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Showing posts from March, 2015

Bamzooki - Creators Not Consumers

I spent some time over the weekend playing around with one of my favourite pieces of software - Bamzooki. Originally created for the CBBC TV programme of the same name, the Bamzooki software allows a user to create 'Zooks'. These are digital 3D creatures that are built using a variety of blocks which can be modelled to your specification and then tested for speed, strength and agile in a variety of simulations. In my opinion an excellent tool for supporting the area of the ICT curriculum focussed on modelling and simulation. So many opportunities for a teacher to ask the "What if...?" questions, changing of variables in the model, and challenging pupils to solve problems. For instance, several years ago when I ran the "Bamzooki Challenge" across the local authority, the challenge for the pupils involved was to create a 'Zook' with certain constraints  - mustn't be heavier than this, have more parts than this, etc. The pupils then created their m