Why I have an issue with this ‘anti-office, it’s boring’ approach #digitalstudies #digitalliteracy

This morning I saw on Twitter an article about the Scottish ICT curriculum and how it has been praised by Hal Abelson, who I respect greatly and I’m also reading one of his books,  which quite rightly praises the approach the Scots are taking (and many sassenachs are taking as well!) to craft real-life and relevant approaches to the ICT curriculum.

The article then also quite rightly takes a boring and repetitive approach to office skills to task but I think it is missing quite an important point about ‘Office skills’.  The problem with this, as I wrote in the comment underneath the piece, is that they shouldn’t be seen as ‘Office skills’ but as ‘productivity skills’ as using the term ‘Office’ instantly equates it only with what Microsoft has to offer.  Pupils should be taught good productivity skills both to support their learning in other subjects but also to prepare them for tertiary education and employment.

Whether they use Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Zoho, Openoffice etc or any other productivity suite is irrelevant they must still be learning how to …

1. Write a good document which is suitable for a target audience
2. Create a usable and engaging slidedeck (and present with it)
3. Manage and manipulate data within a spreadsheet and draw results and conclusions from it
4. Store and manage data within a database and extracts information from it
5. Manage communication in a professional manner through channels such as email
6. Research and synthesise relevant information

Like grammar, basic algebra etc pupils should be leaving school with these skills so that employees do not have to waste time teaching them just as much as they shouldn’t be having to give remedial english and maths skills.

So the question is – how to teach it?  When I see examples of schools doing fancy mobile app development projects I think to myself: are the pupils being asked to write decent technical documentation? Are they creating slidedecks to demonstrate their products as if they were seeking investment? Are they using spreadsheets or databases to track inventories and test runs?  Productivity skills can still be taught but instead of being the main focus ‘This term we learn Mail Merge!’ they become a support to what is being asked of them in collaborative group work projects.

This blog post is not an attack on computing and computational thinking in the classroom.  I am full supporter of the increased role of computer science in class.  I just do not see this approach of ‘computing’ first, everything else ‘boring’ or second as the right approach.  Productivity skills have their approach and can still be used and taught extensively and effectively in class.

Image attribution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Microsoft_Office_2013.svg in public domain

my #code365 exploits next year

Last year I did a #project365 where I took a photo a day for a year.  Only missing one day overall I ended up with a great blog filled with lots of nice pictures which don’t really provide me much value for the future or provide anyone else any value at all.

I thought I therefore need to do something which will provide me with a bit of ‘value’ for myself and others.  It didn’t take me long to think of http://codecademy.com as an inspiration for this.  Codecademy encourages learners to hit ‘code streaks’ where you code at least once a day for a streak (site obviously run by Americans – batting streaks … :-)).  My highest streak so far is a gigantic 5 days.  A #project365 for a year focussing on coding might therefore be a great idea.

Truth be told I have zero idea how long I am going to be able to keep this up but believe me I will have a go.  I will probably be blogging on a daily basis mostly about what I do in http://codecademy.com but will also try and blog about anything else I learn whilst teaching myself Python.  I realise also that this blog might become of use to other ICT teachers who are learning how to teach computer science so I may blog as well about general programming and GCSE issues.

Good luck to me … I think I will need it!

Baseline #assessment of #digitalstudies skills using @yacapaca

A short while ago on the wiki (http://digitalstudieswiki.pbworks.com) a discussion was started about baselining pupils in #digitalstudies. That reminds me I need to add this blog once I have done to that page.

I left that discussion for a while but have come back to this issue as our own school exam week is very fast approaching. Recently I have been trying out http://yacapaca.com which is an online quiz engine. Yacapaca I think is immensely powerful and at being able to set quizzes and analyse the results. It has a bit of a learning curve but I stuck to it and I think it os starting to pay off.

On yacapaca I have set up an authoring group for baselining #digitalstudies. Within the group you setup questions and then from the questions you build tests.

The group is here

http://yacapaca.com/teacher/agroup/5798/ (hope the link is visible, may need to create an account to view)

I have started building questions for our exam and I hope to have 40 questions set up and ready to go by tomorrow. But here is where you can both benefit and help. Obviously you can use the test as well yourself (I don’t know whether Yacapaca can compare results between schools but would be cool if it could) but if you have any ideas for questions for baseline tests I would very much welcome those questions been added to the pool.

