HandHeld Learning Day 2

The morning of Day2 kicked of with keynotes Zenna Atkins, the chair person of Ofsted, Atkins was followed by Malcom McLaren, who admitted that he was speaking at a conference that was definitely not in his comfort zone, and proceeded by telling the audience his schooling/educational experiences. Next up was Yvonne Roberts from the Young Foundation,
The morning keynotes ended with a good talk by James Paul Gee, Read a full review of these key notes from by Mark van 't Hooft where this introduction was taken from.

Social Media for Learning

Katy then attended a session with Ollie Bray http://www.olliebray.com/ National Advisor for learning and technology, on Social Media for Learning and Ollie focused on 5 points to demonstrate how SM enhances learning:

Power to engage and collaborate and to broadcast to a real audience.
He asked “..Does your school have an entry about itself on wikipedia?

Real time data …Ollie referred to google alerts http://www.google.com/alerts (for alerts on your school) and other applications such twitter and googlemaps exporting to google earth.

Professional Development … he encouraged more use of teachers tv and interactive resources such as http://www.wallwisher.com

Digital entitlement with regard to allowing great content on sites such as you tube. Trust and respect pupils and promote responsible use.
School improvement

Gaming used with purpose and as a stimulus for a creative curriculum

Next up was Tim Ryland, teacher and innovator who showcased his inspiring work using gaming as a stimulus for creative planning across the curriculum and the example he shared was Wild Earth African Safari used on the Nintendo Wi and a full description is available from http://www.timrylands.com/blog/ (Tim is also famous for using Myst)

Gaming as a stimulus for cross curriculum projects was a theme which ran across many presentations throughout the 3 day event including:
· Andrew Rhodes in Enfield CLC who ran projects with schools using Guitarhero on the Nintendo Wii
· Learning and teaching Scotland, innovators in games based learning also showcased some of their well known and highly regarded projects using Nintendo Wii, DSi and others.

Other games discussed at the event were Endless Ocean, Curious Village, Professor Layton, Big Brain academy