“It’sick!” exclaimed a student in praise of new learning taking place at North Liverpool Academy. What used to be a term of disapproval now meant the opposite as the power of gaming was unleashed in the service of learning.
In Merseyside, a centre for gaming excellence, North Liverpool Academy has been trialing and embedding gaming and software programming in its curriculum over the past year. Starting as optional enrichment activities the teachers and students learnt together the power of gaming before carefully planning and embedding it into their curriculum.
A visit to the academy in December revealed students working individually and collaboratively on Scratch software for game design. They were planning, storyboarding and manipulating instructions to produce simple games. Even better, Scratch is free and couldn’t have a better brand origin. It comes from MIT (the revered Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://scratch.mit.edu/),
Gaming is the fastest growing industry (ever), and it’s currently worth more than $65 billion a year globally ($2bn a year to the UK). It sends our dopamine levels (neurotransmitters associated with learning) through the roof and it has a proven impact on learning and attainment.
Although it has been making inroads into schools, for many gaming is still seen as quite revolutionary. That is until good teachers demonstrate how it can engage learners and produce worthwhile outcomes. And that’s exactly how awareness is being transmitted among schools.
Coalition politicians are starting to wake up to the important role of technology for learning. In early November David Cameron stated “We are not doing enough to actually teach the next generation of programmers," and more recently, in an interview at the Schools Network's National Conference, education secretary Michael Gove acknowledged that current ICT teaching in schools is out of date and that computer science has a place in secondary education.
This is welcome news for the UK games sector which has been campaigning tirelessly for more relevant computing education in our schools including:
¥ The introduction of an industry-relevant Computer Science course within the framework of the National Curriculum;
¥ A review of ICT in its current form and to embed essential ICT skills across the wider curriculum;
¥ The promotion of the vital role that teaching maths, physics, art and computer science will play in ensuring the growth of the UK’s digital, creative and hi-tech industries.
Co-author of the Next Gen Skills Campaign, Ian Livingstone says, “Next Gen Skills believes that not having computer science on the national curriculum is a risk to any UK business that has computing and technology at its core. This is as relevant to design, engineering, financial services and architecture, from the building of jet engines to protection against cybercrime, as it is to the digital creative industries.”
As this campaigning gains ground we need to look at how pioneering schools and academies have been leading the way in gaming and computer programming, at how they have already been bringing it into the curriculum. We need to understand how they demonstrating and benefiting from the colossal power that gaming has on learning.
In addition to developing the skills needed by emerging industries what can gaming and computer programming bring to learning in our schools today?
Hannah Jones, Connecting Learning and co-director of the EXite programme for leaders, recently visited North Liverpool Academy, to talk with leaders, teachers and students about gaming, computer science and their plans to develop their exciting vision for learning further.
“It was inspiring to see the benefits of integrating gaming and computer science first hand. The students I spoke with showed held a great passion for learning through this medium, their imagination was their only limit and there was no shortage of that”, says Hannah.
Don Callan who leads this exciting development at North Liverpool Academy explained how they Academy has embraced gaming and provided an insight to how the leadership team, teachers and students have all played a part in ensuring it’s success and further development.
Following some initial training from Onteca a local gaming company and an inspirational visit to a twilight training session led by Neil Winterburn of Flunstella at FACT Liverpool the true potential of gaming within the Academy was realised. ‘Game Design’ was initially delivered as an optional enrichment activity within the Academy with staff and students learning together.
A far cry from PowerPoint and databases, when the Academy IT department added Game and App Design to its enrichment choices the number of students choosing ICT went up by nearly 500 per cent – from 6 to 59. And although any quantative data is not currently available on the gaming project to date Don and other teachers have definitely noticed an impact on learning and say that they see the levels being achieved by the students surpass previous years.
“The possibilities are amazing” Don Callan states, “we will soon be offering 3D Game Design as an enrichment activity for students. We are also looking at how the use of Games can be beneficial across the curriculum, the potential of gaming to add to the understanding and learning in subjects such as history or geography are limitless”.
Game technology is the closest we are to replicating our real environment and it may just be the right substitute when reality fails due to cost or scarcity and they can replicate experiences and investigations within a classroom environment that would otherwise be physically impossible. With Gaming technologies knowledge sharing and mobility will only cost a second and learning will become more captivating and interactive.
As we know curriculum reform does not happen overnight and the task ahead is enormous requiring a modified curriculum, professional development and continued discussion for leaders and teachers. We look to inspiring places such as North Liverpool Academy, one of the few schools leading the way in terms of computer programming and gaming in schools, to lead the way and share best practice with others.
