At a conference that I attended recently I heard a spokesperson for the company responsible for the hugely successful Little Big Planet game for the Sony PS3 describe their approach to product design when she said, “Only by watering ideas do you find out if they are a weed or a flower.”



Well one idea that was watered by LTS to see what might grow was
The Consolarium: The Scottish Centre for Games and Learning, an initiative solely focused on the use of commercial-off-the-shelf computer games as learning tools.

Initially this idea was received with a degree of scepticism by many within the Scottish educational landscape but a small number of interested Local Authority partners helped explore some early initiatives using tools/games such as Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training and Guitar Hero in classrooms and the resultant and ongoing findings have helped to change the discourse about the place of computer games in schools.

A recent research report has shown how Scottish schools have embraced game based learning and are leading the way in the use of computer games as learning tools.

Our experience working with schools face-to-face in schools and via Glow continually offers examples of:

We all face great challenges in taking Scottish education forward but I believe that it is vital that schools take great account of the cultural frameworks from which their pupils come and that from within these frameworks we can find the seeds of ideas that, if watered and thoughtfully nurtured, will allow us to create relevant, engaging and purposeful learning opportunities that learners will choose to situate themselves in and as a result, engage for education!

The Scottish Government has recently started to consider the development of a Technologies for Learning Strategy.
Join the conversation at Technologies for learning strategy website.