Each question is tagged in the following way:
– tagged with one of the four #digitalstudies strands
– tagged with a topic such as programming, spreadsheets or databases
– tagged with a level. These are not NC levels but a simple level numbering system where the first test I am building is a level 1 which every pupil from year 7 to 9 will get (resetting the clock almost). Next year I will build a level 2 test for year 8’s and up and so on. Eventually if the year 7’s get too good at Level 1 then year 6 will start doing level 1 test and the other tests will be readjusted. I know I have had a go at levelling in the past but it is simply a tool to manage who gets what tests.

Hopefully this could grow and multiple with a whole bunch of questions in the framework of #digitalstudies strands!

#Minecraftedu Pedagogy – some thoughts

I’ve been talking with Santeri Koivisto who is one of the head honchos to do with Minecraftedu about issues to do with the game and pedagogy. This post is therefore a summation of what I feel about Minecraftedu and pedagogy.

To start I headed back to the wikipedia page on pedagogy and the following line right at the top stands out:

“Its aims range from the full development of the human being to skills acquisition”

So – how does Minecraftedu contribute to the science of education and the development of human beings and skills acquisition? Firstly I am not trying to be grandiose and claiming that Minecraft is vital to the development of pupils but I do think it is a good tool which teachers can use as part of their armoury in class. I’m not one of these teachers who tends to think in one dogmatic way or another. I think that skilled teachers should be using a range of tools and approaches in class. Essentially there is a time for getting pupils to be facing the front and learning in a ‘lecture’ style format and there is a time for pupils to be learning independently and setting their own tasks and boundaries. This is where Minecraft and its Edu flavour come in.

Well development of a human being and skills acquisition to me go hand in hand. One acquires a skill it helps develop one as a person. In turn one develops in maturity and outlook in life and this could lead the ability to pick up new skills. It’s not a perfect symbiosis but it works.

Minecraft I think does both.  It allows for the general development of pupils and encourages skill acquisition.  It does this through allowing pupils the opportunity to work independently, or as some people might say self – directed learning, but still within an educational environment.  If a pupil is playing Minecraft at home there still may be some benefit but they lose out on the nature and atmosphere of playing the game but within a school environment.  Playing Minecraft at school gives them access to educational support primarily through their teacher so that when they do something within the game their teacher can then respond to that, challenge them and then help shape what the pupil could be doing next.  This to me is part of Minecraft helping pupils develop as individuals.

As for skills acquisition Minecraft’s collaborative nature is the key here.  Yes there is some benefit to pupils being able to design stuff in single player but for me the real and obvious benefit is working as groups in multiplayer.  This is where pupils are being compelled to work together without it being overtly directed by the teacher.  This isn’t a typical classroom where pupils are forced to work in groups by their teacher but a classroom where pupils can either choose to work as a group or not.  I’ve heard two pupils who weren’t even working together negotiate a boundary between their building areas as they found some nice geographical elements they wanted to use which were close to each other.

We spend so much time in school getting pupils to work according to our rules and guidelines that sometimes we forget that they can be quite good at setting up these rules and guidelines themselves through collaborative discussion with one another.  In doing so, as long as there is a teacher present to pick up on pupils and groups who are getting into a negative feedback loop, pupils are without knowing it beginning to build the collaborative team building skills they need for future careers.

If i think about any further issues to write about to do with Minecraftedu and pedagogy I will continue to post them.

