Dear colleagues

Please find link to our new interactive and resource rich site on game-based learning approaches.  The TGfU SIG executive has worked with a professional website development company, using our membership fees, to create to unique resource into games teaching and coaching.  The site features extension social bibliography libraries on games teaching/coaching, reviews on current research articles, video footage on game-based learning approaches, members pages to edit to refine insights on an array on game-based learning approaches and insights on current and past projects related to game-based learning.

In addition, the website offers a link to colleagues round the world through this blog, conferences and workshops.  We hope to see many of you at the 5th International TGfU conference to be held in Loughborough July 16 to 18. Links to the conference on the website.

http://www.tgfu.info

Comments on the site welcome here.  Details on joining the SIG in the website.

Regards and Happy New Year

Tim Hopper, TGfU SIG Chair. 

Posted by Tim Hopper  

Time: 2.00 to 3.15 
Channel: TimTV
Location: John Holland Theatre, University of Limerick.

The focus of this workshop/panel is to create a forum for discussion about the role of games centered learning approaches in physical education. There will be parallel discussions on SKYPE connected to members from the TGfU SIG with the speaker presentations broadcasted using USTREAM. The panel members will speak for 10 mins each followed by round-table discussions based on the key issues identified by the panelists. A final sharing and discussion of the round tables will conclude the session.  Here are a short insight on the panelists presentations: 

Joy Butler:  Will there be a time when the TGfU movement has served its purpose?


Ontological and epistemological decisions are crucial to the health of PE programs, since they encourage them to change with the rest of society and culture. TGfU has provided an invaluable catalyst for such evolutions, but in this presentation, I will argue that once 'good pedagogy' has been established, the purposes of the movement will have been served.

Len Almond: The Craft of the Teacher in TGfU

This session will highlight three features of a Rethinking THfU process:
1. Intelligent performance characteristics. 
2. The art and science of practice 
3. Pedagogy 
In order to illustrate this the presentation will develop the idea of how Games Sense and Technical Prowess can be redefined in the intelligent practice of one’s craft – the informed practice of the teacher and the learner

Wendy Piltz.  Play Practice:  Framing the teaching practice for game centered learning

Game centred learning is a complex process that can be difficult for teachers and coaches to grasp and integrate into their practice.  In order to assist professionals improve this capability, Play Practice presents the processes of ‘shaping’, ‘focusing’ and ‘enhancing’ to frame teaching practice and enable sustained professional learning to occur.  These processes will be described and connected to the design and facilitation of engaging game centred learning environments.

David Kirk.  The normalization of innovation, models-based practice, and sustained curriculum renewal in PE.

The challenge of educational innovation is not merely the creation of good ideas or of generating interest and enthusiasm among teachers. It is, in addition, sustaining innovative practice once it is in place. The tendency within school system is towards normalizing innovative practice, in order to make it fit with existing structures. My proposal for sustainable curriculum renewal in physical education is a models-based approach to the curriculum located within networked learning communities of schools, universities and other partners.

Blog members should select which panelists presentation they wish to participate in at the panel session and then send it to Tim Hopper (thopper@uvic.ca) along with their SKYPE address to set up their access to the group discussion on Thursday June 23rd.

Posted by Tim Hopper  

Four recognized scholars and practitioners of game centred approaches to teaching in PE have been invited to share their insights on games teaching in PE.


·      Joy Butler:  Will there be a time when the TGfU movement has served its purpose?

·      Len Almond: The Craft of the Teacher in TGFU

·      Wendy Piltz:  Play practice framing the teaching practice for game centered learning

·      David Kirk:  The normalization of innovation, models-based practice, and sustained curriculum renewal in PE.
 

As an experiment the TGfU sig plans to broadcast this presentation to TGfU sig members on Thursday June 23rd 2.00 to 3.15 pm GMT + 1 hour.

More details to follow.... 

Posted by Tim Hopper  

Image from the session The use of homemade materials to enhance constructivist learning within the Sport Education-Tactical Games Model: the case of an ultimate learning unit by Antonio Méndez-Giménez, Javier Fernández-Río - University of Oviedo 


A key issue identified for me at the TGfU seminar here in A Coruna is the need to communicate ideas about Game Centered Approaches (GCA) to teaching games across different languages.  One way is to share ideas like the one about using visuals.

What other ideas can people suggest?
How can we develop a way of categorizing and sharing practical and theoretical ideas? 

Posted by Tim Hopper