Game for Life

Overview
Marie-Louise Brogan is Depute Headteacher at Holy Family Primary school in Kirkintilloch. In 2008, the school won a prestigious financial education award from Goldfish for the “Game for Life” learning experience they created. This original project involves developing financial awareness and life skills, and is undertaken by all Primary 7 pupils in the school.
Previously, Marie-Louise’s brainchild, the ‘Game for Life’ was delivered to pupils via email. However, she wanted to improve upon this and provide a more effective means of communication. She therefore decided to deliver the ‘Game for Life’ through Glow.

In this cookbook we’ll look at how Marie-Louise uses a range of web parts within the ‘Game for Life’ Glow Group to communicate with pupils, provide relevant financial information and enable pupils to submit their budget spreadsheets.

Context
Marie-Louise was keen to provide a relevant and stimulating basis for covering the Curriculum for Excellence numeracy outcomes:
I can manage money, compare costs from different retailers, and determine what I can afford to buy. MNU 2-09a
I understand the costs, benefits and risks of using bank cards to purchase goods or obtain cash and realise that budgeting is important. MNU 2-09b
When considering how to spend my money, I can source, compare and contrast different contracts and services, discuss their advantages and disadvantages, and explain which offer best value to me. MNU 3-09b
She came up with the idea of the ‘Game for Life’, which is about developing pupils’ financial awareness, improving their budgeting skills and giving them opportunities to make decisions based on information presented to them.
Pupils are given a virtual budget and paid a virtual monthly salary. From this salary, pupils are expected to make choices about how to spend their money, how to budget and how to manage credit. They choose whether to have a mortgage or pay rent, are sent monthly bills for their utilities, have to pay for their council tax, and decide where best to shop to minimise their monthly grocery expenditure. They also learn about the benefits of saving. Each month, pupils must submit a spreadsheet with their expenditure, to show how they have managed their money.
Marie-Louise saw a Glow Group as a way of regularly communicating with pupils, giving them information about financial matters, and providing a place for them to ask questions.

In this cookbook, we will find out:
• What the ‘Game for Life’ Glow Group looks like
• How a range of web parts have been used
• How to replicate it
• What the impact was

Ingredients

What did Marie-Louise initially need to facilitate the ‘Game for Life’?

1. A Glow Group
2. The News web part
3. The Web links web part
4. The What’s on web part in Calendar view
5. A Document Store

It was also necessary to ensure pupils had Contributor rights within the Glow Group to enable them to take part in discussions and upload documents.

In the next section, we’ll take a look at the ‘Game for Life’ Glow Group and learn how to recreate elements within it.

Recipe

The first video below shows the ‘Game for Life’ Glow Group and the uses made of a range of web parts. The videos that then follow show how these elements can be recreated.

Game for Life Glow Group overview (3:15)

Targetting News (3:11)

Adding web links (2:02)

Renaming a web part (0:54)

Removing the border of a web part (1:58)

Adding calender events (2:47)

Adding a new page to a Glow Group (2:14)

How to create a second calendar in a Glow Group (4:59)

Uploading documents (2:58)

Product

The impact of using Glow to deliver this learning activity has been enormous.

Overall, pupils develop financial awareness, increase their life skills and find out in a more realistic and relevant manner about running a home. They also now have a real purpose for using ICT.

One of the key benefits of using Glow has been the ability for pupils to access the information at home. Marie-Louise tries to send out new targeted news after the school day ends, so that pupils accessing the information in the evening are buzzing with enthusiasm when they come in to school the following day and discuss it with their classmates.

Parents have greatly praised this project. Whereas before, they could only hear about what the pupils had been learning, now, parents can see it for themselves when their child is logged on to Glow at home. Parents have told of the increased financial discussions they now have at home with their child, with pupils asking their parents how they themselves budget, and discussing whether they pay bills by monthly direct debit or await a 3-month utility bill which needs to be paid all at once. There have even been reports of pupils chastising their parents for making poor spending choices when in the supermarket!

For Marie-Louise herself, using Glow to deliver the project has really freed up her time. Compared with the time spent last year managing the correspondence through email, using Glow has enabled her to manage the way information is shared with pupils more effectively. You can hear Marie-Louise talk about this and about the numeracy covered within the Game for Life in a series of short video clips:

Teacher’s views Part 1: Changing from email to Glow (1:26)

Teacher’s views Part 2: Benefits of using Glow 0:40

Teacher’s views – Part 3: Parental opinion 0:41

Teacher’s views – Part 4: Purposeful use of ICT (0:24)