On my Way to Prague

Nicki   November 25, 2012   1 Comment on On my Way to Prague

So this week I’m off to the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum in Prague. I was honoured to be invited, following the European Forum I attended in Lisbon earlier this year, to present the work I have been doing with Kodu Game Lab. Regular readers will know about some of the ways I have been using Kodu, but in summary, my project consists of the following aspects:

  • Scheme of work embedded into ICT
  • Kodu & Literacy Project
  • Kodu Olympics
  • Activities Days (both in my school and other schools)
  • Extra-curricular activities after school
  • Working with other schools
  • Staff training and development
  • Training videos on YouTube
  • Life on Mars (scheme of work for teaching Functional Skills in ICT)
  • Kodu X-Curriculur Project (current work in progress)
  • Recent work: The Kodu Kup

Here is a video that gives a brief overview of the project:

You can view my Virtual Classroom Tour, ‘Kodu in the Klassroom’ on the Partners in Learning Network here and read a full overview here.

I will be presenting my project alongside the other half of ‘team GB’, the lovely Katie Boothman, who will be presenting her project, The H.I.T Squad, for which she won an award at the European Forum in Lisbon.

I’m looking forward to the conference, if not a little nervous, as it will be great to hear about all of the projects from other educators across the globe and network with other like-minded people! Will post an update when I return, in the meantime, to follow the events of the forum you can follow the hashtag #PILGF on Twitter.

My Day at Decoded

Nicki   November 17, 2012   No Comments on My Day at Decoded

This week I was lucky enough to win a place on Microsoft’s “It Starts with a Spark” programme after being nominated by Stuart Ball from Partners in Learning. This is a programme that encourages women in IT. There were ten winners in total and the prize was to learn how to code an app in a day using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

The day began with looking at the history of programming, introducing people such as Ada Lovelace (first female programmer) and Alan Turing. We then moved onto the history of the Web and were given an introduction to the main languages we would be using, these being:

HTML – The markup language used to give webpages their content.

CSS – The language which dictates the design of a website.

Javascript – The programming language used to control what happens within a page or app.

We got to grips with these languages one-by-one and each point was introduced gradually in a very simple and easy-to-understand way. I already had knowledge of HTML from my college days many years ago but it was great to refresh my skills and gain an understanding of some of the new tags that are now used. I was particularly keen to understand how CSS is used in conjunction with HTML and I now fully understand how the two operate together. Lastly, learning Java Script was really useful as most of my programming experience in the past has been with Visual Basic. Java Script is particularly useful as it is compatible across many devices due to it running within a web browser so is fantastic for making cross-platform applications.

The app we each built consisted of an HTML and CSS front-end that runs within the browser. The app then uses JavaScript to display a different message depending on our distance from a specific location, in this case, Decoded HQ; this used the built-in GPS on the tablets and mobile phones. You can take a look at my app here.

Following the day’s events we were then invited to attend a ‘T-Party’ afterwards where we were able to meet and network with other women in the world of IT. Is was great to meet so many different people and hear about the various jobs available in the industry. This will be great for me to share with my students in school, particularly the girls who often don’t think about the IT industry as being a potential career path.

The training was run by a new company called Decoded who offer the ‘code in a day‘ course to both groups and individuals. They have also been working on educational resources for teachers through O2 Learn and I can’t wait to see their ‘CodeCards‘ when they become available. I really can’t praise the training enough, many of the ladies on the course with me had no programming background at all and were still able to get to grips with the task at hand which is incredible; programming isn’t generally considered an easy topic!

I have definitely taken lots of ideas on how I can deliver this topic to my sixth form group in school soon. Their task is to build a game so I am going to show them how to develop the same application as I built here, except they are going to extend this into an educational game to help new students find their way around the school. They will utilise the GPS features of tablets or their mobile phones so they can create an interactive story-style game in which they are told to go to different parts of the school to reveal the next part of the story. Who knows some of them might even add obstacles around the school as well to avoid! (Thanks to Alex from Decoded for the interactive story idea!)

I’m planning for my sixth form intensive programming day to take place in a few weeks (and we’re even going to buy-in Dominoes Pizza for lunch). I will post an update once I have returned from the Microsoft Global Forum in Prague,where I will be presenting my Virtual Classroom Tour, Kodu in the Klassroom.

Summer Fun!

Nicki   September 22, 2012   No Comments on Summer Fun!

