Computing is... again!

MIT Media Lab's $100 Laptop for Third World Children
Originally uploaded by Quiplash!

We had another meeting today of the group of people considering the future of Computing Science education. There was another attempt to define what we think Computing is and we are perhaps slightly further forward but once again, we found it easier to say what Computing isn't. It isn't ICT.

It seems so obvious to me that there is a distinction between ICT and Computing that I may on occasion just state it as a fact and assume that people will go, "Of course! I see it now..." Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.

I don't want to get too depressed though because some people get it. For example, three recent articles/letters in the Times Educational Supplement (No bytes at the back end, What lies underneath and Put computing in its rightful place), a post on the BBC web site (End of innocence for Mac fans) and the Guardian article that I've already blogged about.

The main problem seems to be the people in charge. In particular our Scottish Government don't seem to get it. For example, I wrote about our ideas for placing Computing in the Science area of a Curriculum for Excellence in my post Digital World. We pulled these thoughts together, made the distinction between ICT and Computing Science and presented what we thought was a good case to Maureen Watt (Minister for Schools and Skills). We received a reply - not from Maureen Watt but from someone else (a civil servant we assume). This reply assured us that ICT was firmly embedded in the Scottish curriculum and ICT was being taught very well and ICT would be even better with a Curriculum for Excellence. (I paraphrase... just a bit.) It basically said, "Thank you for your letter. Now go away." Bah! Did they even read our letter? If they did they completely missed the point. We may or may not be doing well at teaching ICT but ICT is not Computing!

We're going to try again. :-)

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Technorati Tags: Schools Computing, Schools Computing the Future, SCtF07, ICT, Computing, Computing Teachers, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

The family that blogs together...

Considering a Digital Future
Originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs

Daughter Number 1 drew the vlogbrothers (Brotherhood 2.0, nerd fighters, etc.) to my attention. She thought it would be the sort of thing I'd like. {I think she wants to try it herself - cheaper than wasting her money on texts and mobile calls to her parents after all!} I must admit, I'm not sure if it is a bold social experiment or just a couple of nutters messing about. However, it is done with care and attention and I can't help but feel impressed. For example the first video I watched (July 27: How Nerdfighters Drop Insults) included a nice riff on Shakespearian insults and a good punchline related to organising a home library. It is not a "sit down in front of a camera and record four minutes of stream of conciousness" stuff but a carefully crafted and well edited video message.

I wonder how lasting this form of communication will be. There is an ephemeral quality about electronic communications. I've been meaning to write a post on unwitting testimony for some time now (maybe this week...) and I'm sure there's all sorts of stuff in their exchanges that will be of interest to future historians but how accessible will their video be?

However, the main thrust of my wonderings has been on the nature of families and family communication in the age of the read/write web. I've become aware of a number of families that are making use of social networking tools to maintain family connections. For example Mrs Blethers seems to keep up with Blethers Boy 1, Blethers Boy 2 and more recently Baby Blethers through blogs, Flickr, Twitter and Skype. Also, the McKinlay clan are popping up on Flickr (Mister McKinlay, Master McKinlay and at least one other). As a final example, I was amused to see that Digital Katie's mum calls herself Analogue Ali and sets her daughter "Where am I?" tasks through her Flickr account. There was much speculation not that long ago on the death of the extended family. Are we seeing the emergence of the extended eFamily and is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Finally a rant... I see these families using read/write web but what do I get from my own immediate family? Grief -- because allegedly I spend too much time on Flickr! Ridiculous... especially given the Bebo addictions of Daughter Number 1 and Daughter Number 2. Pot calling the kettle... if you ask me. {I think I'll get away with that because, as although they claim I spend too much time doing this kind of thing... they don't actually look at it. :-) ...Or should that be ROLF? <-- Private family joke just to see if any of them are paying attention!}

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Technorati Tags: vlogbrothers, Brotherhood 2.0, nerd fighters, family, read/write web, web 2.0, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Any answers?

Thanks to a Twitter tweet from Teach42 I discovered Polldaddy. So, for instance, if I want to get some feedback about which posts people like best, I can easily include a poll:

Now, I know that the new Blogger templates allow you to add a poll, and as soon as soon as I get around to a long overdue refresh of this blog, I'll add one to try it out. However, Polldaddy also allows much more sophisticated questionnaires to be developed. For example, please answer my extended questionnaire.

