Contextualised learning and teaching using ICT..

Today we had an input from David Miller about using a game as a context for many learning and teaching opportunities in the classroom. 
I found this extremely interesting and can't wait to try it out with a class I have in the future!
David and his colleague used the game Dr. Kawashima's brain training with the children to carry out a study about how this would help them raise their attainments in mathematics.

David told us an interesting fact about these sort of games, that they are called COTS games which means commercial off the shelf games, which means they are not made for the classroom, they are just made for general use but are extremely beneficial to use in the classroom and so to look out for these kinds of games throughout our teaching careers.


The study David and his colleague carried out was with a class of P6 pupils, at the beginning of the study children had to do a 100 number challenge and then had to play the brain training game for 20 minutes each morning. Afterwards, they then did the 100 number test again and compared the scores.


They found that the children's scores improved tremendously, their speed was faster, their self-esteem grew and their collegiality improved.
They then carried on the study with 32 schools and the results were the same. They made it a randomised control trial which means everyone was picked at random, but there was one main focus and that was children from disadvantaged schools. 
They found that the children who did the brain training had an improvement of 50% higher than the groups who did not and their speed was twice as fast as the control group. Children also changed their attitudes towards school after the brain training, their academic work improved because of playing brain training, truanting and lateness dramatically improved and more responsiblity was placed on the children. Also, children's interpersonal relationships changed as they were interested in how their friends and peers were getting on and also made new friend groups because of the game.


This highlights greatly that using a game as a context for learning can have so much impact on children and how they act academically and socially. The improvements made because of this game were immense and children were much more engaged in school altogether. Prensky(2001), states that  'Digital Game-Based Learning can play an important role in learning material that is not intrinsically motivating to anyone, but which needs to be learned'(pg 9).  This emphasises that games can provide fun, motivating learning in a way that children will be engaged in and the for a great example is this study using Dr Kawashima's brain training as it is challenging, using skills such as remembering and recall, children are engaging in the mathematics aspect throughout but in a fun filled way!