Educational iBooks

Educational Ibook just released for Prep Teachers and Parents targeting the Australian Curriculum: Literacy MY PREP YEAR develops Reading comprehension strategies.

My Prep Year wows Australia

Just checked the stats for My Prep Year: The Trip. WOW! Thanks to all those who recommended it: Number 1 Ibooks education category (Australian Charts) 3 days ago and currently sitting at number 8. Thanks to everyone. http://itunes.apple.com/au/book/my-prep-year-the-trip/id530439712?mt=11

Australian Curriculum Resource - My Prep Year - Spelling Words

My Prep Year: Spelling words is a collection of the most common high frequency words that are learnt during the foundation years of schooling, Prep Year. My Prep Year: Spelling words includes spelling activities for prep teachers and parents. Take advantage of iBooks note taking and record what your children are having problems with in each level. Digital resource for the australian curriculum

Australian Curriculum Resource - My Prep Year: The trip

Australian Curriculum resource for ipad just released from Paul Hamilton. My Prep Year: The Trip is is a picture book based on the Australian Curriculum: Foundation Year. My Prep Year: The Trip contains beautiful illustrations, reading comprehension activities, interactive models and embedded video. However, it is the use of the note taking tools and record keeping structures that sets this ebook apart from the crowd. It also contains groups of spelling words from the text.

WEB2 - Brainstorming site - Wallwisher

There's no doubt individual brainstorming sessions are important in students demonstrating past knowledge. Whether you follow a framework like dimensions of learning or not, students sharing what they know is a crucial in determining where they are going.

WALLWISHER is a fantastic WEB2 site allowing multiple users to post to one notice-board. Easy to set up and ideal for schools implementing a 1-1 laptop program. I have also used it to great effect with staff training sessions.

Game Design and Strategy

The benefits of teaching our students Game Design and Strategy.
Introduction.
My name is Paul Hamilton and I’m a Year 5 teacher at Matthew Flinders Anglican College on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. I have a range of teaching experiences from classroom teaching to ICT Coordinator in a P-12 school. I’m a passionate educator and committed to using effective ICT’s to aid and enhance already effective pedagogies. For some time now I have used Game Design and Strategy in my classroom. Game design is the process of designing the content and rules of a game. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in an actual game as well as documentation that describes such a design. Game Strategy is a complete plan of action for whatever situation might arise; this fully determines the player's behaviour. A player's strategy will determine the action the player will take at any stage of the game, for every possible history of play up to that stage. I have used Game Design and Strategy to:
• engage students
• cater for a variety of ability levels
• tailor teaching and learning for digital learners
• develop high level thinking skills
• encourage cooperative learning


More than engaging.
The Game Design Unit I have introduced to the students at Matthew Flinders College over the past 2 years has been the most engaging unit I have ever exposed my students to. Not only do they come to school early in the morning but they are continually working on their game and content at home and at lunch breaks. The dialogue between students, both personally and in online forums, is like nothing I have ever seen in my 12 years as an educator.
But Game Design and Strategy is more, and it needs to be. Engagement is a key component in the fight for students acquiring knowledge, retaining knowledge and developing skills, but it is only one component. Game design incorporates cooperative learning, open ended tasks, the problem solving process, higher level thinking, an introduction to applied Mathematics and introduces and develops further the concept of working as part of a team. It develops life-long learning skills that successful people demonstrate, such as persistence and responsible risk taking.
Catering for a variety of ability levels.
All teachers are faced with the question: how do I push my brighter students? Do I continually give them more, without actually challenging them? Game Design and Strategy caters for a range of academic ability levels. It allows students to go as far as they want, with continual problems and hurdles popping up all through the process. This problem solving process is a vital piece in the gifted and talented student puzzle. It increases the students desire to take responsible risks and stimulates collaboration with other classmates. Continual exposure to high level problems encourages the students to pose the questions “if I do this...then this will happen”. I will expand on this cause and effect process later.
Tailoring teaching and learning for digital learners.
We all know as educators that the students who sit before us are significantly different to past generations of students. As teachers we are faced with continual updates of technology, and this possess difficulties with the up skilling of teachers. To be honest, the attitude of staying ahead of our students is unrealistic, as the students we are now teaching have exposure to digital media well beyond that of our own. Instead of staying ahead of our student we need to set in place a set of processes that allow the teacher to facilitate the students learning. Cooperative learning (through blogs and wiki’s) is one of these strategies that enable students to ‘fly’, to nourish their leaning needs as they arise.
High level thinking.
Analysis and Evaluation are two higher level thinking skills that are developed and enhanced through Game Design and Strategy. The Game Design and Strategy start with an in depth look and current practices in Game Design. This allows students to analyse what is currently done, what is effective and ineffective about these practices, and what can be enhanced/improved on. The development of Analysis and Evaluation through Game Design and Strategy permit students to understand concepts and the use of skills at a higher level across all curriculum areas.
Collaboration and peer learning.
As mentioned earlier within this article, the teacher need to adopt the role of facilitator within any planned Game Design Unit. The ability of the teachers to know everything is unrealistic and hold students back. Therefore we need to set in place structures that allow students to draw upon a wealth of resources. Online tutorials for Game Maker can found easily on the WEB. These tutorials are outstanding teaching tools that students love to take advantage of. Teacher and student directed BLOGS and Wiki’s are other online tools that encourage collaborative and peer learning. Creating a BLOG with open ended tasks like – “share with the other students something that you have discovered today in class that you think no-one else has discovered”. Sit back and watch the explosion of online dialogue that then takes place between students. This is the type of environment that our digital native students excel in! You will witness students listing other websites, creating video tutorials of their own, inserting screen shots of instructions and lots more. This explosion of knowledge and communication is where Game Design and Strategy really excels. In a perfect unit you are not limiting your students to your own knowledge, but expecting they reach a level that is the sum of many resources put together.
Cause and effect.
Cause and effect occurs constantly throughout the entire Game Design process, from the early stages in planning to the final stage of testing and evaluation. The students have to continually ask themselves “if I do this what will happen?” Cause and effect can also be of benefit during the problems solving process. The Cause and Effect Strategy helps to find and consider all possible causes of the problem, rather than the ones that are the most obvious. It allows the students to predict possible scenarios for specific actions during the creation stage. From a strategic point of view, students are continually challenged to make their Game playable – not impossible but increasing the level of difficulty as the game unfolds.
Conclusion.
I will continue to expose my students to Game Design and Strategy because I have seen the benefits first hand. I know that each of the students I teach will walk away from Year 5 with skills that will hold them in good stead for any subject that take in the years ahead. I know they have enhanced life skills such as communication and collaboration that are used in all careers. And I know that they have had fun along the way.