Why I have been quiet on #digitalstudies and what I am working on

This week at school we have had a consultant working with us on iPad usage in schools. He and I were talking about being able to make change on a large scale versus being ‘stuck’ in a single school. Although the consultant said he still does some teaching it didn’t seem to be on a very regular basis and my response was that for me instigating change is best done whilst teaching as much as possible. It is the best way to see your ideas and strategies put into practice and assess where things are going right or wrong. This in a sense is why I am enjoying working on #digitalstudies whilst still being a teacher and not employed by some consultancy. It’s tough and we may not be able to affect large scale change but if I consider that we already have a number of schools running variants of #digitalstudies based on some of the principles we have developed I think it’s been remarkably successful. The reason why I have been quiet though on #digitalstudies for the last month is because of the fact that after all the work last year I just want to teach it now in class. I want to put into practice what we have developed and test out how it actually works. I do though have a letter ready to go to DfE regarding general ICT curriculum matters and I’m considering writing to BCS and Royal Society of Engineering dependant on daily pressures. One thing I have been tweaking is a set of competencies for #digitalstudies. One of the entire aims of #digitalstudies has been digital badges as a form of acknowledgement of pupils progress in class. The actual assessment still needed to take place and this is where the competencies come in. These have been developed slightly in line with what The Corporate IT Forum have been saying about the ICT curriculum. I have tweaked these recently, particularly the last few ones, and it is starting to look better. I will probably write a second blog soon on what is happening within lesson time.

From Evernote:

#digitalstudies competencies

Competency	Strand
1. The ability to write a program and understand their uses	Digital Technology
2. The ability to use technology as part of a business process including developing a product idea and taking it to market	Digital Literacy / Digital Society
3. The ability to select and work with computer hardware	digital technology
4. The ability to create simple multimedia for an audience and understand its use	Digital Authoring / Digital Society
5. The ability to work with computer networks	Digital Technology
6. The ability to manage data sets through models, simulations and databases	digital literacy / digital technology
7. The ability to understand the use of Computer, Data and Privacy legislation in society	digital society
8. The ability to use a range of communication and collaboration tools effectively in a relevant context	digital society / digital literacy
9. The ability to choose the most effective software and hardware to complete a task	digital literacy
10. The ability to write effectively in support of work completed	digital literacy

Update on progress with #MinecraftEdu in my school

A couple of months ago I went to a games festival up north where some pupils and I were fortunate enough to go to a Minecraft workshop where we experienced the Edu version. At the start of this term I therefore decided to buy 25 licences and get Minecraft going at school.

Before I start describing the issues we have been having I do want to clarify that I thoroughly enjoy Minecraft and I buy the concept of it as an enrichment and educational resource in school. As it is obviously still a game which is a work in progress and almost certainly not built for network environments in school you need to think very carefully about buying it. Having access to a supportive and skilled network manager, as I am fortunate enough to have, is also a very good idea.

Onto the actual buying and install process. After having to convince my bursar that paying through Paypal in dollars was ok I ordered minecraftedu and was sent the relevant details. The first issue which came up for me was redeeming the gift codes. Although I followed the suggested process of using email aliases to redeem the gift codes I am still not sure as to why I needed to do this. Surely the purchase agreement should just simply state “download Minecraft client once and put it on 25 machines?”. I lost concentration half way through the process and completely messed up my system of signing up with the 25 aliases. It just seems a time consuming and unnecessary task.

Installing it we also run into issues. Now these issues may arise out of two factors: firstly the game client isn't built for a networked environment like a school and secondly individual schools may have unique set-ups which conflict with how Minecraft wants to run. We use roaming profiles at school which help deliver a consistent desktop experience but also allow saving to network drives.

When Minecraft's client is run it checks to see whether you have the game files and pulls those down. I had to login to the browser version to force a download of the files. Those files are placed in the appdata folder which on our network is cleared when a user logs off. A solution I therefore found was copying .minecraft to the same folder as the client on a machines local drive and then using a .bat to tell the launcher to look in the same location for the files.

This now means we can use straightforward single player Minecraft in school. However a limitation is that we have is that because the launcher and .minecraft are on a machines local drive that means maps created and saved remain on that machine rather than networked. A temporary solution will be to ask pupils to keep a copy of their saves on their personal network drives and then copy that onto C: whenever they want to have a Minecraft session.

In order to fix that I am looking at whether I can use something called symbolic links to create a saves folder on C: which appears to the launcher as if it is a legitimate saves folder but it actually links to a saves folder on the pupils personal network drive.

Once that is working I will then need to solve why the minecraftedu launcher isn't working, set up a server and get machines to talk to each other for a LAN multiplayer session.

A lot to do …

 

Posted with Blogsy

Adding Creative Commons to the #digitalstudies wiki

One of the points which came out of #rethinkingict for me is attaching a Creative Commons license to the #digitalstudies wiki.  Miles Berry mentioned it on Saturday when I met him at #educationfest and it came up in his speech at the conference on Monday morning.

