The new office of Derek Robertson, LTS development officer for New Technologies for Learning, is full of games - everything from Nintendo and Xbox, to PSP.
The consolarium, as he calls it (or the Scottish Centre for Games and Education) may sound like a child’s dream come true, but he believes that his fun-filled office in Dundee will have a huge impact on primary and secondary education. Its purpose is to use the games’ hardware and software to facilitate learning.
The former teacher says his working life was transformed when he saw two of the most difficult pupils in his class playing a Nintendo game (pictured).
“They were hypothesising, they were learning from their mistakes and, above all, they were persevering. At that instant, my perception of those two boys completely changed,” he says.
Since then, he has been an unapologetic evangelist for games technology and its positive role in education.
