Game Based Learning 2009

Adrian Hall is an independent consultant with a respected profile in the use of mobile, game and social media technologies for learning. Prior to this Adrian held the position with Steljes Limited, one of the UK’s leading technology integration companies, is to develop thought leadership around the use of technology in education. He has worked on the Project Inkwell Group, an American based international think tank/lobby group for one to one access to technology for children.

Prior to this, Adrian worked for the UK’s Department of Education and Skills as a senior policy advisor on educational software. His responsibilities included developing the government’s policy in relation to the educational software industry, commissioning new and innovative curriculum software, including software to work on mobile devices, and developing thinking on the use of games in education.

Prior to this Adrian worked as an Archaeologist.

Alice Taylor commissions cross-platform educational content for 14-19 year olds, aiming to get useful, life-helpful information to teens via their most favoured platforms and formats. She specializes in videogames and virtual worlds, and Channel 4 Education’s 2009 slate includes Routes, a cross-platform game tackling DNA and genetic testing, an as-yet unnamed cross-platform game on the subject of privacy, online security and surveillance, and 1066 The Game, a web game depicting the events of the battles of 1066.

Alice was a judge for the 2006 & 2007 Independent Games Festival as well as D&AD 2008 and Dare to be Digital 2008. Alice founded the gamecentric blog Wonderland  and writes about gaming for sites and magazines, including The Guardian, New Statesman, and Kotaku.

Andy Black has worked in the Education sector for more than 20 years, primarily in the land based college sector. Major interests are the how the use of ICT can overcome barriers to learning among disengaged and disadvantaged learners. He has worked remote rural communities on this, changing staff attitudes to e-learning. He has written extensively on the subject and role of emerging technologies He has developed a sideline demonstrating gadgets and gizmo's, such as 40 gadgets in 40 minutes. He lives on line via his blog http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com.

Andy joined British Educational Communication Technology Agency (Becta) in July 2003 and was involved in supporting the Learning and Skills Sector. His current focus is as a Technology Research Manager.

He is most proud of a project involving an ICT terms glossary in British Sign Language on the web http://www.slcresources4ict.net. The project and a proof of concept mobile device version was show cased in October 2006 at Mlearn in Canada. He has attended all three previous HandHeld Learning conferences and is regular contributor to the HHL and GBL forum's.

His raison d'être is "don't forget the learners" and "flexibility is the key to the future". He intends to write a book titled "What do when the kit doesn't work", apart from tell jokes.

Anna Rossvoll is currently seconded from her post as a Depute Head of a primary school to her current post as Curriculum for Excellence Officer with Aberdeenshire Council. She supports and develops effective learning, teaching and assessment approaches through technology, including the use of SmartBoards, commercial off the shelf computer games and in particular Glow, the Scottish National Intranet. She has been instrumental in the development and success of initiatives such as the use of Nintendogs, Guitar Hero, Myst, Kororinpa and computer games design. Anna has shared the development of games based learning in Aberdeenshire widely, presenting at the Scottish Learning Festival, Handheld Learning and Be Very Afraid.

Ben’s research interests include the ways in which education policy and research is translated into school practices, the role of different media in constructing and representing ideas about childhood, and student voice. At Futurelab he has worked on the three-year Enquiring Minds project, carried out research and written about citizenship education, the role of games in school, and young children's drawing. He has previously worked as an English teacher and in magazine publishing. A graduate of English Literature from Cardiff University, Ben also completed his PhD on American literature and pragmatist philosophy at the University of the West of England.

Chris has led multicultural motion picture video and computer game publishing for nearly 3 decades, starting with his role as international marketing head at the original Atari in 1982, and as VP -International for Spinnaker educational software He was COO of Columbia Tristar International Video for 7 years and headed Sony Computer Entertainment in PAL countries from 1995-2005. Now in "retirement", he chairs the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. Codemasters Games, and serves on several boards, including Learning Without Frontiers Ltd as non-exec Chairman.

The Handheld Learning and Game Based Learning conferences are unique in their breadth of coverage on the use of personalised technology in education. The conference welcomes diverse viewpoints and dispenses a wealth of knowledge in a friendly, unassuming, engaging and compelling manner. Really gets the passion for positive change flowing. The big winners, of course, are the kids, which is why we all attend.

Dan is a Digital Media Consultant working for Advantage West Midlands, the Regional Development Agency. Prior to that, he managed a number of regional projects including; Interactive Digital Media, the International Serious Games Event, Stratford Unplugged, Technology for the Growing Business and the Regional E-business Development Initiative.

