The team at the Consolarium first saw The Land of Me when it was being presented at a game based learning conference in London. We were quite enchanted by the resource and felt that it could be something that, if used appropriately, could work well to support and enhance learning with younger children. We managed to meet up with James Huggins who is the CEO of Made in Me, the company that make the software and let them know that we would be interested in running pilots when the resource was ready to go…
Discussions continued with James and his team and eventually we managed to get things on the move. However, this was not where things stopped in terms of partnership with Made in Me. Very keen to see for himself how things had been going on in Scotland he asked if he could accompany us on out visit to Port Ellen PS to see for himself how his resource was being used in a teaching and learning context.
Once Janice McRae heard that James Huggins was coming to visit she began to think how she could best exploit this event to have further impact on the chidren’s learning…and in so doing she came up with an idea!
The King of the Land of Me comes to Port Ellen PS.
Janice’s idea was to ask James Huggins to act as the KIng of The Land of Me when he came to visit. That meant that the children could write letters to the King telling him what they know about his fabled land. James was in agreement and soon enough a batch of hand-written letters found their way to the King of The Land of Me’s postbox. James took time to to respond to all the children’s letters and duly sent them back with a promise that he would come to see them in the classroom.
This was the catalyst for great excitement and following on from the Royal Wedding this year plans were put in to place to ensure that things would be ready for the Royal visit.
On arrival at the school James was asked to wear a crown and a cloak so that his persona as the King of The Land of Me could be as true as possible for the excited children. He readily went along with this and was somewhat at ease in his Royal role! As he entered the class he was given a guard of honour by the children who were acting as animals from his Kingdom. A red carpet then led to his classroom throne where he was then met by his loyal and admiring subjects.
I spoke with James later that day about what he had seen and what he thought of the way that his resource was being used. His first reaction was to say that he was ‘speechless’ and that “we could not have created a better example of why it is we made The Land of Me or how we’d like it to influence learning!”
You can hear our conversation below:
The craft of the teaching and the way in which contexts can be created to help learners suspend their disbelief is clearly in evidence here. Yet again we see how young learners can respond in such a positive fashion to this methodology and how the thoughtful and imaginative teacher can create the environment in which rich learning can happen and thrive.
This is the first in a series of five posts about the Land of Me at Port Ellen PS. The other posts can be accessed via these links: 2. Land of Me: A Visit from the King of the Land of Me 3. Land of Me: Gleeful Children Lost in the Learning Space 4. Land [...]
This is the first in a series of five posts about the Land of Me at Port Ellen PS. The other posts can be accessed via these links: 2. Land of Me: A Visit from the King of the Land of Me 3. Land of Me: Gleeful Children Lost in the Learning Space 4. Land [...]
This year we worked with the people at The Land of Me to pilot their software in schools in Dundee, West Lothian and Argyll & Bute. We have already seen some great work in the use of this software to support and enhance learning in Pre-5 and P.1 & P2 classes in Dundee and West Lothian and were also made aware of work ongoing in some of the Argyll and Bute schools via a class blog and a Made in Me’s Facebook page.
Janice McRae from Port Ellen PS on Islay was one of the teachers who came along to the Land of Me introductory session in Inveraray earlier in the year. As a result of her experience on the day and following on from subsequent discussions with colleagues and her own thinking about the needs of her learners she has put together the most inspiring learning experience set in The Land of Me, one that has encouraged parental involvement in so many ways and that has created a space in which her pupils can suspend their disbelief and embark on a learning adventure!
“We had three weeks of learning before we even looked at the software!”
I managed to get out to visit Janice and her class just before the summer break to see just what had been happening. You can listen to my chat with her about how she planned to use the Land of Me and how things progress from then on…
Planning for learning
What was interesting about how Janice McRae planned to use the Land of Me resource was that in the first instance she did not share it with her children for three whole weeks. During this time so much was done in terms of asking questions and initiating discussions in order to create the context for enquiry and curiosity that could then be further developed when the resource was introduced. Some of the questions that were discussed included: Who lives in the Land of Me?; What is a map?; How would we get to the Land of Me? As a result of these discussions some of the children suggested that they make the Land of Me in the classroom!
“Let’s turn the classroom into The Land of Me!”
The Land of Me is made up of a number of chapters that are set in different geographical scenarios. We meet the main characters Buddy Boo, Eric and Willow in the desert, on clifftops, by the riverside, in the arctic and other places too. With the help of her partner and many of the parents Janice went about transforming the classroom into The Land of Me with all the scenes represented in the software physically incorporated into the classroom. Parents helped make camels for the desert, brought in trees for Bramble Wood, built the cave where Granny Olive reads her stories and even made wooden cutouts of the main characters from the story.
With things in place both contextually and physically it was now time to go on a learning adventure…
“The rhetorical power of the word "gamification" is enormous, and it does precisely what the bullshitters want: it takes games [and] makes them accessible in the context of contemporary business.”
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