I’ve been at the Games Based Learning conference for the last two days and wow, what a blast it was! Fantastic presentations, great people and so many new ideas. If I went through everything that went on it would be such a long account you’d probably fall asleep before the end  so here are my edited highlights! :

 

·      Alice Taylor, (@wonderlandblog) from Channel 4 telling us about all the educational (and fun) games coming up – especially interested in some for teenage girls, particularly one dealing with self-image which looks great

 

·      Matt Mason, (@MattMason) encouraging us all to be pirates and turning previous ideas on their heads (you must download his e-book from here)

 

·      Derek Robertson , (@derekrobertson) and others making me wish I lived in Scotland and could take part in all the fantastic stuff they are doing with games in education (follow @consolarium on Twitter for more details)

 

·      Tim Rylands’ (@timrylands) marvellous presentation during 20 minutes of which four students created a video game with 2DIY and Tim held the audience in the palm of his hand and had at least two virtual pairs of pants thrown at him!

 

·      The Twitter game which entailed ratings, throwing things and generally having fun, the back channel was vibrant, funny and interesting although one presenter might not agree...

 

·      Professor Stephen Heppel talked to us from Tasmania during Teachmeet and 15 year old Edith showed us just how boring her Year 10 ICT classes are – this girl has a fantastic sense of humour and will go far

 

·      Ollie Bray’s (@olliebray) session left me with sore fingers from tweeting and making notes at the same time as he gave me so very many ideas

 

·      Dawn Hallybone (@dawnhallybone) and Nic Hughes (@duck_star) used a Presi to tell us all about using Wii fit etc with students – a comment from a dyspraxic student ‘I didn’t know I was good at PE’!

 

·      Brian McLaren (@BrianMcL) made us all (well, Dawn Hallybone and I anyway) desperate for an Eyepet of our own

 

·     Great closing keynote speech from Jesse Schell (@jesseSchell) by video link from the U.S. –‘If you can make education beautiful, customised, shared and real... everybody wins’

 

This is not to say other presentations weren’t good, they all were, but these are just the ones that particularly stood out for me. There are lots of things I want to follow up on, Scratch for example, that I hadn’t seen much before and looks awesome, especially when free content from other sources such as Flickr is added into it. I want to find out more about Ribbon Hero for Microsoft Office and Microsoft Worldwide Telescope and I have downloaded Drop7 onto my iPhone on the recommendation of Margaret Robertson and I think it may well become addictive.

 

If you’re interested in reading more about the conference, I strongly recommend you have a look at #gbl10 on Twitter – it will take you ages to go through but I can assure you it will blow your mind!