Thursday, September 11, 2008

The new term!

Well it's proving to be a bit difficult to catch a breath up here, so many things going on and I'm still getting used to the new way of working but so far I'm really enjoying working in the school.

I'm slowly but surely getting the department all sorted out and am certainly enjoying working with the smaller classes at standard grade level.

I'm in the process of creating a brand new S1 course centred around the idea of the pupils being band managers. This idea came from an ex-colleague down in East Lothian. The idea is the pupils learn how to use ICT skills with a purpose as opposed to just copying out and completing exercises in a book. So far there's been some Word Processing and even a little bit of photo editing using iPhoto which has surprised me with how easy it is to use. I'm also trying to get other departments involved as much as possible so hopefully this is heading towards the curriculum for excellence that's waiting over the horizon.

So what's next? Computer Games of course.
I'm attempting to run the Int1 & 2 computer games courses and as such now have a TV and 2 games consoles in my room to help with the playing of the games. if anyone has any experience of teaching this course I'd love to hear from you.

3 comments:

David said...

Hello there Andy. Glad you're enjoying yourself.

Where did I hear about the school that was building the Primary/Secondary transition work around Guitar Hero? Is that the East Lothian school you mention?

Don't know anyone teaching the Computer Games course but it might be worth contacting Derek Robertson @ the Consolarium who might have heard something. Also, Steve Beard from Shropshire has some experience of using Game Maker/Mission Maker and is probably a good chap to talk too.

David said...

Oh... and it is Musselburgh High that did the Guitar Hero thing. :-)

David Gilmour said...

It was probably Ollie Bray at Musselburgh Grammar where this started last year as a transition project involving all the feeder primaries.
There's an edubuzz blog MGS Guitar Hero where you'll find a whole lot of documentation that you might be able to build on for secondary. These include the linkages with the ACFE Outcomes.