It has been something on the back of my mind for a while but just not got round to it but now I think is the right time for it.  #digitalstudies has involved a lot of new thought and essentially the creation of new ‘intellectual property’ however we are not a commercial organisation.  Furthermore some of the key concepts were developed out of what people like Mark Clarkson and Chris Leach offered.  So I think it is important for us as a subject not to sit tight on what we have but to also offer it out as well for others to use and develop.

So I would like to propose that we use the Creative Commons Licence CCBYNCSA.

BY: just as much as we are attributing the original authors or ‘finders’ of resources it seems only sensible to ask for that similar attribution.

NC: although we are working with commercial interests this must remain a non-commercial enterprise.  I would not want to see #digitalstudies products being sold.

SA: we want to give people the rights to share our work as well and this will protect the original license application.

What do people think?  If there no real objections I will probably attach it later to the wiki.

Cheers

Brian

My first Oxford #RaspberryPi meetup :-)

On the 19th of June I went to what was the second Oxford Raspberry Pi meetup organised by Paul Read.  It was held at RS components office in Oxford.  I arrived not knowing anyone but really looking forward to it.  There were 20? guys there (no women though … ) and various monitors and bits of kit scattered around

The evening was mostly demoes of existing projects which people are undertaking.  All were especially impressive but the ones which stood out for me were the guy who was getting RiscOS running on the Pi and the other chap who was using XBee? boards to wirelessly send serial data in near real time to a small display unit.  The thing which struck me about both their approaches (and everyone else as well) was when asked about practical implementations of their projects their only response was in a nutshell ‘not sure … just wanted to see if I could do it”.  This to me is the spirit of true innovation and skill and in a sense true bloody minded British optimism in simply saying – “sod it let’s do this!” After seeing documentaries before with black and white footage of engineers standing around rocket engines or photos of 70’s hippies holding weird circult boards I kind of got a sense of what it must have been like at the time and what the Pi could herald for the future.

As I was standing there kind of trying to pedal fast to keep up with the conversation (someone says “Oh I do this using SSHDA on DX99 using )(*&^ etc” and everyone nods wisely and I’m thinking “Huh?”) I thought whilst I hopefully will be able to pick up some kills and competencies myself what I could contribute to the group in the future is my expertise as a teacher.  The projects which are being booted around including home sensors would be perfect translated into lessons in school.  Whilst I may not know much about how to build these things I may be able to help package what is created into something which teachers who may not be fully skilled themselves could use within a class.

I think this approach would help as a way of keeping the Pi grounded.  With all due respect to the other guys there I think I can already see how guys could focus almost exclusively on the nuts and bolts of code or hardware and forget the bigger picture.  So that when someone is asked ‘why did you do this?’ or ‘what is it for?’ they could turn round and say not only ‘I did it because I wanted to see if I could’ but they could also think ‘you know what – this could really work well in schools as something to encourage pupils to do even better things one day’.

original blog is here at designspark.com 

Reflections on meeting with the Corporate IT forum #digitalstudies

Earlier today I blogged about a meeting myself and Nic Patterson (@teachesict) were going to with the Corporate IT forum and their Education and Skills Commission. In brief for those who haven’t read the earlier post the Corporate IT forum is an organisation which represents the interests of hundreds of organisations and thousands of IT professionals largely in the IT as a service industry rather than IT as a product industry. Earlier this year they formed an Education and Skills Commission to look at issues to do with ICT education and concerns regarding the quality of school leavers going into full time work.

Soon after the commission was formed we wrote to them introducing the concept of #digitalstudies and recently we received an offer to attend a meeting of the commission and present about our subject and then discuss with the members some of the issues. Why we wrote to the commission is important as well in terms of our motivation for going and what we hoped to get out of the day. I may be making some generalisations here but largely I think that teachers tend to be wary of outside business interests in education. We deal with shoddy businesses wanting to sell us quick fix but badly built educational products through to looking at the implications of Gove’s keenness on seeing schools being run for profit.

However we would be foolhardy to forget that just as much as we are preparing pupils to go into tertiary education we are also preparing pupils to go into the job market both as potential employees and if they themselves are developing new and unique ideas or products then they will become job creators as well. I therefore think that especially in a subject such as ICT or #digitalstudies forging links with business is absolutely essential.

