Have been slightly disappointed with the African Cup of Nations. You expect some tasty tackles and calamity goalkeeping, but its been just a bit dull. Teams tend to stay at the edge of their own box, giving lots of space for nothing to happen in the middle third of the pitch!

Following a team in Irn-Bru Divison 2 takes you to all sorts of places…

Cowdenbeath FC. Must be unique in having a stock-car racing track around it…

Raith Rovers. Ah, the glory days of SPL past have left them with 10000 seats but not that many fans! There are two mighty stands, one at either end, then an individual collection of assorted stands makes up the rest of the ground!

Like Raith, Airdrie have a smart 4 sided 10,000 seater ground, known as New Broomfield or as they Shyberry Excelsior Stadium! Shame they only ever open one stand and will never even fill that!

Alloa play at Recreation Park – or the Rec, and quite literally it is! I can’t find a photo to do it injustice, but – it has an artificial pitch!

Then you have Queens Park. They play at an Hampden Park! Nuff said.

Went to see In The Valley of Elah. Think I must have confused the trailers I had seen as I was expecting a bit of a FBI type shoot em up. Must be Tommy Lee Jones Being too busy recently.

What I did get however was fascinating. Some may see it was slow moving, but it is more appropriately paced as Jones tries to work out what happened to his son. He is ably supported by an understated Charlize Theron, with both portraying their characters with strong emotion.

From the same guy who brought you Crash, if you want a film to contemplate, then this is good. Plenty of Why War questions arising from this…

This is just a brief copy and paste from an evaluation form I filled in for Buzz: The Schools Quiz.

Issues:

Some questions were very specific to schemes of work that we do not address in Falkirk, and even Scotland.
Some questions were very difficult, some incorrectly worded.

Used:

Mental Maths at the start of Maths sessions. Maths group activity, focusing in on a particular subject area. Writing – use of punctuation, sentence structure, grammar, definitions. General Knowledge quizz at end of day. Choosing activity at Golden Time at end of week.

Outcomes:

Increased confidence amongst pupils. Willingness to participate and cooperate as a group. Increase in willingness to answer questions when not using Buzz. Also used as a reward for those who finish work – so increased motivation to finish work!

Negatives:

Limit to 8 players (with controllers). Difficult to undo any choice made. Some pupils guessing answers immediately rather than giving time to reading and thinking about the answers – no delay in being able to answer.

Student thoughts:

Really inspired by using Buzz! Amazed that they could use a PS2 in school and call it work. Always asking if we can use Buzz! today.

Learning Outcomes:

Increased confidence in their ability. Greater cooperation and better participation with their peers. Reinforcement of knowledge and learning that they have been doing in a subject area.

Additional Comments:

It would be very beneficial if you could save player data or set up a group of players that could be reloaded. Setting up 8 players can take anywhere up to 10 minutes, which limits the pupils time on the actual group. A teacher could set up a group which could be instantly loaded. These groups can be set by ability or other means as the teacher sees fit.

Over on the busier class blog, the class have posted their thoughts, organised by thinking hats!

We used our thinking hats to evaluate Buzz: The Schools Quiz.

Green – Creativity

We could do it in the hall with all the classes. We could use buzz for subjects like maths, language and science. The people who are on green lights get buzz. You can use buzz for everything except art or circle time. Two people use the controls at the same time.

Yellow – Positive

It’s good because it helps you learn more and it is fun and sometimes funny. I like buzz because every one likes it and it is fun. You can go against your friends. You do not need to put up your hand you just need to press the red button. Buzz is good for maths. You don’t have to put up your hand you can just push buttons. You learn a lot more.

Red – Feelings

I feel happy when I am playing buzz because it is funny and every one likes it. You can use buzz for everything except art or circle time. Buzz is fun because you learn new things. I feel happy with buzz but only eight people can play. It is fun to play with buzz it helps you learn. My feelings are that it is quite good and really fun. I think buzz is fun because it helps with your maths. It is brilliant and excellent.

White – Facts

Only eight people can play at one time. It’s good because you can choose more than one class. We sometimes play buzz at mathsBuzz is a good game. We got interviewed with buzz. Buzz has different coloured buttons on the controller and a big red button.

Black – Negative

It can sometimes crash and you can’t play the rest of the game! The bad thing about buzz is that you can only have eight players at one time. Sometimes can be annoying because the girl who tells you what to do. It is quite harsh because if someone gets the answer before you and then you are out of the pie game. There are only eight controllers.

I was thinking of trying to use Zoo Tycoon 2 as part of an ES project on animals.  As well as the normal investigation into different animals and categories etc I was planning a bit of a project on looking at animals in captivity.  Is it good is it the end of the world, that sort of thing.  Planned on visiting a couple of places which keep animals, having some people out too, maybe designing an enclosure also.  Was wondering if this could enable the class to get a bit more insight into how a zoo is run and all that goes on behind the scenes… not sure how it would work though – working as a class on the IWB maybe, or giving different people time slots to make progress… maybe leave it for another time until I know the workings of it…

it’s not my social life, but that’s for another day.  Apparently, if you have a big presence on the interweb, then it is a darn fine place to stop by and see all your bits n bobs together!  (Or you could just have less bits n bobs and do one of them really well!).  Thanks to Big Gareth for the heads up, great place to visit for webmeister stuff!

It’s time for 8hands, ’cause constantly checking all your social sites is so 2007.

…heavy helpings of dark psychedelics and Jesus And Mary Chain fuzz served up on the Raveonettes Lust Lust Lust (Stereogum). It’s more of the same from the Danish Duo. Well if it ain’t broke and all that…

Stumbled across Okkervil River on some blog or other. Got instantly drawn in by the awesome Black, one of my favourite tracks of the last couple of years – even though (or because) it deals with a dark subject!

The blurb states:
“spiked with dirty rock and roll, shimmering with white-hot pop, shimmying with girl group snap and shivering with epic ballads.” Exactly!

“… more self aware than Conor Oberst, more serious than Colin Meloy, more legible than Jeff Mangum… Will Sheff writes like a novelist!”

Been listening to new albums from some of my favourite artists. They’ve really inspired me to get the old albums out on rotation (or digital decoding if you are all mp3d up) again!

Listening to Boxer by The National has reminded me how great Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers is!

Challengers by The New Pornographers is fantastic. It made me reload Twin Cinema, which is different, but also fantastic!

Both albums provide such a range of real artists producing real music.

This made me laugh… out loud! We’re quite into using consoles and gaming at school, but…

Comment from a pupil on Friday… “this isn’t science, it’s a game!”  We were looking at the circulation system.  The class had roles of either being a body part, such as the heart, lungs, legs, or being some blood – moving from body part to the heart to the lungs and so on.  I was quite surprised in a way at the comment, but in another way a bit worried that by P5/6 they hadn’t had much experience of Active Learning.  Our P1s are well into it, but there must be a big gap in between!  Even working in groups seems to be a novelty for the class…

Different folk, different methodologies I suppose…

Going to write up my use of Buzz! The Schools Quiz soon, with the class doing likewise, using 6 thinking hats (or the 5 we have learnt so far!).

Also just started using a Dance Mat with stepmania.  Not sure when and where to put this into practice, obviously good for health, PE, brain breaks… after wet intervals especially.  Ideas?

Any ideas on how to overcome the global Wii shortage?