Dan has over 15 years international experience, predominately in the B2B space having worked for a public affairs agency, a bank, four universities, a credit card company, and three regional economic development organisations.

Dave Green is a journalist with 20 years' experience of covering computer and video games, for publications as varied as Wired magazine, Amiga Power and The Guardian Guide. Until recently he edited Channel 4's casual gaming website www.channel4.com/games, and was a regular technology correspondent for BBC Radio 1, 6Music and Radio 5 Live. He has organised several grassroots technology conferences in London (from 2002's Extreme Computing to Open Tech 2005) and is always on the lookout for more events to add to the London Games Fringe's year-round diary at www.londongamesfringe.com.

I am currently the ICT co-ordinator at Oakdale Junior School, a position that I have held for 6 years and have been teaching for 12. I teach a Year 6 class and have been involved in the Boroughs first foray into the world of gaming using the DS consoles. I will be looking at how we managed to share 35 machines among 340 pupils using the Brain training programme and the effect this had on their learning. I hope to share my passion for both the use of games and consoles in the classroom and how both members of my own staff and teachers from across Redbridge have been inspired to give games based learning a go. As well as sharing how we overcame some of the technical difficulties in saving the data for such a large group of pupils I will be showing some of the work that using the consoles generated amongst the pupils, and their thoughts on how this games based learning is impacting on their education.

Derek began his teaching career in Dundee in 1994. During his time in class he witnessed two boys, who were in his lower ability maths group, engaging with a complex problem-solving environment on the Super Nintendo console. He was astonished at how they engaged with the problems, how they were challenged by them and how they used their own suite of strategies to solve the problems in order to be successful at the game. Derek noted that this behaviour did not happen in the traditional maths setting and it made him reflect on the context of the game and why it facilitated such impressive abilities in children who had not shown it in the world of learning that they were expected to engage with in class. This chance observation gave birth to Derek’s interest and passion for games based learning. Two years as an ICT staff tutor in Dundee City Council was followed by a position as a lecturer on the B.Ed(P) and PGDE(P) courses at the University of Dundee. This position allowed him to establish games based learning as a topic of study for his teaching students and then to his successful application to lead games based learning initiatives for Learning and Teaching Scotland via the Consolarium. Derek is now partnering local authorities and teachers throughout Scotland to explore the impact of computer games in the classroom and is contributing to the growing body of work that is helping to change the discourse about the position and practical application of games based learning in classrooms.

Jacob's early career was spent at the coal-face of game development working on PlayStation titles like Loaded, Hogs of War and Micro Machines at Gremlin and then Infogrames in Sheffield. In 2003 he took a career break to study for a Ph.D. in the psychology of learning at the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham. Here he worked on a range of research projects related to game-based learning and wrote a popular hobbyist book on game development called "The Game Maker's Apprentice".

Jacob is now "Head of Serious Games" at Sumo Digital in Sheffield. Sumo are a mainstream console game development company with over 120 staff who make up the UK arm of the Foundation 9 Entertainment group. Sumo develop games like Superstars Tennis (PS3, Nintendo DS, PS2, and Xbox 360), Track and Field (Nintendo DS), TOCA Racing (PSP) and Outrun (PS2, Xbox) for large publishers like SEGA, Konami and Codemasters.

Dr Richard Graham is Clinical Director of the Adolescent Directorate of the Tavistock Clinic, and is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. After training in Medicine and Psychiatry in London, he specialised in Adolescent Psychiatry at the Tavistock Clinic, and has continued to work there as a senior clinician and trainer. In the spirit of the work of the Adolescent Directorate, he has been keen to recognise and work with the contemporary issues of adolescents, especially in the context of developments in media, technology and the internet. The impact of these changes has been of particular interest in terms of our understanding of the development of body image, self-esteem and peer relations, and of the addictive patterns of behaviour for some that play online games. He believes mental health services need to be aware of and engaged with technological developments to provide services that young people feel are relevant to their issues. This creates a particular problem for health services, especially given the rate of change and advance in technologies.

Graeme is the Chief Executive Officer of Caspian Learning where he has responsibility for all strategic planning, commercial, operational and partnering activities. Graeme is a leading expert on the development, use and deployment of games based learning applications and tools. Graeme believes passionately about the emergence of the 3D Web and Caspian has delivered serious and casual games deployments on social networking sites, across the web and within corporate infrastructures.