Well, I haven’t added a post in a while so I thought it was time I got writing again! I had intended to update over the summer but have been so busy I just didn’t get chance!

Therefore I decided to add everything into one big Summer Update and hopefully I’ll then be able to add new posts more frequently.

Cambridge Technicals in IT

Just before the summer holidays I went on a training course with OCR to learn about their new Cambridge Technicals course in IT. We have been teaching OCR Nationals at Level 3 for some time but as this is coming to an end we have had to make a change, Cambridge Technicals seems to be the natural replacement and as a result I’ve been frantically putting resources together over the summer, so far I have only finished Unit 1 but Unit 15 is nearly there and I will be developing a further four units throughout the year. Resources are available from here.

Grade 1 Piano

I had a personal success just before I broke up for the summer holidays. Having sat my Grade 1 piano exam a few weeks earlier I found out I passed with a Distinction! I was so pleased, just need to start working towards Grade 2 next!

Daily Edventures

At the beginning of the summer I was interviewed for the website of Anthony Salcito, vice president of Education for Microsoft. He is a on a year-long journey looking at educators around the world, you can read the interview here.

Olympics

Following my Kodu Olympics project last term I was lucky-enough to get tickets to see the Athletics on the morning of Super Saturday, we watched Usain Bolt  in round 1 of the men’s 100m among others but most impressive was watching the amazing Jessica Ennis on the long jump and javelin. We saw so much in the few hours we were in the stadium and it was simply a wonderful day!

Kodu on Mars

Well on Monday 6th August the Rover landed on Mars and to celebrate this a Mars-themed edition of Kodu Game Lab was released. I managed to find some time during my busy summer to play with the new version and program my very-own Mars Rover, it’s great fun! Since then I have been writing a scheme of work around the Mars-theme. I’ll be uploading into my Key Stage 3 resources area as soon as it is complete.

Kodu Bootcamp in Wales

In August, alongside fellow K-Team member, Ray Chambers, we delivered a two-day Kodu bootcamp with Technocamps for young people aged between 15-18. On the first day we gave the students an overview of how to use Kodu and an understanding of the fundamental skills, much of this was taken from my scheme of work, on the second day they had the opportunity to design and create their own games. We were really impressed with the work they produced. You can download their games from here.

I will be showcasing the work I have done with Kodu in Prague in November at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum.

 The Remainder of my Summer Holidays

I had a great end to my summer holidays this year, firstly my auntie and uncle from America visited for two weeks, so we went out to lots of nice places in the local area as well as London. For the final week my partner and I went to St Agata (near Sorrento) in Italy, which was very enjoyable, we got to travel up to the top of Mount Vesuvias, visit the ruins of Pompeii and not to mention the beautiful Amalfi Coast and delicious food! It was quite a shock to come straight back to work!

 

Kodu Primary Project in Kent

Nicki   May 22, 2012   1 Comment on Kodu Primary Project in Kent

I have recently finished running a project with children from a local primary school, using Kodu in a Literacy context. The project lasted nine weeks and after learning the basics of Kodu the children designed and wrote descriptions of their own worlds. They then created these worlds in Kodu. After that they planned which characters they were going to use and wrote a storyline for their games and were  given time to develop these. While doing this they also blogged about the progress they were making, which you can read here. Their games are also available for download on the site.

Myself and the children really enjoyed the experience and the children learnt a great deal, not only skills in Kodu but also with storytelling and blogging in which we focussed on their grammar and spelling. One thing I found particularly surprising was how imaginative the children were, they seemed to find it much easier to come up with ideas for their games than their secondary-school counterparts. They were also very quick to pick up techniques in using Kodu. I am hoping to run this project again with other local primary schools (Thanet area), here is a flyer explaining more details.

I also developed some resources to use throughout the project to aid the design and planning, you can download these resources on the links below:

At the end of the project students were presented with certificates by our head-teacher after he had played each of their games. They found this very exciting!

Kodu Tutorial Videos

Nicki   May 7, 2012   2 Comments on Kodu Tutorial Videos

With my inherited title, “Queen of Kodu”, I have begun to develop a series of Kodu tutorial videos. I have created a playlist of these on YouTube which you can find below or by clicking here. I am aiming to continue adding to these as time permits. Hopefully some of you will find them useful. If you have any suggestions of videos you would like to see, please add comments/suggestions below.