Release-party and test of The Island

By |2020-09-09T12:29:48+00:00April 24th, 2018|

Release-party and test of The Island By Trine Askjær-Jørgensen The 13th of April we had a party and celebrated that we moved into our new office and that we released a new game; The Island. It all started in the afternoon, where we talked about the making of the game, the team behind it, the story itself and the test of the game. Ahead of the release pupils from Gammelgårdsskolen tested the game together with their teacher and two students, from the teacher education in Aarhus. The pupils got on stage at the party and told everyone about their experience with The Island. The development of the game, The Island, began around two years ago and initally started out as "HistorieHopperen", which was supposed to contain two interative stories, namely Lakridsmanden by Louis Jensen and The Island by Boris Hansen, of about 30 minutes in length. The Ministry of Education partly funded HistorieHopperen, which eventually turned into two separate games/stories independent of each other, which contained much more than what was intially intended and thus ended up taking much longer than half an hour to play. The idea of The Island was that we would make [...]

Workshop in Funder Børnehus: Music & Movement

By |2020-09-09T12:55:00+00:00April 9th, 2018|

Workshop in Funder Børnehus: Music and Movement By Trine Askjær-Jørgensen On the 14th of March Hopspots went to Funder Børnehus, where we held a workshop for pedagogues who are part of a so-called media-network in Silkeborg Municipality. This blog is about the workshop, and emphasizes the ideas that were created and experimented with that day, allowing other Hopspots-users to benefit from these and making it possible for interested people to learn more about the different ways one can use Hopspots. 8 pedagogues from four different day care centres in the municipality were present at the workshop together with Aviaja, founder of Hopspots, media-researcher Stine Liv Johansen from Aarhus University and me. The workshop was the first out of four workshops, which are part of a project that is to experiment with creative use of Hopspots in day care institutions. This time the theme was “Music and Movement”, and therefore we experimented with how Hopspots can be used in relation to that. First, we worked our way through the different games in the Hopspots’ app together, where we brainstormed and experimented with the ideas that came up. But, before that we started out with hearing a bit [...]

BETT-show 2018

By |2023-05-04T13:34:00+00:00February 19th, 2018|

BETT-show 2018 By Trine Askjær-Jørgensen In week 4 Hopspots once again went to BETT-show in London and we had a blast. BETT is short for British Educational Training and Technology-show and at this show there are lots of opportunities for people within the educational sector to get new ideas and inspiration for ways to integrate technology into teaching. This year was the first time we had our own stand at BETT-show – close to the BETT futures-area, where we were located last year. Here we showed Hopspots to tons of interested people and playful children from January 23rd to 26th – and we really enjoyed it! There was heavy interest in the product, which was actually the only one of its kind at the show. One of the wonderful things about going out to show Hopspots is getting a lot of feedback from our current customers. Among others we got the following positive statements: “When the pupils get to pick what they are going to do, they pick Hopspots” “They don’t feel that it’s learning – because it’s just play to them!” “The pupils really like it. They play it every day!” Hopspots is going to [...]

“Bring Movement into the Classroom”… with Hopspots

By |2020-09-09T13:05:27+00:00January 18th, 2018|

“Bring Movement into the Classroom”… with Hopspots By Trine Askjær-Jørgensen Studies show that active pupils learn better and more because movement significantly increases learning. Thus, pupils who are more active “exhibit better focus, faster cognitive processing and more successful memory retention” compared to children who spend the entire school day sitting still (Abdelbary 2017). The reason for this is that keeping the body active through movement increases the blood and oxygen flow to the brain, which promotes mental clarity and positively affects cognitive development as well as physical and neurological health (Abdelbary 2017). Several studies have shown “a significant positive relationship between PA [physical activity] in general and cognition in children”, and “positive effects of regular PA on the structures and functions of the brain” (Have et al. 2016). Among other things, physical activity increases information processing and helps children build the foundations of their social skills (Abdelbary 2017). Although children must learn how to work while sitting still, it is also important that we understand that “play and movement give kids the chance to release stress and take breaks from the rigor of schoolwork” (Abdelbary 2017). The challenges of today’s teachers and [...]

Hopspots challenges children’s competencies

By |2020-09-09T13:11:03+00:00January 15th, 2018|

Hopspots challenges children’s competencies At Bagterpskolen in Hjørring and Herningvej Skole in Aalborg the teachers and pupils love Hopspots. We talked to Anja Godtliebsen, teacher and IT-advisor at Bagterpskolen, and Henrik Bundgaard, after school care worker and head of pre-preparatory classes at Herningvej Skole, about their experiences with Hopspots. At Bagterpskolen Anja has borrowed Hopspots for 4 months in total during the past year. She particularly took Hopspots in, in her role as IT-advisor because as she says, “she knows what’s good” and thus she books ahead in order to make Hopspots available at her school. At Bagterpskolen everyone from the first grade and all the way up to the 6th grade have tried Hopspots and Anja says, “they are all equally eager to use it and even the older children find The Chase and Mix’n’Match fun”. According to Anja, Hopspots is ideal for getting children to move while learning, because it does not take a lot of preparation time to use it during class, and she says “it’s nice to be able to bring Hopspots into the classroom and it is something that the children think is fun and when they even learn something [...]

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