So after meeting Nic for the first time (twitterlife – you can work for months with someone until you actually meet them!) we headed to the Gazprom offices in London. Very impressive setup including a great conference room with a triangular table which Nic and I briefly reflected on as a layout for a class and we then get going.

Partly due to lack of sleep and two celebratory pints Nic and I had in a pub near baker street at the moment I will not be able to recount absolutely all of the day. There will apparently be a transcript coming out sometime soon and until then I will probably write specific blogs about some of the topics discussed. For now though the main points from the day were as follows:

• Unsurprisingly business is taking very seriously the issue of pupils going into employment with the necessary competences and skills. This is something which needs to be recognised irrespective of whether delivering ICT or #digitalstudies. We have many pupils walking through our doors and what we do in class will not be about preparing them for the next test. We are not training colleges for employment but we can start building the capabilities into pupils for employment. It’s an obvious statement but I think it needs to be said again.
• There was a lot of discussion with regard to skills versus competencies. It was acknowledged that skills are updated quite fast due to changing technology but that competencies may be more permanant. It was noted from the research the forum had done that companies were mostly more interested in hiring pupils with competencies rather than skills. At the end of the day we were all asked to develop a list of 10 competencies for submission back to the commission. Expect another blog post on this soon.
• The #digitalstudies presentation went down very well. Nic and I had a ton of very searching, incisive and very fair questions from the commission members. Their motivation to get to grips with the issues to do with #digitalstudies and general ICT education was obvious and very welcome to see as these are serious issues.
• A number of commission members expressed interest in the #digitalstudies projects and Nic and I have a some contacts to work through and process.

Overall it was a very productive day. Unlike reading and hearing about most things which seems to come come out of DfE tinged with ideology this was a day of productive, focussed and practical discussion about moving forward the debate surrounding ICT education. A few key elements moving forward were decisions to try and continue influence of exam boards in their future development of GCSEs, acknowledgement that support needs to be given to projects furthering ICT curriculum developments and as part of that using research to look at a key list of competencies that pupils need to show by the time they are 16. This issue of competencies is a key one as it could provide the framework for a #digitalstudies curriculum which I have written about before.

We certainly enjoyed being able to offer her opinions during the day and the opportunity to shape future ICT policy for schools across the UK is quite exciting. I look forward to being able to continue to work with the commission but I hope that they will continue to take input from as many ICT teachers as possible. I know I would certainly have a number to recommend.

(note: blog was started on day of meeting but only managed to finish it today but have kept the time references)

 

Today is an important day for #digitalstudies

Recently the steering group received an invite to attend a meeting of the Corporate IT Forum’s Education and Skills commission.  Their press blurb is as follows:

The Education and Skills Commission was created by The Corporate IT Forum in March 2012 to tackle the growing ICT skills crisis.  Forum members were concerned that their employment needs were not being addressed by the current education and training environment. 

The Commission has 28 members drawn from large companies, public sector organisations and education and training bodies.  Its Chair is John Harris, Chair of The Corporate IT Forum and Chief Architect and Head of IT Strategy at GlaxoSmithKline. 

The Commission is informed by the experience of its members, research from contributors and through feedback from The Corporate IT Forum.  It will publish its findings and recommendations over the next two years.

The Commission’s response to the Department for Education’s public consultation on proposals to disapply the current ICT curriculum was also informed by a survey of members of the Corporate IT Forum carried out in March 2012. The Commission’s response to the proposals were published in full on the Corporate IT Forum website at: www.corporateitforum.com 

The Corporate IT Forum is the premier representative body of the largest corporate users of ICT in the UK.  The Forum represents 320 IT user organisations and supports over 10,000 IT professionals.  The collective spend on IT of the Forum’s members is some 35 billion euros per annum. 

As you can see this is quite an important group!  Nic (@teachesict) and I will be presenting to the commission on #digitalstudies.  We will cover what we have done and why we have done it and just as importantly we will be looking at what they could hopefully do to support us.

We will be presenting at 10:45 this morning so if you can keep the hashtag #digitalstudies going and we will try and keep you either updated during the day or blog after the end of it.  I’m posting this from the bus wi-fi so will add the presentation later.