Meet Andy. Andy has been teaching in a Hertfordshire primary school for around 10 years. He loves tech and gadgets and shares his passion with his students. This can be anything from using Makey Makey to create a banana keyboard to producing stop frame animations as part of the school play. He’s not fazed by the new school computer curriculum; in fact, he’s been coding with his kids for years!
Andy is always on the look out for new and exciting stuff and if that includes a smartphone or a tablet, even better. So he was amongst the first to start using Invisible Buildings in lessons (even when the product was being prototyped). As a way of kicking off the course on the Romans, Andy said “it immediately engaged my class with a unique way of letting them participate and start to understand aspects of both history and archaeology – this is not something that one could get close to at a museum or on a field trip. Even the parents were enthused.”
Since the move from smartphones to tablet, Andy is pleased that Invisible Buildings is much easier to use, even for his less confident colleagues. Now he is acting as an advisor in his local area and working with other schools. “When we first started using Invisible Buildings we needed the guys that developed the product to come over and help us out,” says Andy. “Now it practically runs itself – and if anyone needs help or forgets what to do, there are step-by-step instructions on the website.”
Andy is now looking forward to some of the other Invisible Building games that are currently in production, and is keen to contribute to the microsites that will be “online museums” with other quality material based around the subjects, with access to experts and the ability for teachers to add their own material and ideas.