Unfortunately when many of us think about gaming in schools, we have a negative image of Children playing World of Warcraft or similar and we struggle to see the potential it has for learning. The word gaming, surprisingly, also implies that it is ‘too much fun’ for learning.
Don Callan argues that “using gaming provides children with a platform where they already have a deep understanding, interest and knowledge base. They appreciate the theme and as such can articulate their thoughts more expressively. They have experience of gaming whereas ‘IT in the workplace’ has no grounding for them. With gaming they not only develop storytelling, problem solving and logic skills they can explore the impact on social, moral aspects of these games and subsequently are able to access high levels of the curriculum”.
And finally learning should be fun, it should be addictive and as for the potential of learning through games and computer programming consider Tom Chatfields, game theorist and journalist, words on how the characteristics of gaming can develop the needed skill sets of students and benefits to their overall learning opportunities.
“… In terms of education, perhaps most obviously of all, we can transform how we engage people. We can offer people the grand continuity of experience and personal investment. We can break things down into highly calibrated small tasks. We can use calculated randomness. We can reward effort consistently as everything fields together. And we can use the kind of group behaviours that we see evolving when people are at play together, these really quite unprecedentedly complex cooperative mechanisms
I'm in awe of their power in terms of imagination, in terms of technology, in terms of concept. But I think, above all, I'm in awe at their power to motivate, to compel us, to transfix us, like really nothing else we've ever invented has quite done before”.
And the last word, as always, goes to a student from North Liverpool Academy, “ I love watching other students try to solve the games I have created, I take pleasure from creating the game to seeing people enjoying it”. Loving learning, now that’s the power of ‘IT’.
North Liverpool Academy has recently been successful in its Studio School application for a “Gaming Studio School, now called The Studio .
The Studio aims to address the skills shortage for the gaming sector (identified by the NEXTGEN report
http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/assets/features/next_gen) by delivering a curriculum that will combine mathematics, science, art and the creative subjects through project-based learning. Hannah will be working more The Studio and will share more on this exciting development soon.
Article written by Hannah Jones, Director of Connecting Learning and Co-Director of EXite and Merlin John, Agent4Change.net
www.connecting-learning.co.uk
www.exite.org.uk
www.agent4change.net
It’s sick!” exclaimed a student in praise of new learning taking place at North Liverpool Academy. What used to be a term of disapproval now meant the opposite as the power of gaming was unleashed in the service of learning.
In Merseyside, a centre for gaming excellence, North Liverpool Academy has been trialing and embedding gaming and software programming in its curriculum over the past year. Starting as optional enrichment activities, the teachers and students learnt together the power of gaming before carefully planning and embedding it into their curriculum.
A visit to the academy in December revealed students working individually and collaboratively on Scratch software for game design. They were planning, storyboarding and manipulating instructions to produce simple games. Even better, Scratch is free and couldn’t have a better brand origin. It comes from MIT (the revered Massachusetts Institute of Technology http://scratch.mit.edu/),
Gaming is the fastest growing industry (ever), and it’s currently worth more than $65 billion a year globally ($2bn a year to the UK). It sends our dopamine levels (neurotransmitters associated with learning) through the roof and it has a proven impact on learning and attainment.
Although it has been making inroads into schools, for many gaming is still seen as quite revolutionary. That is until good teachers demonstrate how it can engage learners and produce worthwhile outcomes. And that’s exactly how awareness is being transmitted among schools.
Coalition politicians are starting to wake up to the important role of technology for learning. In early November David Cameron stated “We are not doing enough to actually teach the next generation of programmers", and in an interview at the Schools Network's National Conference, education secretary Michael Gove acknowledged that current ICT teaching in schools is out of date and that computer science has a place in secondary education. More recently, gaming and computer science also featured in Gove's speech to BETT 2012. This is welcome news for the UK games sector which has been campaigning tirelessly for more relevant computing education in our schools including:
The introduction of an industry-relevant Computer Science course within the framework of the National Curriculum;- A review of ICT in its current form and to embed essential ICT skills across the wider curriculum;
- The promotion of the vital role that teaching maths, physics, art and computer science will play in ensuring the growth of the UK’s digital, creative and hi-tech industries.
Co-author of the Next Gen Skills Campaign, Ian Livingstone says, “Next Gen Skills believes that not having computer science on the national curriculum is a risk to any UK business that has computing and technology at its core. This is as relevant to design, engineering, financial services and architecture, from the building of jet engines to protection against cybercrime, as it is to the digital creative industries.”
As this campaigning gains ground we need to look at how pioneering schools and academies have been leading the way in gaming and computer programming, at how they have already been bringing it into the curriculum. We need to understand how they are demonstrating and benefiting from the colossal effect that gaming can have on learning.
