Traditionally we have taught the basics of spreadsheeting in S1 by providing learners with lists of products and prices (e.g. Star Bar, cost £0.42, sales 50) and having them use a formula to calculate the total sales revenue of each product. Dull! This year we decided that rather than superficially manufacture data, our students would generate [...]
Archive for the ‘Games Based Learning’ Category
Kinect controller coming to PC – and education?
January 4th, 2011
3 Comments
According to the Business Insider website, PrimeSense, one of the companies behind the Kinect motion controller technology are lining up a similar device for the PC. The PC controller will be previewed at CES next week, with a launch pencilled in for summer 2011. Assuming the price is right, such a device would offer real [...]
Technoteaching – the year in review
December 29th, 2010
No Comments
One year ago today I registered the cunniman.net domain and started this TechnoTeaching blog*. Since then I have written 46 posts (this is number 47), mostly on the different technologies I have been using in the classroom. I am quite astonished that since its inception one year ago, this blog has been visited a grand [...]
Teaching statistics with Mario Kart Wii
June 12th, 2010
8 Comments
We have just completed the Mario Kart Challenge with all of our Maths S1 and S2 pupils. Having borrowed a brand new Wii, 4 controllers and Mario Kart from the Consolarium at LT Scotland, we decided to build it into our Maths curriculum whilst also taking part in the national Mario Kart Challenge. We decided [...]
Adventure Maker – Developing point and click adventures from creative writing
May 24th, 2010
6 Comments
I have been really keen to find a game development environment which allows learners to express their creativity without necessarily getting bogged down with the technical side. I think that Adventure Maker does just that. And it is free! We used Adventure Maker as part of a recent S1 inter-disciplinary project involving English, Drama, Music and [...]
Sumdog – A Maths resource for the World Cup
May 9th, 2010
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I have been looking for Maths resources which can be used to tie lessons in with the World Cup. I stumbled across a number of free online games produced by Sumdog, one of which is Penalty Shootout. The concept is simple and effective. To take a penalty, the player is given a question and the [...]
The Wii Tennis Challenge
February 5th, 2010
4 Comments
I have a second year class studying Information Systems at Intermediate 2. We are currently working on the Using Information unit, and to be honest it can be pretty dry. Over the past week and a bit the class have been learning about the 4 functions of an organisational information system (i.e. Gathering data, storing [...]