There are many educational uses for polls like this. For instance, I mentioned in a lecture recently that I'd been at a workshop before a production on The Crucible. There was some discussion about whether we are supposed to think that John Proctor is still attracted to Abigail Williams. I thought that sort of thing would be a great thing to ask by a poll on a class blog. It would allow the teacher to get a quick idea of the range of opinion in a class and for pupils to see that it can be legitimate to interpret a scene in a number of ways.

Steve Dembo (i.e. Teach42) also drew my attention to Poll Everywhere. This looks like an interesting alternative to the audience vote style personal response systems that some schools are using. I was sceptical about the use of such voting systems until I tried using them in a lecture. I found them surprisingly useful. There are obvious issues about asking students to pay to vote in class but I think it is worth investigating further. If I try it, I'll try to remember to let you know how I get on. I have a blog post on voting systems that's been bubbling on the back burner for a few months now. Maybe this will inspire me to finish and post it. :-)

In the meantime, what do you think of using tools like Polldaddy? Can you see potential for your classes? If you are already using that type of tool, I'd love to hear if it worked.

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Technorati Tags: polls, questionnaire, Polldaddy, Poll Everywhere, Steve Dembo, Teach42, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Unpatriotic?

BBC NEWS | Education | School work priority for children

The survey of 507 boys and 493 girls, across all social classes, in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, revealed that half think they are British and half are patriotic saying they are English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish.

...So saying you are British is unpatriotic? How odd!

This report, and the bits on the Newsround site, are both a bit light on detail about attitudes to technology. However, the BBC report reveals that "The real world still beats online, children would rather play outside and talk to friends face to face" and the Newsround report says, "Most kids would rather play outside than on their computer". ...So despite changes in society and technological advances, children are still children!

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Technorati Tags: children, survey, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Getting ratty with Technoratti

Once again, Technorati seems to be missing some of my posts. At the moment, it has failed to pick up three of my last seven posts. This happened to me before before but I thought the problem (what ever it was) had been resolved. Now even the work around (change the time submitted on a post it failed to spot and resubmit) isn't working. Odd.

Anyone else having problems?

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Technorati Tags: Technorati, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Guitar Hero versus Violin Virtuoso

Sigur Rós at Somerset House, London
Originally uploaded by production designer matt

I said a bit about Joe Moretti's session at the recent Apple RTC meeting in Southampton. I forgot to mention he said he'd read that peripatetic teachers of guitar now outnumber teachers of violins in schools. His comment, if I remember correctly, was:

"Isn't that dreadful... why are so many kids being forced to learn violin?"

I couldn't find the report he referred to, but this one seems close:

Violin losing out to guitar in music lessons | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk

a government-backed study has found that guitars and drums are, in fact, becoming the instruments of choice in the classroom.

Not everyone will share Joe's pleasure in this finding... but the solution seems obvious - do a Jimmy Page and play the guitar with a bow. :-)

(*I discovered today that it was David McCallum Snr, father of David McCallum the actor (Illya Kuryakin in the TV series The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) who suggested to Jimmy that he could use a bow on his guitar.*)

I assume that part of the reason for this shift is that guitar and drums seem more relevant to children's experience of music. I'm reminded of the attempts to convince Daughter Number 2 that playing the flute was a good idea. Her music teacher suggested she should listen to James Gallway, but this failed to inspire. I tried Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull - but that was dad rock and that too failed to impress. Her sister, Daughter Number 1, seemed to come closest when she found the beatboxing flautist on YouTube. Relevance matters and dads (and teachers?) rarely manage to pull it off!

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Technorati Tags: Joe Moretti, guitar, violin, school music, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Note this

Wanted to try posting a photo with working notes.



Alan Levine thought that Blogger strips out javascript... but it seems to work OK here.

Details of how to do it can be found at Yuan.CC Flickr Experiments via CogDogBlog.

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Technorati Tags: EduFlickr, Notes, CogDogBlog, Yuan.CC, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog