The winning school looks forward to combining play and learning in the teaching! CONGRATULATIONS to the winning school, Egebakken Specialskole in Aalborg, which won a set of Hopspots for a month! Kenneth Vestergaard who is the headmaster at Egebakken expressed that Hopspots is going to be a total hit at the school. Even the pedagogues had great pleasure out of trying Hopspots on the demonstration day. We asked Kenneth Vestergaard about his thoughts on movement in school and how the school is going to use Hopspots. Movement in school is very important and it is related to learning which is why he thinks that Hopspots will improve the children’s learning. “Movement and learning, body and brain are related”, the headmaster Kenneth Vestergaard says. It is important that children get to play while learning, and also that they learn while playing. Egebakken is a school for children with ASF. It is thus important that it is not just the traditional method where children are sitting down an entire day that’s being used. “I believe that Hopspots can make them feel like they get a break while learning and moving [...]

THE SCHOOLS’ HOPSPOTS METHODS We know that it varies how the different schools and institutions implement Hopspots into the everyday school life and thereby include digital technology and movement in the teaching. Even though we offer start-up help and feedback it is great to see that the schools themselves do such a good job at finding a rhythm that suits them and their children. Here we made an excerpt of the different Hopspots-methods used at some of the schools that are currently using Hopspots to create active learning. Seeing it, may inspire others to get started using Hopspots. At Uglegårdskolen in Solrød Hopspots resides in the Centre for Learning. Britt is the IT-advisor and manager of Hopspots as well as the person that gets the other teachers started with using the games. Once a week the interested teachers can book a Hopspots lesson for their pupils. In that way the teachers get experience with how to use Hopspots in their teaching. Uglegårdskolen looks forward to getting a second set of Hopspots, which will allow more teachers to use it with their pupils, and the school will make themed presentations for the teachers to introduce [...]

The SEN school Stensagerskolen: ”Hopspots is awesome!” We are thrilled to see that Hopspots creates value for so many different children in schools all over the country. At the SEN school Stensagerskolen in Viby just outside of Aarhus, the children love Hopspots, and they use it several times a week. We talked to Randi who teaches the 3rd grade. Randi scheduled the use of Hopspots and uses it two days a week together with her 3rd grade, particularly when they have P.E. Randi implemented Hopspots in her teaching because she wants “P.E. to be more than just running”. She was pleasantly surprised to see how well Hopspots works and to see just how much the children actually move. When using Hopspots children can keep their focus for about an hour, where they usually lose the motivation and focus after just 10-15 minutes. They are completely done after an hour of using Hopspots, Randi says. ”Hopspots is a great way of combining both cognitive learning and physical activity. Learning easily becomes something that is done sitting, and that’s exactly why Hopspots is so great. That’s what we really like!” Stensagerskolen in Viby SEN [...]

FlowDance – a co-creation collaboration between CxD, junior designers and musicians On November 18th we visited 8th grade at Uglegårdskolen in Solrød, which we had really been looking forward to. Earlier on, the pupils participated in a contest about inventing a game for Hopspots. They competed against three other schools in Denmark, and Sofie Østergaard from DR Ramasjang elected Uglegårdskolen as winners because of their excellent idea for the game FlowDance. FlowDance is a game that combines dance and music. By stepping on the different Hopspots’ spots the pupils can create their own rhythms within the genres: pop, swing, Jazz and Middle Eastern Music. The music is recorded and subsequently used to choreograph a dance. The music genres in the game aren’t random at all. They have been through a careful screening. The pupils found different genres and choreographies on YouTube and tested them. For instance, it was the YouTube video Yalla Habibi that inspired the pupils to use the Middle Eastern genre. The genres that the pupils couldn’t create a dance for were discarded. In the end the pupils took a vote to decide between the remaining music genres. The [...]