Graeme has delivered a wide variety of presentations and keynote speaches including, Serious Games DC, Serious Games Europe, Online Educa, ITEC, IITSEC and the elearning allance. Graeme has also written for many publications on these topics including, E-learning Age, HRD, HR Zone, Serious Games Source, EDGE, Training Magazine and IT Training.

Graeme brings a wealth of experience and qualification to this role. Prior to joining Caspian, Graeme was the Commercial Director of IVAX pharmaceuticals UK. This role was preceded by a six-year career at GlaxoSmithKline where he held a variety of sales and marketing roles, the last of which was Marketing Manager for their flagship Diabetes franchise. Graeme has also carried out work within the consulting sector for major FTSE brands.

Graham Brown-Martin is the conference director and founder of Learning Without Frontiers (LWF) whose mission is to provide continuous dialogue concerning new learning and teaching practice leading to improvements of a transformational nature. To achieve this mission LWF hosts online communities, conferences and publishes content for international thought leaders, innovators and practitioners in the education, technology and entertainment sectors. Example communities including Handheld Learning and Game Based Learning. New communities with a focus on digital safety and recognition of innovation amongst young education professionals will be launched during 2009.

Prior to this Graham has enjoyed a career spanning the education and entertainment software industries, having built a number of creatively and technologically innovative enterprises that were sold to larger corporations including Philips Electronics and Virgin Interactive. Before starting his own companies Graham worked with the Open University and Research Machines. Graham has also worked in several developing nations.

Aside from his work and entrepreneurship in technology, Graham has also directed music videos for The Fall, Malcolm McLaren, Salt Tank and Future Sound of London amongst others and with artist, Buggy G Riphead, he designed the ship’s computer for the feature film, “Lost in Space”.

Graham has also appeared in a variety of media including The TES, The Assignment, Trace, Transculturalism, the BBC Money Programme, The Guardian, Management Today and The Times.

Graham has 4 children and lives in a leafy enclave between Peckham and Deptford in South-East London, UK.

Ian Livingstone is one the UK’s founding fathers of interactive entertainment and fiction. In 1975 he founded Games Workshop with Steve Jackson and launched Dungeons & Dragons in Europe and the Games Workshop retail chain. In 1977 he launched White Dwarf, the UK’s first interactive games magazine, and was its editor for 5 years. In 1982, again with Steve Jackson, he devised Fighting Fantasy, the series of interactive gamebooks that sold over 15 million copies in 23 languages. He wrote more than 20 books in the series including his best-selling Deathtrap Dungeon. He has also invented many board games. In 1992 he became Deputy Chairman of computer games publisher Domark. In 1995 he oversaw the merger and flotation of Domark with Eidos Technologies and served as Executive Chairman of the Board of the new interactive entity Eidos plc until 2002. At Eidos - the UK's leading developer and publisher of video games - he was instrumental in securing many of the company's major franchises including Tomb Raider and Hitman.

In 2000 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Technology by the University of Abertay Dundee.

In 2002 he was awarded the BAFTA Special Award for his outstanding contribution to the interactive entertainment industry.

In 2003 he was appointed Creative Industries advisor to the British Council.

In 2004 he was made a Creative Industries Luminary for London.

In 2004 he was appointed Non-Executive Chairman of Bright Things plc.

In 2005 he was appointed Skillset’s Chair of the Computer Games Skills Council.

In 2006 he was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List for his contribution to the Computer Games Industry.

He is currently the Creative Director for Eidos and a leading spokesperson for the UK video games industry.

Kim Aplin is a primary teacher and Depute Head from Aberdeenshire on secondment to Learning and Teaching Scotland.

Kim first became interested in the use computer games to motivate and engage learners two years ago. She successfully piloted the use of ‘Guitar Hero’ in the classroom as a starting point for developing a cross curricular project to raise attainment and motivate and engage learners to reach high standards. Since then Kim has successfully piloted 2 further projects involving the use of ‘Crazy Talk’ – software that allows the creation of 3D talking characters from an image and ‘Endless Ocean’ (a game for the Wii console) in which a rich context for learning was developed that included the exploration of biodiversity, conservation and climate change.

During the last 3 months, Kim has been working with Derek Robertson at the Consolarium at Learning and Teaching Scotland. She has been collaborating with local authorities and teachers throughout Scotland to investigate further the impact of computer games in the classroom.

