never put anything onto the blog. So this will be my first posting in a series of postings about why I believe in the use of computer games in education, the examples I give are all ones that I have been involved in while teaching or now as a consultant.

I have always enjoyed playing computer games since I was a kid, I had a spectrum as a young lad and spent ages typing in computer games only for them to fail to load - those books were awful, but I learnt a lot about logic and sequencing of instructions (soon to be a new part of the national curriculum for ICT). I played games for hours on end, always trying to find the most efficient way of winning. Winning was part of my nature as I was also a keen sportsman playing rugby, football, cricket and crown green bowls - so I did have a healthy life I wasn’t just stuck in front of the computer screen for hours on end.

While at university I got introduced to LPMud games, in particular DeeperTrouble MUD. This is basically a multi user text based adventure game, that is played across the internet which I accessed via a simple telnet connection! Towards the end of my university days I had finally made my way through all the levels of the game and was promoted to ‘wizard’ status that enabled me to write the game not just play it. What I did notice while playing the game was that my spelling and typing speed increased dramatically, I will come back to that later on.

So I left university and got a job as a maths teacher, after several years and gaining ICT lessons year on year I left my first job to become head of ICT. This gave me the opportunity to push the boundaries as it was my head that was on the chopping block. I used to stay behind after school and oversee computer clubs and at the same time I played on Deeper Trouble, either coding new areas or just playing. Bearing in mind that the screens are just full of text, several students were keen to give it a go. After realising that telnet was very limited I purchased 3 licences for zmud, this provided a much slicker interface to the game.

I showed the 3 students how to log in to Deeper Trouble and talked them through the initial decisions they had to make, race, gender etc. It was obvious from the beginning that their spelling was going to be a problem and their 1 finger typing was also going to give them some problems, but that didn’t stop us.

I remember when C&C first came out and I spent many a day/week/month playing this hugely addictive game.  If you have never played it then I would recommend it, I guess it is a little dated now but is still a good strategy game.  This is the text from the C&C website:

Thanks largely to the efforts of our loyal fans whom continue to sustain and grow the Command & Conquer community, Command & Conquer has become a legendary franchise and it’s time to celebrate its birth once again.

In order to give back to the fans for over 12 years of devotion we are putting together a 12th Anniversary celebration during the month of September. However, as any Command & Conquer fan knows, the true party starts today, August 31st, which marks 12 years since the original Command & Conquer launched way back in 1995.

To kick the celebration off, today we have a special surprise which we are certain new and old Command & Conquer fans will enjoy. We are providing the original Command & Conquer as a free download, compatible for Windows XP! This is the same version included with the collectors pack Command & Conquer: The First Decade, and is now available for you to download for free!

Last week while I was in Staffordshire I was chatting to a couple of the delegates about gaming, as you do on a game design course. Tim from Ounsdale School mentioned that he had been playing on ‘Frets on Fire‘, this is an open source (FREE) version of Guitar Hero for the pc or mac. I have since downloaded it, it is very addictive and great fun, I would recommend it to everyone. I have passed the details on to Keith the Shropshire music advisor and we will see what he makes of it.

I have spent today in Staffordshire working with eight ICT teachers from across the county. The Staffordshire ICT consultant has accessed some funding for a study support project, the aim of the project is to participate in a Gaming Competition (details here). I was asked to deliver software training on Game Maker, the software to be used for the project. The project will conclude on the 4th December with the students coming to the training centre to present their games to the other students.

I have set up a blog that will be used to share ideas and work in progress throughout the project, the teachers have posted their initial plans for the project already. What was interesting is that the teachers were discussing how they will be using Game Maker in other contexts outside of the project, replacing Flowol with Game Maker was high on the agenda, iMedia was mentioned by several teachers, and using it from year 7 right up into the sixth form.

Do you like playing computer games? Do you like playing/composing music?  If the answer to these two questions is ‘yes’ then xbox have got a competition that is just right for you, check out their website:

Forget music for movies – that’s so last-century. Music for games is the next creative frontier. Lead the revolution by creating the ultimate Xbox game trailer soundtrack.

Our judges will pick their favourites, then the public will get to vote for the best of the best right here on Xbox.com. If you win, you’ll make gaming history with the chance to lay down your track with one of the Universal Music team. (Worldwide fame and adoring fans are sure to follow – but don’t hold us to that.)

Don’t miss this exclusive chance to share your soundtrack with the world. You have until 31 May 2007.

iQuiz is a new ‘game’ available to download for your video ipod, it costs 79p in the UK. It allows the user to play multiple choice tests and records their statistics. If you download iQuiz Maker from Aspyr, currently only available for the Mac but Windows version is due out this month, you can also create your own tests that can be uploaded to the ipod. This would be another way of utilising the technologies have students have in their pockets in or beyond our classrooms.

I found several multiple choice ICT tests on Teach ICT and even though their resources are free to use they will not allow me to turn them into iQuiz files:

Hello
Thanks for getting in touch. We have also been considering other channels to pursue, such as ipods (video and audio), so in light of this, we must decline your request of using our content to do this.

If you develop something along those lines using your own material, then please drop us a line as we are always willing to host other contributors work on the teach-ict site.See www.teach-ict.com/contributors/index.htm

Regards
www.teach-ict.com

So if anyone knows of any ICT multiple choice questions that I could use, drop me a line and I will share all the iQuiz files I produce.

Does anyone know if this kind of software, both the quiz and quizmaker, is available for the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP or PDAs?

Yesterday I attended Becta’s ‘Enhancing learning; virtual worlds, simulations and game based learning’ seminar. It was an excellent even, a shame only 3 Local Authorities sent representation, the majority of the audience were game/e-learning companies and university representatives.

Dave Hassell kick started the day, setting the scene etc. The first question posed was ‘what is a game?’, there are a variety of answers for that and examples are given in his presentation. What I think was important is that it doesn’t really matter what your answer is, ie what the product is, what is important is the outcome achieved by the ‘game’. He stated that over £1 billion has been spent in the education sector over that last 5 years on content, how much value for money have we had from this investment? We need a strategic approach to this spend and the sector should investigate what it wants the content to achieve first.

When students are playing games we should think about the following:

If ‘games’ are beneficial then how do we get the workforce to adopt them? What interventions are needed to achieve this? Should we do this or should we leave computer games for students use at home?

Presentations can be downloaded from the Becta website.