X Box gets an eye toy style game

Just watching BBC World news on the new X Box offering- the new game looks like it will also add to the physical immersive experiences already offered by Eye Toy. All games that extend the ideas in this area and the possibilities for interactive physical play for people of all abilities can only be good news. While they are useful for general entertainment my main interest is in how they can be used for physiotherapeutic reasons with kids and adults with cerebral palsy, especially right or left-sided hemiplegia. This one looks like it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Whiteboard vs Television Set

On another school visit today I went to the Sheffield Springs Academy where I watched an impressive display of how integrated whiteboards can be in practice. Emmanuelle Bishton is the epitome of the 21st century classroom teacher, using her whiteboard as creative stimulus, collaborative workspace, timer, ticker-tape reminder and record keeper. She showed me the thick green folders of lesson plans that are about to be jettisoned now she’s stored her bank of lesson plan powerpoints. Each one is a slick and flexible bank of targetted resources. Some came free from the BBC and Teachers TV. Others she rated were bought in from providers such as Teachit, They can all be fine-tuned each year for different types of learners. Creating a bank of resources like this feels onerous, especially in the middle of a busy term. But it’s clear once it’s done how much time it saves year on year and how simple it is to add to.

In the lunch queue it was remarked that soon no-one would ever wheel a TV into a classroom again. I wonder how many still do?

Educational Games on mobile phones

This is a great example of a game that teaches without preaching. A Sims-style experience allows teenagers to live through the experience of moving out, renting a flat and negotiating independence. Made by Creative North with the local housing association in Kirklees.

We all carry our mobile phone all of the time. And it’s a source of solace and distraction when delayed on a journey. Teens with mobile phones are a readily harvestable audience for any games. The children I know are quite happy to play repetitive games of snake endlessly so the bar doesn’t have to be too high. Well-made games like these with a strong narrative drive provide an entertaining game with a well concealed but wise foundation that can also be shared with friends.

BBC Jam and the licence fee payers

I asked about the cancelling of BBC Jam at the Showcomotion festival. The BBC Trust member was very polite and eager to say that all materials that could be reused would be - by which they meant the Gaelic and possibly Welsh components. That’s good but it seems to be fairly minimal in relation to the the 90 projects, and (est.) £50 million licence fee spent.

The following day at a session on innovative video we saw three excellent examples of the materials that have been produced but may never see the light of day outside an industry conference. It’s clear from these that the licence payers - and their children - are being sheltered from some superb educational resources. Since the UK licence payer has invested this huge amount of money, whether willingly or not, in the BBC’s educational output, it seems odd of the BBC Trust to refuse to let them see - and benefit from - what they’ve already paid for.  

The Trust’s argument is that the release of these materials would distort the market for commercial producers. Yet it also feels like a cavalier decision to allow so much licence fee to go to waste when it could be adding value to our children’s education. Like having a food mountain and pouring it away instead of giving it away. How can there possibly be public value in suppressing excellent educational resources? It feels like burning books.

On other matters, the Trust canvasses opinion on its website. Is it possible the licence payers could be consulted over this matter in the same way, and asked whether they want their children to have these free to air resources that would help them to learn? Or whether they agree that having all these BBC resources would actually hurt the interests of UK and international businesses who need to earn a living?

It may be that we would all agree with the Trust in the end but I suspect it would seem ludicrous to most licence payers. The resources exist. Our nation’s educational needs are rising. The UK’s children and teenagers need every possible help to be as well-educated and competitive as possible in the 21st century. Here we have cutting edge resources made by some of the UK’s finest educational providers inside and outside the BBC.
Having seen the three examples, It’s clear they’re eminently usable, distinctive, cutting-edge and inspiring. Why shouldn’t UK learners have access to them?

The only parallel I can think of is that the BBC produces a soap opera called Eastenders. it is very popular but was created many years after ITV created a similarly popular soap called Coronation Street. I’m sure Granada must have been irritated by the BBC rivalry, yet the BBC still produces Eastenders. Why isn’t that damaging the interests of commercial entertainment providers? And why is the BBC shy of producing educational resources in the same way? It’s been in the business of doing so for over 80 years, far longer than it’s produced soap operas for. It seems a strange sense of priorities when Lord Reith’s heirs think stuff for our school children is less worth fighting for than Eastenders.

Showcomotion Innovation Labs

At today’s Showcomotion I had the good fortune to attend a session with Frank Boyd and Marc Goodchild. ‘Crossover Kids’ introduced me to their method for sparking off multi-platform developments amongst a random group of interactive and TV producers. Having brainstormed lists of platforms and genres we were randomly allocated two platforms and a genre and sent away to come up with something that worked for kids. I particularly enjoyed Frank’s excellent road map for creativity and ideas generation which led from ‘an opportunity’, via a widening miasma of ’seeking perspective’ then down into a narrowing funnel of ‘editing’, to ‘a thingy’. It was reassuringly low-tech and resulted in free and easy brainstorming.