(1888PressRelease)
April 09, 2009 - Bring the curriculum to life and fully integrate your learning platform alongside teaching and learning with Birchfield's (www.birchfield.co.uk) new SCORM-conformant* learning platform games and games question editor tool.
Suitable for all teaching and learning styles, teachers can choose from eight engaging 2D and 3D games formats, and then personalise topic-specific questions from extensive question banks to create a fun and engaging activity to complement in-class teaching.
Offering complete curriculum coverage across 19 subject areas, the 20,000 topic-specific questions are easily selected, amended or even created by the teacher using the games editor tool, and integrated into the graphically stunning, highly interactive games at a click of the mouse. This offers teachers the flexibility to use Birchfield's pre-loaded questions or create and share entirely new questions and answers for a wide selection of animated games in which students progress as they correctly answer topic-related questions.
Supporting anytime, anywhere learning, Birchfield's games are fully web-deliverable through a school's SCORM 1.2 or 2004-conformant learning platform, complementing in-class teaching, as well as providing fun activities to work on at home. The flexibility of the games enables teachers to use them in many different ways; for example, a game can be created to ascertain comprehension of a particular topic or a series of games can be set to aid revision of a certain subject at home. Additionally, games are differentiated by length, thus allowing teachers to choose a game appropriate to the time allotted.
As the questions are fully editable, teachers can also control the level of difficulty, and therefore use the games to support students with special educational needs or extend learning opportunities for gifted and talented students. When opting to create a game using Birchfield’s extensive question banks, the software issues questions from a selected topic at random, thus ensuring teachers can use them time and time again without the fear of students becoming bored or disengaged.
Research proves that children enjoy learning when they have a sense of their own progression and where the learning is relevant and appropriate**. Birchfield's games give pupils immediate feedback during activities, providing them with the opportunity to brush up on areas they do not understand and play again to increase their score. To help teachers ascertain a students' comprehension of a topic, their progress can also be tracked through the school's VLE/Learning Platform, including the time spent on a game, how many times they played, and their overall results.
Jon Case, CEO of Birchfield Interactive, comments: "It can be a challenge to convince students to log onto a learning platform from home, so it's vital that the technology is populated with exciting materials that can be used to meet specific learning objectives and ultimately make learning fun. With 100% curriculum coverage and 100% interactivity, our new VLE Games and Question Editing software is a must for any school, keen to maximise the benefits of their learning platform."
Sold by curriculum subject with a perpetual school licence, Birchfield's games cost £249.00 (ex VAT) per subject or £2,999 for all 19 subjects. For more information about this range and Birchfield Interactive, please contact Anthony Evans; tel: 0800 915 6616, e-mail: aevans ( @ ) birchfield dot co dot uk or visit the web site at: www dot birchfield dot co dot uk dot
SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model. It is an XML-based framework designed to facilitate moving course content and related information (such as student records) between learning platforms, and to disaggregate course content into modular objects for reuse in other courses.
Report 8, Literature Review in Games & Learning - Futurelab, (2004)
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