Maja Pivec, Ph.D, is professor of Game Based Learning and Learning with Multimedia at the University of Applied Sciences FH JOANNEUM in Graz, Austria. For her research achievements Maja received in the year 2001 Herta Firnberg Award (Austria) in the field of computer science. In the 2003 she was awarded by European Science Foundation in form of a grant for an interdisciplinary workshop organisation in the field of affective and emotional aspects of human-computer interaction, with emphasis on game-based learning and innovative learning approaches. She is co-ordinator, scientific leader or partner in several EC or national founded projects. She is editor and co-editor of three book publications in the area of innovative learning approaches. She is guest editor of British Journal of Educational Technology, Special issue on learning from games, May 2007. Her research work is published and presented at more than 90 international conferences and publications.

She is member of Laboratory For Decision Processes And Knowledge-Based Systems, University of Maribor, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, Slovenia. She is also international advisory board member of MJET – Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology. She is Program Committee member of GAMEON conferences and F.R.O.G. conference, and is a reviewer for European Science Foundation and for British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET).

She was scientific leader of the UniGame EC Minerva funded project and project co-ordinator for both SIG-GLUE EC eLearning project and of Austrian national project AdeLE. She is currently the project co-ordinator for the Engage project, disseminating methodologies and resources though the European Game-Based Learning portal – www.engagelearning.eu

With background studies of Political Sciences in the Catholic University of Milan, Marco Minoli entered the videogames industry in 1997. He never left the industry since then.

10 years in the videogames market always on the marketing and production side, Marco Minoli has been working as a Product Manager and Senior Product Manager on Eidos and Electronic Arts titles from 1998 to 2003, working on games such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Harry Potter and The Sims.

He moved to Senior Management positions within Italian publisher Black Bean effectively starting the company from a product perspective.

Marco Minoli is now marketing director of UK-based independent developer Slitherine Software and a major contributor to Gamestore Magazine, the leading Italian Videogames Trade magazine.

Michael was appointed Managing director of ELSPA in May 2006. Responsible for the day to day management of the association, his remit includes keeping up to date with all the political pressures facing the industry; the most important current issue being the age classification consultation which came out of the Byron Review into Children and New Technology.

Michael joined ELSPA in 1999 as General Manager to run the back office functions, and was promoted to Deputy Director General in November 2001.

Michael was instrumental in developing PEGI, the pan European voluntary age rating system for videogames, which came into operation April 2003.

Michael has recently been appointed as the videogames industry representative to the executive board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. The establishment of the council was a key recommendation of the Byron Review, and this is a significant step forward for the recognition of the industry as an established part of our entertainment culture.

Nolan Bushnell is best known as the founder of Atari Corporation and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater, and is justifiably revered as the "Father of the Video Game Industry".

Over the past 20 years, Bushnell has founded numerous other companies, including Catalyst Technologies, the first technology incubator; Etak, the first car navigation system whose mapping is still the basis for car navigation systems today; Androbot, a personal robotics company; and ByVideo, the first online ordering system (1982), which allowed customers to order and pay for product from kiosks. Mr Bushnell is CEO and founder of uWink, Inc. uWink develops digital media entertainment and hospitality software and owns and operates interactive restaurants that allow customers to order food, drinks, games and other digital media at the table through proprietary touch screen terminals. Additionally, he has provided consulting services to numerous corporations, including Commodore International, IBM, Cisco Systems and US Digital Communications.

Patrice Chazerand has held the position of secretary general of the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) since 2002.

The first fifteen years of his career were spent with France’s foreign ministry, six of which at the French embassy to the United States.

In 1989, he was hired by AT&T France as director, public affairs, in the run-up to the opening of European telecommunications markets.

In 1999, he moved to Brussels to establish and run the European office of Viacom, the mother company of Paramount, MTV, CBS, etc.

CEO of Some Research and GameVision. Sean's group of companies work with all of the successful international games publishers. The GameVision reports are the only international usage and tracking survey for the games industry and are currently subscribed to by 95% of the publishers (by market value). Sean correctly predicted the recent switch to casual, more female, gaming 4 years ago. Those who were listening are now rich. Prior to his 12 years in consumer research Sean was a film-maker, a soap writer, and lent money to talented film companies on behalf of the European commission.

Steve is currently an ICT consultant in Northumberland, supporting schools in their use of ICT. He has a passion for using games in learning and can see the obvious enthusiasm from the pupils. He has heard more than once, ‘Are we really using Nintendos in lessons?’ As part of a Becta sponsored Harnessing Technology project, he has been using Nintendo DSes to develop the use of enquiry. A main focus has been using the Pictochat feature of the DS as a collaborative tool.

Steve began his career teaching upper primary pupils and has developed expertise in the secondary range as a National Strategies consultant over the past seven years. Using games in schools has enabled new exciting opportunities to be developed in the curriculum. He works closely with schools and local games companies to develop enterprise skills and to make the games industry real and relevant to the pupils.

