If its for sale to home users (will stores stock it?), it's a smart product that's comparable to all those books parents buy to help their kids.
Buzz! The Schools Quiz
- Thread starter Arwin
- Start date
It is. Currently 3rd on play.com / ps2:
http://www.play.com/Games/PlayStation2/4-/3519386/Buzz-The-Schools-Quiz/Product.html
Little doubt that stores in the UK that still sell PS2 titles will stock it. Buzz has a very good reputation - there are already several Buzz titles doing well in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
So the neat and brilliant idea here is to limited it to something not at all good for a school but for the home? Maybe it's better for that aspect, but for an actual school I'll stand by that it's a rather poor solution. The money spent on inputting the questions would be minimal and a one time thing if you matched it to the curriculum like was done with this Buzz game.
No, once again I called your example/idea of those teachers to be stupid. Which they would be. But I must live in this amazing fairy land where no one is like that.
No, once again I called your example/idea of those teachers to be stupid. Which they would be. But I must live in this amazing fairy land where no one is like that.
archangelmorph
Veteran
As many have already stated multiple times.. The money isn't the issue here.. It's the time & dedication of the teachers having to learn to use the system AND maintain it, updating the question database as & when the curriculum changes..
So pay for a third party or the education department of the country do it or at whichever level in the UK where the curriculum is finalized. The something will have to happen with Buzz, in a certain time frame it'll be irrelevant time wise and not update-able at all.
archangelmorph
Veteran
No education department or governing body is ever going to fund extra-curricular learning aids like this for every single school, it would only be the responsibility of the school itself & whether they could afford it/it was deemed necessary..
When you look at it from that perspective.. The cheapest (in both time to setup & maintain) & easiest solution would probably be better..
scooby_dooby
Legend
Exactly.
The very idea that this would ever be funded on a federal level is laughable. Talk about a clusterfuck...
You certainly do.
I simply stated there were many teachers would would take an inordinate amount of time to maintain such a system, and as such they would avoid it, and simply teach the same way they've been doing for the last 15 years.
There's nothing stupid about that. It's the reality of people who did not grow up using a PC, and do not have alot of free time to practice learning something new.
Your idea that none of these people exist is far fetched, and out of touch with reality, there's little point in debating with you when you're going to make such outlandish claims, and can't even bring yourself to accept such an obvious premise.
Even among younger, computer savy teacher, their workload is so high, that any additional work is immediately looked at as a bad thing. No matter how 'simple' it seems to you. If you want something to be used by teachers in their classroom's it has to save them time, not require more. That's fundamental to anyone who knows anythig about developing digital teaching aids.
There's no educational department in the UK that'll hand out or develop content. It's left entirely to the schools to choose from private sector developments. The government provides and maintains an educational tools portal which, along with catalogues sent to schools by educational retailers, is where teachers are presented thousands of different tools and applications and have to pick something based on their budget. There are companies that'll service school IT needs, but a custom job is going to cost silly money because these companies operate on the IT price level rather than educational budget level. What'll it cost to have some engineer create a 30 question science quiz with assets? Easily as much as a copy of Buzz! If anyone other than the teachers were to be creating quiz systems using standard PC DIY applications, it'd be the teaching assistants, many of whom are just parents of kids and have no more creative or IT know-how than your average adult.
One hopes the system can do better than this teacher did...
archangelmorph
Veteran
Damn, wonder what this Department for Education and Skills (I know it's been split now, but I'm sure one of those still performs functions very similar) was doing by giving money for a prototype. Hmm... simply odd and contradictory to what others have said.
Pay someone to enter the curriculum for a stand alone product already out there and then simply give schools these saved files for the program. They don't have to develop a custom system at all. I can't see why you people are having such a hard time understanding that. It's simply choosing a third party product then making the curriculum for that. It is then the schools choice to purchase said program and the government to give out the proper saved presets. No different than the Buzz other than a number of more features and it leverages existing systems.
Pay someone to enter the curriculum for a stand alone product already out there and then simply give schools these saved files for the program. They don't have to develop a custom system at all. I can't see why you people are having such a hard time understanding that. It's simply choosing a third party product then making the curriculum for that. It is then the schools choice to purchase said program and the government to give out the proper saved presets. No different than the Buzz other than a number of more features and it leverages existing systems.
Right. And if someone does that and gives the schools a curriculum focussed product with the questions all available and no work from the teacher, whether created by the government directly funding a project or not, it'll fly for sure. The question here isn't what's possible - it's what's available. Originally your point was that there are products that do the same thing as Buzz as long as the teachers input the content. That's not an option, they aren't interested in spending their time that way on the whole. So then it moves onto commissioning.paying for someone else to do that. Well, the choice now is organise someone to create custom material for you or the whole curriculum, or pick up a product that's already available. This is the universal 'custom designed system' versus 'off the shelf system' competition.
You know, your argument could easily be presented in a nigh on irrefutable way by just linking to some existing suitable solutions that compete with Buzz
The solution that I've seen in use doesn't come with every curriculum out there integrated already. The Buzz game was given funding and I'm saying that a education department could do the same thing before, it just hadn't been done to my knowledge. I don't see a reason to praise Buzz or say its something original or even the best solution because its none of those.
Neither do I. No-one here is really praising Buzz as the bees knees, are they? It's just a decent sort of product, ish, with some serious limitations in the classroom, but in the existing educational software landscape it has a place, especially with a tie in with home use. And the thing it's doing that is original is bringing pure educational titles tied in with the curriculum onto a home console. It lets players sit around the big TV in the comfort of the living room and go head-to-head in curriculum revision, rather than sitting on their ownsome-lonesome in front of the PC in the study. An attempt to combine boring old education with social gaming has to be a good thing, no?
This is probably going to be a stupid question, but how many people here with an opinion on how well Buzz does things, have actually played even just one Buzz game? (not to mention the school quiz, which probably no-one has ... I think I'll order it, as I have the buzzers already, it's very cheap anyway)
EDIT: ordered, for 27.99 euro. I figure this will be fun too. We're having a little one and this way my and my wife can brush up on more basic skills or at least see where our biggest gaps are, and the best thing about these quizzes is that even if you do know rather many answers, it's still also about time. And of course I get to tell you if it's any good.
Oh yeah, and it will no doubt teach us some good basic words in English that we've missed out on so far, because we don't live in an English speaking country (you learn the hardest words from books, but miss out on the most banal ones)
EDIT: ordered, for 27.99 euro. I figure this will be fun too. We're having a little one and this way my and my wife can brush up on more basic skills or at least see where our biggest gaps are
, and the best thing about these quizzes is that even if you do know rather many answers, it's still also about time. And of course I get to tell you if it's any good. Oh yeah, and it will no doubt teach us some good basic words in English that we've missed out on so far, because we don't live in an English speaking country (you learn the hardest words from books, but miss out on the most banal ones)
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Me. The latest Buzz. Okay as a title, although fundamentally flawed gameplay. All the questions answered beyond pointless come the final round, where a few right answers put you out on top no matter how badly you could have done in the rest of the game.
That would be the Mega Quiz, yes, where the final round is a winner takes all. Though when we play it, it usually takes very long before someone loses (even at hard it's not THAT hard) so it's usually still a fair result. It's not like that in my favorite though (the Music Quiz) fortunately. School will likely have a slightly different structure again, we'll see.
Mega Quiz is not the latest, by the way, as at least Hollywood Quiz came after that. School shares code with an even newer edition, I think.
archangelmorph
Veteran
I've done more than played a Buzz game..
I've done more than played a Buzz game..
Cool!
One of the few games that the wife loves, and awesome party game, nice job. 