Thunder

Just reading the latest article on the Microsoft Schools blog, that details the following:

The minimum cell space allocation for each prisoner to avoid torture or degrading treatment,
as recommended by the Council of Europe “European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” link

The teaching space allocation for a secondary school pupil,
according to BB98 (the non-statutory guidance used for school design), based on a 1,000 pupil school. The space allocation extends to a lavish 6m2 in total if you include all teaching, meeting, social and staff space (like the staffroom!)

And, if you’re in favour of silly statistical comparisons, then what about:

• £5,600 a year – the average annual spend on a second pupil, according to Hansard
• £37,500 a year – the average annual spend on a prisoner, according to Hansard

It makes you think, that maybe if more was spent on students while they were at school then they might not to have as much spent on the prison service!

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.

Every wondered what the weather is like 15km south west of Melbourne? Probably not, unless you live 15km south west of Melbourne or are planning to travel there.

Anyway, if you are interested in the weather at that particular place then Westall Secondary College have just installed an automatic weather station.

Sale Sharks who are currently flying in the Guiness Premiership and in the final stages of the European Cup are to run a second Rugby camp at Whitchurch Rugby Club after the huge success of last year’s camp. The last camp held at Easter 2007 attracted a record 120 Junior Rugby Players from all over Shropshire and Cheshire.

This year’s camp promises to be bigger and better than before catering for budding Rugby Players from the ages of 8 to 15 years of age, with a master class for the older Junior players. The course will run from 1st to 3rd of April over the Easter School Holidays and provides excellent opportunity for parents to provide their Children with active interesting activity to relive the boredom of school holidays.

The camp is run by CRB checked RFU qualified Coaches who will let attendees be able to access some of the inner secrets of how to play like some of the Sale regular first team players like All Black Luke McAllister, the French Caveman Sebastian Chabal and England’s own Charlie Hodgeson. Everyone that attends the camp will get a unique Sale Sharks rugby camp T-shirt, a free match ticket to one of Sale Sharks premiership home matches and a chance to take part in the Fin Awards Challenge, the winners of which will be invited onto the Sale Sharks Pitch for a photo. There will also be plenty of opportunity to win many Sale Sharks goodies as well a member of the first team will be visiting the camp to help out with

The camp costs £85 for the three days or £80 if booked on line via the following link www.salesharks.com/upcoming_rugby_camps or by phoning the Sales Hotline on  08712 220120

Players are advised to book early as demand is expected to be high as last year’s camp sold out.

The Mini Junior section will receive a percentage of the takings which is paid in the form new kit for the section which obviously benefits all members of the section

Any questions please ring Andy Caldwell on 07968 027950

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.

So why do I venture all the way up to Glasgow to attend the Scottish Learning Festival?

There are several reasons:

• The people, each time I have attended I have been made to feel very welcome by the Scottish educators. It is great to put faces to names you read or hear about in blogs/podcasts/wikis etc.
• It is about learning, notice the name change from SETT to SLF. The focus is on learning and less on hardware and software, that seems to plague the BETT show.
• Size, I think BETT is getting too big, trying to navigate your way around in a day is near on impossible, especially if you want to take in a seminar or a keynote. SLF is considerably smaller and you can listen to several seminars and still have time to pop around the exhibitors.
• Quality of the seminars, keynotes etc, the speakers are inspirational (I will write further posts about what I heard).
• The fringe events, including Teachmeet.

I would recommend attending SLF08 to anyone with an interest in learning.

Since getting an ipod last Christmas I have started to listen to podcasts more often, but I still only subscribe to a small amount. At present I listen to the following podcasts on a regular basis:

• Booruch - David, a Chartered Teacher from Scotland, shares his experience of using social software and the latest Web tools in class. David publishes his feed about twice a month.
• Digital Planet, the weekly BBC World Service programme that reports on technology stories from around the globe.  This podcast is published on a weekly basis.
• T4 Tips - Jordan School District, Transforming Teaching Through Technology.  A variety of educational ICT podcasts, I came across this podcast after watching ‘Pay Attention‘.  This podcast is published on a weekly basis.

If you know of any other decent educational technology podcasts can you leave me a comment.

It is fast becoming that time of year again, TeachMeet 07 is scheduled for Wednesday 19th September, 6.00pm - 8.30pm.  Last year I was able to attend the event and picked up some great points for development work.  I am hoping that I will be able to attend again this year and meet up with the great Scottish bloggers, and anyone else who manages to make it up there.

I seem to be slightly addicted to Facebook atm.  Up until last week I had probably only visited my profile a couple of times, over the last couple of days I have probably spent hours on my profile adding applications, and seeing what my friends are up to.  If you are using Facebook let me know and I will add you as a friend.

Steph is running the ‘Race for Life‘ today, if you would like to sponsor her please do so at her sponsorship page.