"Deary (is) the most influential historian in Britain today." So says the "Daily Telegraph" newspaper at 10 May 07

Terry Deary is the author of 190 books in the UK (with almost 600 more foreign editions) mainly for children and teenagers. His books are sold in 39 languages from Russia to Brazil, Scandinavia to China.

He was born in Sunderland, England, in 1946 and now lives in County Durham, in the North-east of England. Terry is a former actor, theatre-director and museum manager.

In 32 years as an author his writing has included fiction for juniors and teenagers, and popular non-fiction series (Horrible Histories, being the best-selling with over 20 million worldwide.) He also writes TV, theatre, radio audio and new media scripts and performs his own scripts.

In 1996 he was the best selling British children’s author with 5 of his books in the top ten best-sellers of the year. (Waterstones Bookshop tables) In August 1997 he was still leading the way with thirteen titles in the top forty. (Bookseller listings). In 1999 “The Daily Telegraph” recorded that he outsold Enid Blyton by four to one and annual libraries’ surveys made him the most-borrowed author of children’s non-fiction in Britain – with an astonishing 17 titles in the top 20 in 2001. In November 1999 Books for Keeps magazine readers voted him “The Outstanding Children’s Non-Fiction Author Of The 20th Century”. In 2000 a Schoolsnet survey made him the most borrowed British author in school libraries while a Guardian survey of March 05 made him Britain’s fifth most popular living children’s author.

In the Blue Peter Book Awards 2001 and 2002 Terry won “Best Book of Knowledge of All Time” for his Horrible Histories Rotten Romans and Terrible Tudors.

Terry returned to writing for the theatre with Mad Millennium at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre in Summer 1999. In November 2002 he returned to his roots and acted in a professional theatre production of his own musical Christmas show, Crackers Christmas at Barrow’s ‘Forum 28’ Theatre. A major series of touring theatre plays, Horrible Histories - Terrible Tudors and Vile Victorians have been created for in collaboration with Birmingham Stage – in 2008 they will expand the franchise to have local plays in permanent residence in 5 British cities.

Tom Watson was elected to Parliament in June 2001 and was quickly appointed to the Home Affairs Select Committee. He was made Parliamentary Secretary to the Paymaster General in 2003 and entered the Government as an Assistant Whip at the end of 2004.

Between May 2006 and September 2006 he was Under Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans. In July 2007, he rejoined Government in the Government Whips office and in January 2008 was appointed Cabinet Office Minster.

He presented the Organ Donation (Presumed Consent with Safeguards) Bill to Parliament, steered the final stages of the Armed Forces Bill through the Commons, and has sat on the Standing Committees of the Proceeds of the Crime Bill, the Communications Bill, the Human Tissue Bill, the Civil Partnerships Bill and the Gambling Bill.

Before entering Parliament, Tom worked as Political Adviser to Sir Ken Jackson at the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. He has also worked for the Labour Party and Save the Children and served on the Rover Taskforce, the Government-appointed body that helped extend the life of the Longbridge car plant.

Tom is the author of a number of publications, including Votes for All, examining the introduction of compulsory voting, and Taking Responsibilty – Dealing with the Legacy of Radioactive Waste; and contributes regularly to political journals.

Tom was Parliament's first blogger and has a well-established interest in technology.

He lives in the Black Country with his wife Siobhan and young son Malachy. Outside politics his interests include growing vegetables, most spectator sports, music and cinema.

Tom Watson on video games and social media

Vicky MacKenzie began teaching in 1997 and currently teaches Primary 7 in Lairdsland Primary, East Dunbartonshire. For 10 years she was the school’s ICT co-ordinator before taking on the responsibility of developing International Education. She spent two years as an ICT staff tutor for East Dunbartonshire Council promoting the use of ICT in learning and teaching. She has recently returned from a secondment with Learning and Teaching Scotland as a Glow Development Officer. As a self confessed gaming geek (owning one too many games consoles), she has always had a passion for finding new and innovative ways to motivate and enthuse pupils in their learning.
Vicky will present the Games Based Learning work being implemented in Lairdsland Primary which includes Nintendogs and Dr. Kawashima projects using Nintendo DS. Guitar Hero, Wii-mbledon, Cooking Mama: World Kitchen and Sonic and Mario at the Olympics topics using the Nintendo Wii. Vicky will also explore in her presentation how Games Based Learning promotes active learning throughout the school and is used to support the promotion of positive behaviour.