London BETT Trip

BETT 2014 was hosted in London's Excel Centre. BETT an opportunity for technologists and educationalists alike to share and exhibit their ideas of how technology can help learning in education. BETT covered learning technology for:

• Primary
• Secondary
• Higher Education
• Workplace Learning & Development.

Michael Gove opened the show and there were over 300 speakers presenting seminars and new ideas. The exhibitors that I found most relevant were ZU3D and Animate Me, both of these are programming software aimed at children. Here a just a few photo we took whilst visiting BETT and London.

 

Hopscotch

Programming using Hopscotch

Hopscotch is programming for everyone and anyone. It is available on the IPad and is very similar to Scratch. You can make games, animations, stories and other interactive programs by using the various commands on screen to drag and drop blocks of code together. Having the software on Ipad allows you to shake and tilt the ipad to control your characters in your animation. I found this easier to use than Scratch as it seem likes complicated. In this session, we made a house using the characters to draw the lines of the house.

My Scratch animation

My Scratch Animation

This animation was created using the program 'Scratch'. We started using Scratch in our sessions before Christmas. Scratch is a free programming software which allows you to create your own interactive animations. Firstly, it was confusing, as this software was completely new to me, but once I got into it, it was easy to pick up! To get to terms with our software, we had to create a maze on the screen for our 'Sprite' to move through. Then after creating our maze, we then moved on to creating our own animation. I choose the 'Africa' theme and used a Lion and Elephant. Here is a screenshot showing how I created my animation. 

In my animation, the lion is chasing the elephant. This was difficult to begin with, as trying to get all the commands in order was very time consuming but after working hard I created my animation. 

Moral Dilemmas

In our seminar we talked about moral dilemmas. We created a moral game using powerpoint presentation. Our game was called 'Flight Dilemma'. The user follows the story through and are faced with moral dilemmas.

'A moral dilemma is when you have to choose to do one of two equally unpleasant things. You have a lot of bills and you see a truck drop a hug bag of cash along the road. You see the truck with the company logo on the side. Do you give the cash back which is the right thing to do and continue struggling to pay your bills. Or, do you decide to take the money, pay off your bills, and live happily ever after. But, you know if you take the money, it isn't yours, your not entitled to it and the company may not be able to suffer the loses. What shall you do? That is a moral dilemma.' 

(http://answers.ask.com/society/philosophy/what_is_a_moral_dilemma

16/10/2013) 

Em x

My opinion of gaming

In my opinion gaming plays a major role in people's lives. Gaming is not necessarily online or using a games console, it can range from games such as jigsaws and puzzles to board games. The gaming industry is worth millions of pounds and computer games are becoming more and more popular.

On the other hand, there are a lot more games made just for fun. A lot of people's hobbies are playing computer games, but there can be problems, such as people becoming too addicted to playing games and spending far too much time on them and games encouraging people to be violent towards other characters in the game.

These days people spend more and more time gaming. But is it a good thing? Games can be educational, such as BBC Bitesize and other online games for children. These types of games are beneficial because not only are children learning how to use a computer but also learning a topic related to what they learn in school. Learning using a computer, I think, engages children more as they are keen to learn using something fun like a game on a computer.

Another point is we are all going to become couch potatoes if we are constantly sitting inside gaming, games are so addictive now people seem to forget about the outside world or getting some exercise.

So in conclusion I think gaming is good for an activity when you have spare time but it can be too addicting and expensive.


Em :)