Esther Lambe, principal at St. Kierans National School discusses how her primary school students used the MissionV virtual world in a game-based learning programme.

1. Game-based
Learning in
Virtual Worlds
Esther Lambe, Principal, St. Kierans
National School &
James Corbett, CEO, MissionV Education

2. Background
●2 Teacher
●27 children rural school
●Shared LS RT teacher
●Agriculture and farming
●Children from local
town

3. September Day Course
●Positives
●Child centred/child led
●Authoring programs/content free
●Variety of abilities/backgrounds
●Negatives
●No idea how it would work
●Teacher input? Log in/supervision/ parental
support

4. Teacher View
●Set up Groups of mixed ability, boys/girls
●Explore Virtual World
●Brainstorm for Science challenges
●Research topics/record
●Consider Literacy/Numeracy objectives
●Continuous Evaluation a must

5. Child’s View
●We are doing a project on the virtual world. The project is
based on living things.
● There are two groups on the whole 16 acres. 3rd and 4th
class is working on half of the land and 5th and 6th is is
working on the other half of the land.
● I am doing the water cycle and John and Eoin are doing
the bog life and animals. We have nearly spent all our time
looking up information about how a bog is formed. John
and I did bog in a bottle and our experiment is to do the P.H
on the bog in the bottle. We are hoping we will do well.
By: Dan

6. The Beginning

7. Relig Farm
●On mission v me, Emma and Aine are doing about water
pollution and river life. We have blocks with river life on
them and were going to make them move. When you are
spreading slurry you have to stay 5 meters away from the
river.
●I like Mission V because you can fly, talk and walk . I think
it is so cool .
●If I had my own 16 acres I would have a horse ranch and
the education would be measuring the saddles and tacks
and it would be fun at the same time.
● By Ciara

8. Tour of Breachoill
●VirtualWorld videos, tour of Breachoill - http:
//youtu.be/bgbhm5PRguc

9. ● Droighneach Farm
●First we downloaded Imprudence. Then we put in the grid called
Mission V http://missionv.ie:1909
●Our teacher put us into 5 groups of 3 The groups were based on our
Placenames project.
●Then we picked out our Science Challenges and we picked our land in
the North.
●We downloaded Scratch for Open Sim. Then we practiced Scratch for
Open Sim.
●We made a gate, built our house, decided one two or three storeys.
●We put a floor down, put textures on the walls, made stairs, and made
the kitchen.
●We made a second floor, made our couches, our tv.
●Then we learned about Yeast and Pasteurisation and made bread rise.
●We did experiments. We used 3 Green Eggs

10. ●Then we showed how we learned about yeast and
pasteurisation by putting posters up in the Virtual World.
●We put uniforms on our Avatars to show our schools
identity when we were visiting other schools.
●We made the doors swivel using Scratch.
●We made the light turn on and off
●We made the oven door swing out
●We made the plate of Yeast bread rise
●We made the back kitchen, the extension, the attic,
●Chelsea moved in and we made the trampoline, decorated
the extension and took down our Christmas decorations.
●We got information about Yeast and Pasteurisation
●We built a model of Virtual World
●We put information on posters using coloured paper.

11. Game based learning
●Virtual world is a good game. The virtual world is
educational. We do new things on virtual world
each week.
●Me, Aine and Ciara are doing this project on how
the water gets polluted on the virtual world. You
can build whatever you want to build on virtual
world such as build a gate
●I learned a lot from virtual world. You can do many
projects on virtual world. You can also teleport to
people.

12. Concerns
●No Previous Knowledge
●Addicted?.. Parent
●Time constraints / Time limit
●Organisation and timetable
●Learning styles/learning targets
●Curriculum /WSE Inspector

13. Benefits
●New Experience game based
●Child centred… team work
●Catalyst for Learning all subject areas
Child with poor attendance
●Group Interaction ..one exception
●Problem solving/critical thinking
●Creative and fun
●Affirmation

14. Group Problem solving

15. Quotes:
I learnt a lot while doing the Virtual World. I learnt
when something does not work to keep at it.
I think in the future Virtual World should be used
for History ..like what townlands were like long
ago.. It is good for teamwork too…..John
It is a great learning experience.I learnt angles for
Maths. It also is good for problem solving like
making the drops move in the water cycle.. Dan
We had a problem trying to get the doors to swivel
but Gráinne got it….Eadaoin

16. I really like the Virtual World and I also like
the feeling you get when you make
something really cool. I’d give it ten out of
ten…Anna
We learned a lot of stuff in two weeks..
Cathal
It was cool doing the cows digestive
system…Sean
It went all bonkers but we fixed it up and it
was grand….Gráinne

17. Water Cycle
●Virtual World videos - tour of Water Cycle -
http://youtu.be/cwMia8vB_kc

18. Regional Final Science Competition
st
1 Place

19. Applications now open!
If you'd like your school to get on next term's
MissionV (game-based learning in virtual
worlds) programme please apply here -
http://www.MissionV.ie/apply

20. @MissionVHQ
facebook.com/MissionV
james@missionv.ie