In addition to developing the skills needed by emerging industries, what can gaming and computer programming bring to learning in our schools today?
Connecting Learning's Hannah Jones, co-director of the EXite programme for leaders, recently visited North Liverpool Academy, to talk with leaders, teachers and students about gaming, computer science and their plans to develop their exciting vision for learning further.
“It was inspiring to see the benefits of integrating gaming and computer science first hand. The students I spoke with showed held a great passion for learning through this medium. Their imagination was their only limit and there was no shortage of that”, says Hannah.
Don Callan who leads this exciting development at North Liverpool Academy explained how the Academy has embraced gaming and provided an insight into how the leadership team, teachers and students have all played a part in ensuring its success and further development.
Following some initial training from Ontecam a local gaming company, and an inspirational visit to a twilight training session led by Neil Winterburn of Flunstella at FACT Liverpool, the true potential of gaming within the Academy was realised. ‘Game Design’ was initially delivered as an optional enrichment activity within the Academy with staff and students learning together.
A far cry from PowerPoint and databases, when the Academy IT department added Game and App Design to its enrichment choices the number of students choosing ICT went up by nearly 500 per cent – from 6 to 59. And although no quantative data is currently available on the gaming project to date, Don and other teachers have definitely noticed an impact on learning and say that the levels being achieved by the students surpass previous years.
“The possibilities are amazing” Don Callan states, “we will soon be offering 3D Game Design as an enrichment activity for students. We are also looking at how the use of Games can be beneficial across the curriculum. The potential of gaming to add to the understanding and learning in subjects such as history or geography are limitless”.
Game technology is the easiest and most accurate way to replicate a real environment that is unavailable first-hand. It may just be the right substitute when cost or scarcity prevents first-hand experience, allowing educators to replicate experiences and investigations within a classroom environment that would otherwise be physically impossible. With Gaming technologies, knowledge-sharing and mobility will only cost a second and learning will become more captivating and interactive.
As we know, curriculum reform does not happen overnight and the task ahead is enormous, requiring a modified curriculum, professional development and continued discussion for leaders and teachers. We look to inspiring places such as North Liverpool Academy, one of the few schools leading the way in terms of computer programming and gaming in schools, to be ahead of the curve and to share best practice with others.
Unfortunately when many of us think about gaming in schools, we have a negative image of children playing World of Warcraft or similar and we struggle to see the potential it has for learning. The word gaming, surprisingly, also implies that it is ‘too much fun’ for learning. Don Callan argues that “using gaming provides children with a platform where they already have a deep understanding, interest and knowledge base. They appreciate the theme and as such can articulate their thoughts more expressively. They have experience of gaming whereas ‘IT in the workplace’ has no grounding for them. With gaming they not only develop storytelling, problem solving and logic skills, but they can also explore the impact on social and moral aspects of these games, and subsequently are able to access high levels of the curriculum”.
Furthermore, Connecting Learning sees no reason why learning should not be fun and addictive. Tom Chatfield, games theorist and journalist, offered the following words on how the characteristics of gaming can develop the needed skill sets of students, as well as benefiting to their overall learning opportunities:
“… In terms of education, perhaps most obviously of all, we can transform how we engage people. We can offer people the grand continuity of experience and personal investment. We can break things down into highly calibrated small tasks. We can use calculated randomness. We can reward effort consistently as everything fields together. And we can use the kind of group behaviours that we see evolving when people are at play together, these really quite unprecedentedly complex cooperative mechanisms.
I'm in awe of their power in terms of imagination, in terms of technology, in terms of concept. But I think, above all, I'm in awe at their power to motivate, to compel us, to transfix us, like really nothing else we've ever invented has quite done before”.
And the last word, as always, goes to a student from North Liverpool Academy. “I love watching other students try to solve the games I have created, I take pleasure from creating the game to seeing people enjoying it”. Loving learning, now that’s the power of ‘IT’.
Some of the students kindly shared their work with us to add to this article- their games can be seen and played by following the links below.
Lewis Rudd
Virtual Dog
Mothership Protection
Lauren Bannon
Scrooge Game
North Liverpool Academy has recently been successful in its Studio School application for a “Gaming Studio School", now called The Studio .
The Studio aims to address the skills shortage for the gaming sector (identified by the NEXTGEN report http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/assets/features/next_gen) by delivering a curriculum that will combine mathematics, science, art and the creative subjects through project-based learning. Hannah will be working with The Studio and will share more on this exciting development soon.
Article written by Hannah Jones, Director of Connecting Learning and Co-Director of EXite and Merlin John, Agent4Change.net
For more information please check out the following websites:
http://thestudio-liverpool.co.uk/
www.connecting-learning.co.uk
www.exite.org.uk
www.agent4change.net
