Thunder

The report highlights how important innovation is to improve education as a whole and to encourage higher learning. The report shows how the every day innovation that occurs in classrooms - from a novel way of teaching to a new approach to student involvement is rarely spread beyond the individual teacher and/or school.

NESTA identifies the need to give teachers more autonomy - supporting more developmental work led by teachers and schools to help increase innovation.  But before this can happen there needs to be more funding and support, and schools and teachers need to be given incentives to engage in it.  The report also suggests the significant impact the available budget for educational research could have on collaboration if more of it was offered to schools engaged in innovative development and research.

You can read more (or download the report) from the NESTA Website:
http://www.nesta.org.uk/informing/policy_and_research/highlights/hidden_innovation.aspx

The findings from the ‘Summit on Educational Games, Harnessing the power of video games for learning’ organised by the Federation of American Scientists can now be viewed online. The summit was convened to discuss ways to accelerate the development, commercialization, and deployment of new generation games for learning.

The Summit focused on four issues: video game features useful for learning and aspects of learning that could be supported by video games, research needed to support the effective use of games for education and training, market barriers, and changes in schools that might be needed to take advantage of educational games.

Futurelab have published their findings from their one year project. This report outlines the context, objectives, methods, findings and key messages arising from the Teaching with Games project.

The report:

• offers an overview of teachers’ and students’ use of computer games and attitudes towards computer games in schools
• identifies factors which impact upon the incorporation of computer games into existing school practices
• describes the processes by which teachers plan and implement games-based learning in existing curricular contexts.

ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association), in association with the Department for Education and Skills’ personalised content team, today launched a new report which examines the role computer and video games can play in education.

I haven’t had time to read the report yet, but you can download it from here.

I have just checked out how technologically enabled the area in which I live is, this can be done by visiting Spacial Literacy.org.  My area, according to the site, is categorised in the E-Society classification as being in group A : E-unengaged and type A03 : Technology as fantasy. Full descriptions can be found here.

The site also lists other areas that have a similar categorisation two of which are also in Shropshire, namely Shrewsbury and Ellesmere.  From looking down the list many of the areas were rural areas.

This got me thinking, according to the site people in my area are “too old, too poor or too poorly educated”.  I think the biggest problem we have is access to the technology not the desire to have it or our age, income or education.

It appears that the findings have come about following a great array of research but I wonder where they got their data from, I know that three of my four neighbours have got broadband access and use the internet to shop on a regular basis.  I would have to class my neighbours as Group F : Instrumental E-users.

I would be keen to hear what other people think of the results for their postcode and any other thoughts they have on the ‘E-Society’.

I have just read this blog posting and was wondering how I could take that thinking and use the questions so that students could answer them easily and in a way that would allow the answers to be used by the teacher.
I know there are at least a couple of students who have read this blog, I would be interested in your thoughts.