Micorsoft Teacher of the Year - Ollie Bray (right)

The last couple of months have been……..how can I describe them……remember that game ‘Heads Down, Thumbs Up’ at school? Well it’s been a bit like that! We’ve been working hard on our latest pack and have failed to say congratulations to the award winning teacher, Mr Ollie Bray.

Ollie recently won a prestigious Microsoft European Innovative Teachers Forum Awards in Vienna because of his Guitar Hero Transition project which he designed to help improve pupils’ transition from primary to secondary school.

In this project, students work in groups using Guitar Hero as a context for learning across the curriculum. The project has been such a success that it’s now being implemented across other schools in East Lothian. It will soon be carried out in schools as far away as Hong Kong and Australia.

Ollie is truly inspirational and works with such incredible drive and passion that I often wonder if he ever sleeps and if I can have some of whatever he’s had.

We were completely behind something Ollie said at the Forum when he was presenting this work to other teachers. He said he initially received some resistance when he wanted to purchase so many XBoxes and copies of the game for the schools. People were concerned that he wanted to spend so much money on technology. Ollie’s response was great and I plan on stealing it for forthcoming sales meetings for the pack…… that first of all, “Xboxes are far less expensive than computers”. And secondly, “we are investing in children, not in technology“…Nuf said.

Ollie, we wish you every success at the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Awards in Brazil in November 2009. You couldn’t squeeze some of us (me) into your suitcase could you?

More about Ollie’s Guitar Hero:

Schools and students were able to develop their own learning activities around Guitar Hero, which ranged from creative writing and character studies around fictional bands to the design of t-shirts, animations, marketing merchandise, learning and performing music and dance, and much more.

He brought together all of the primary classes (pupils who would be attending the secondary schools in the autumn) for a “Battle of the Bands”. Throughout the day, children had the opportunity to work together in to develop a band (logo, name, and jingle), compete against each other using Guitar Hero, and participate in several dance, music and drama activities.

Continuing to work on Guitar Hero activities in the context of secondary subjects up to and during the pupils’ transition to secondary school children were encouraged to make connections with other pupils so that when they arrived at their new schools in the autumn they could continue projects they had already started on in primary school. Pupils also designed a Guitar Hero postcard about their work, which they sent back to their old teachers in the primary schools.

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