Online? Game On!

This session will focus on 2 areas – Gaming in Education and Online Learning. The objectives of this workshop are to provide practical ways of implementing ICT across the primary curriculum; to inspire new ways of stimulating children’s thinking in the classroom; to motivate teachers and children to use technologies to enhance learning and to provide case studies and examples of good practice.

Gaming in Education: much research over the last few years has shown the positive influence of gaming on learning. This session will raise the bar to new heights, showing how children can become active learners and creators in the gaming forum rather than passive players.

Using Do It Yourself, primary school students can create their own games, puzzles and quizzes to share on an IWB, the web, blogs, PDAs or email around the world. The open-ended nature of 2Do It Yourself allows for different learning styles to be accommodated and the potential of each student maximised. During this session, we will design our own games, quizzes and puzzles, putting the focus back on learners generating and self-differentiating their learning and allow teachers to rediscover their creative juices!

Online Learning - online learning and online curriculum resources have also been very much in the forefront of educational research in recent years. Traditionally, online learning environments have been predominantly content driven i.e. pre-prepared text, animation, sound, video, or taken the shape of communication or assessment applications. One vital element has been notably missing from this workspace: creative tools. Ideally, children need the kind of creative functionality provided by desktop software but in an online space. We, at 2Simple Software, have developed just such software. Pushing the boundaries in online innovation, the 2Simple Tools explore a forum not previously available to young children.

Aimed at Early Years, Primary and Special Needs children, our unique online software provides children with innovative, open-ended creative tools covering a range of areas such as desktop publishing, animation, art, control, graphing and music applications, all completely browser driven. The 2Simple Online Tools will ensure that online environments are not just a place to access ready-made content but a space were every child can generate their own, high quality, creations. The second part of this session will illustrate how the 2Simple Online Content and Online Tools Packages can be used to enhance learning within the primary arena across the curriculum.

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