Employment

Woodmill High School is a non-denominational, comprehensive school serving the eastern part of Dunfermline and the villages of Crombie and Limekilns. The roll of the school is 1300 and is continuing to rise as a result of the extensive building programme in the Dunfermline.

Learners can study French or German in the broad general education. There are three German classes in S1 and six French classes. In the senior phase, National 3, National 4, National 5, Higher and Advance Higher in French and German are all offered. The Modern Languages for Life and Work award is offered to a targeted group of S3 pupils, providing more of a focus on employability skills. National 3 Italian has been introduced in the Senior Phase, predominantly for those pupils who successfully completed the Modern Languages for Life and Work award in S3 and who wish to continue with a language at a similar level.

For more information about the school, visit Woodmill High School website.

Aims

The project with Outplay Entertainment gives the young people in S3 a real and engaging context for their learning and provides learners with an insight into the world of work. It shows them how the learning of a language can enhance their career prospects as well as developing their skills for learning, life and work.

SCILT and the modern languages staff at Woodmill High School worked in partnership with Thomas Hulvershorn, Operations and Analytics Manager at Outplay Entertainment Ltd.

Outplay Entertainment

Outplay Entertainment is a video gaming company based in Dundee. It is the largest independent mobile developer in Scotland. It is an extremely ambitious company; in less than five years it has gone from two founders to a team of 120 and it has released 13 titles which have been downloaded nearly 60 million times! Each product is developed and owned by the team who drive the development, design, and creative direction of the products in coordination with the directors, marketing, and analytics teams. Outplay produces games such as Angry Birds Pop, Mystery Match and Alien Creeps for Smartphone and Tablets.

The games are created in a number of different languages and their products attract a world-wide audience. Forging a link with this company showed that languages are necessary in the creative industries.

The partners worked together to devise a project that would enhance teaching and learning in the S3 curriculum. As one of the topic areas is media, the teacher was keen to forge a link with a media-based company in order to make the context more meaningful and relevant. Although the media theme was popular with students, feedback from pupils identified the need for more opportunities for links with external partners. Pupils asked if the media theme could be linked to a local business so they could experience how media and languages can lead to career routes in the future. Thomas Hulvershorn of Outplay Entertainment was approached and agreed to visit the school to speak to all S3 classes about this.

Thomas spoke about the type of games his company produces, the specific jobs within the company and the role languages can have in the development of a company. Of specific interest was Thomas’ emphasis on how cultural knowledge is beneficial when working with different nationalities within an organisation. Thomas was also keen to convey the message that young people should look at pursuing a career that is a passion for them and also that learning a language is something that opens doors in today’s global market.

Pupils agreed that Outplay’s visit was a great success. One pupil commented:

“I thought that it was good to learn about how languages could help you get a job and it gave me a new perspective on looking at languages.”

Project brief

It was decided that the pupils would undertake a project advertising one of Outplay Entertainment’s games in French and German as part of their media topic. The projects were then judged by Outplay Entertainment staff class and the winners were sent Angry Bird merchandise.

Nathan and Gregor’s advert was selected as the project with the best design.

Anna and Shannan’s advert was selected as the project with the best translation.

Learners enjoyed the experience. They were able to experience how media and languages can lead to career routes in the future and they enjoyed working on the project brief. They felt their questions were given real consideration by Outplay and this enabled them to have a much clearer view on how the Gaming Industry works and how language skills have a role to play in the growth of the business.

Pupils commented:

“I think it was a good idea to link languages with ICT and the Gaming Industry because some people may want to follow that career.”

“This link helped broaden our ideas about how languages work in the world of work”

“I liked the idea of looking at the sort of job I could do in the future with the qualifications I get in school.”

Woodmill staff thought the project was a great opportunity for the learners to see the relevance of learning languages and agreed that it had been very worthwhile. According to one of the teachers, the project had led to:

“A more dynamic and vibrant S3 course with increased emphasis on skills relevant to the world of work, increased pupil voice and greater engagement in coursework.”

The staff at Woodmill High School would like to continue to build on the partnership with Outplay Entertainment and intend to develop the project further by giving pupils more ICT time to work on their advertisements. They also felt it would have been helpful to see an example of the kind of advert that Outplay would create. Pupils would have liked the opportunity to meet with more of the Outplay staff who use languages in their day-to-day life.