How was it used?

This activity used a number of KS3 resources on the NGFL website to teach my year 7 pupils the elements of music.

They all achieved a whole level higher than expected due to the free resources of NGFL and the technology used.

Pupils were in charge of their own learning. They also used Microsoft Songsmith to help compose their songs. One of the success criteria for the children was to produce revision activities that would have allowed anyone who would really use them to a good level in the end of year test.

Impact and Outcomes

• Pupils clearly become more engaged because they felt they were doing something worthwhile by producing their compositions. Some of these pupils were so disaffected that two of them had only just returned to school from exclusion.(the two boys in the video using the Kinect)  They were working at home just as hard as they were working in school. The class was constantly on the computers making their compositions. They found the concept of using a kinect  to control the NGFL resources exciting. It gave it the wow factor.
• Pupils demonstrated to be able to work interdependently and showed degrees of organization and collaboration I had not experienced before with this class.
• Pupils and parents became more involved in their education and took responsibility for the learning of others. In fact, they produced a resource that, even when used by students from other classes, was very effective as a revision tool.

Learner Feedback

“I loved being in control of my own learning. We were able to learn about new technology and how best to use it to help us understand.”

“I love how we controlled the screen with a kinect.”

Other Resources

Kinect controller, USB adaptor for Kinect,

Lesson Learnt

The most significant learning curve for me was probably to hand over the control of the learning environment to the children and take the “risk” of letting them do the teaching. I was there as a Facilitator of learning, not as a Director of learning. I had to learn to hold back and let the children engage in group discussions, collaborative planning and developing of learning resources. In other words, most of the learning was happening through dialogic activities that were led by the pupils. Also, the majority of the inputs came from the learners after a short introduction recording.  My main roles were to answer questions, check the pupils’ work when they wanted some support. I had to solve some technical problems and ask prompting and probing questions to the groups