Bravo to OB

I've known Ollie Bray since 2005, when I was introduced to him at the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers conference in Dundee. He was presenting on technology in Geography. Our paths crossed semi-regularly since then: at BETT shows, Teachmeets, the wonderful Islay 20:20 event, and Scottish Learning Festival. I've used his resources many times in my teaching, especially his Flood Hydrographs presentation, and some of his 'on a wonk with drop shadow' images.
For the last five years, he has been headteacher at Kingussie High School, and also completed a number of epic cycling journeys as well as working with Microsoft and the Scottish Government.

I was delighted to hear that he has been appointed as Lego's Global Director of Play.
This Guardian piece from yesterday has more details.

As Ollie says in the article:

"Learning through play is widely accepted in the early years and my job will be to find ways of extending it by incorporating it into the curriculum for older children...The curriculum has to be relevant to the students’ lives.."

I'm all ready to help with that mission, and best of luck to OB in his new role when it begins...

Piracy

I was intrigued to see this book appearing in my Twitter feed, written by Quinn Rollins. Like many books, it is linked to the ideas of classroom management, but focusses on the aspects of fun which may sometimes be lost in the pursuit of something more edifying or 'rigorous'...
Although there may be less of a research-led basis to what is being said, this is also about creativity and being open to new ideas and connections.

I loved some of the simple ideas contained in the book - we already make use of graphic novels, Lego and a range of other toy-related materials.
The value of a book like this is that you can see the ideas actually written down, and there are some QR code links to scan to see student work produced using the different techniques.

Digging out the d20s....

A few posts colliding last week in my feed to spark a few thoughts. The thing with weekends and half terms is that I scroll through my twitter feed before doing something useful and get sidetracked into something far more entertaining which ends up taking several hours of the day, and resulting in a few thousand more words written. It all goes into the memory bank though and helps with my creativity in the long run.
The post was by Mark Enser, and was a link to a post regarding the use of Dungeons and Dragons as a context for learning subjects. It was an article in UK EdTech magazine, and written by @DragonLearn
I've still got my Dungeons and Dragons Handbooks, and remembered my teens and early twenties, when I spent thousands of hours creating campaigns, and still have one or two on file, along with my main characters I created. I'll dig some out for a future post... This is an image of the 1st edition Player's Handbook: the one I own.
There's a lot of geography to be had from Dungeons and Dragons and the writing and running of a campaign. I spent many days behind the DM's screen... Mapping for campaigns is an obvious starting point, with the cartography required to create authentic maps of cities, landscapes and physical systems.
Weather was part of the story telling... it taught you some basic writing skills, and also the act of invention - some of my finest stories were made up on the hoof, and rapidly adapted so that there was some consistency...
Geomorphology was a part of the campaigns too - the landscapes were fully formed in my head: rivers flowed downhill and snow fell in winter.
I'm not sure I would use these for teaching geography these days, but the lessons about constructing a story are certainly ones that I draw on daily, as each lesson is a little 'dungeon' in itself in some respects, with some NPCs...
Tom Bennett wrote a piece that was published in 'The Guardian' about the place of play in education and outlined some of his thinking around the position of play.
I would say that there is certainly scope for play in teaching.
Susan Pike then posted a useful reminder of the value of play in the Early years.

For example, check out Sharon Witt's GeoGnome session from the GA Conference 2017 which was the most rigorous and enjoyable session I've been involved with for a while. Visit the conference page, and it's one of the session downloads...

And you can't have a dungeon without gnomes...

Untold Adventures Await

A bit of a connection to some recent and upcoming posts on the value of play in learning...
Rory's Story Cubes are almost ten years old, and I've been a big fan of them, and flagged up how I've used them in many blog posts and numerous CPD events too. I've got the full set of all the cubes, which now runs to more than 10 sets, and includes some recent expansions into familiar franchises such as Batman and Dr. Who.
I prefer the original sets made by Rory and the gang though...
I've just backed the creators' latest venture: a Kickstarter campaign to develop a game which allows the structured use of StoryCubes to create unlimited tales, with children's imaginations being guided using a template and some suggestions for how to develop

Here's a view of the prototype:

Check out the Kickstarter programme here ... the more people who back it the more extra stretch awards will be included in the final package. They've already added two new rewards, and I fancy the next one.