In the latest Naace newsletter there is an article about Futurelab coordinating a games and learning research project.

“Futurelab has been appointed as the UK National Coordinator for a pan-European study of the use of computer and video games in schools. Our Games and Learning project is a programme of research, events and planned publications intended to stimulate discussion and the development of new intelligence.

The overall aim is to demonstrate what challenges and opportunities have emerged from debates and developments in this field to date, and to identify practical actions and interventions to be taken forwards.”

We’ve been in touch with Futurelab as this is something that Real Projects would like to be involved in. At the moment we don’t have much more information than what we have posted on the blog! We’ll be letting futurelab know about the games degree link up and also our work with games based learning. As we find out more we will let you know.

p.s. I still can’t get twitter to work via my mobile phone…anyone got any ideas?

Ever since a trip to Italy last year I’ve been trying to find the ‘perfect’ receipe for pizza dough. After much experimentation and comparing results with my friend Jay (http://www.thechilliking.com/) I’ve stumbled upon something I think works:

• 80g tipo 00 italian flour
• 20g strong bread flour
• 20g semolina flour
• 7g yeast
• 3 fluid ounces of water
• pinch of salt
• brown sugar

I only added the strong bread flour after running out of tipo. After kneading the dough and leaving it for an hour I was really pleased with the results. A quick compare with Jay over email confirmed a few things and we’ve agreed to continue to share notes.

Whilst the latest pizza was in the oven it made me think about my own continual professional development. I’m learning at my own pace, experimenting, using a mixture of research techniques (video, internet, books, tv) and I’ve actually created my own informal learning plan.

I’ll tweak the dough here and there, but my next task is to get the dough into some kind of round shape as opposed to square/rectangle. I’ll go through the same process: research, reviews, testing and measurement. Social networks and blogs have all helped with the quest for perfect pizza. It really did get me thinking about how social networking sites, informal and formal are of benefit to the learning process. I could even post my receipe on a site and have others test it and get all their feedback, a community of testers - carrying out pizza dough research.

….I thought some more about how this would translate to an e-learning module. The receipe and creation would be suited to linear process but I’d want to include decision and thought points where you could review your work. Getting comments from others who have tried the receipe and have their own thoughts.

In a large company this pizza experiement could lend itself to range of topics from the restaurant/bar group looking for feedback on new dishes or getting staff feedback on how difficult it is to create the dish. In a research area people like Johnny Lee are already doing similar things to great effect.

Scott