TESS - Get With The Program

There's a great four page feature on Computing in schools in last week's Times Educational Supplement (Scotland). It's titled "Get with the program".

277/366: Drag and drop,
a photo by DavidDMuir on Flickr.

It starts, inevitably, with the Raspberry Pi (see Raspberry Pi - Further comment if you don't know what this is) and then gives a quick summary of what is happening in England. It talks about a report from the Royal Society (which I want to say more about in future post) but then moves onto the state of play in Scotland:

"So where does that leave Scotland? Most experts argue that Scotland’s delivery of computing science has been superior to that of England for some time - but that it too needs to raise its game."
-- Time Educational Supplement Scotland, 9 March 2012

It's a good article - by which I mean it says a lot of the things that I've been saying for years. :-) For example, it quotes Scotland's chief science advisor as saying she wants, "schools to treat computing science on a par with physics, chemistry and biology." Brilliant!

Other good stuff includes a brief description of Computational Thinking (which some people think should form the basis of Computing courses), a section on National Qualification Group Awards featuring Kate Farrell and a plug for Computing At School - Scotland.

It doesn't say anything that I haven't heard from fellow Computing specialists before but it packages together statistics, ideas, links and discussion points and brings them all to a wider educational community.

Lots to think about and lots to discuss. If you haven't read it already, check it out now and let me know what you think we should talk about first.

Fun On Friday #140: Extra, extra! Three Little Pigs!

Another advert this week:

It's not a new idea, to take a fairy story and turn it into a news report, but I liked the way they updated the story and linked it to current events.

What do you think? Scope to do this in the classroom with other stories?

Raspberry Pi - Further comment

I wrote about the launch of the Raspberry Pi in Rasberry Pi Is Launched and enjoyed following some of the comment posted by others. I particularly liked an article, The Raspberry Pi can help schools get with the program, which I was directed to by The UK ICT Education Daily.

Raspberry Pi pre-release board,
a photo by jared_smith on Flickr.

The article is good. First, it explains that the 10,000 units were sold out within minutes of the site opening for sale. Now, compared to the number of units a company like Apple ships, that may be small potatoes but the Raspberry Pi is a very niche product. Ten thousand units sold out in minutes, and goodness knows how many more ordered by people who were late to the party - I think that's stunning.

The article is also interesting because it talks about a distinction that needs to be drawn between ICT and Computing. This is something that I have banged on about many times before but I was especially struck by this sentence:

We've taken a technology that can provide "power steering for the mind" (as a noted metaphor puts it) and turned it into lesson for driving Microsoft Word.

This may not be an entirely fair characterisation of current courses but the phrase "power steering for the mind" is a powerful image.

The article also talks about Computing Science and asserts that:

...there's a major body of knowledge in this field – complete with a stable and intellectually rigorous conceptual framework that is independent of today's or yesterday's gadgetry...

It is good to see people talking about the science of computing, something that I think we need to communicate much more clearly. Perhaps there is then an inference that programming equals computing science which is too simplistic but at least gives a starting point that may help non-computing people see that there is more to the subject than ICT.

There are a couple of aspects though that I would want to challenge, or at least discuss further. First, there is a hint of the "Computing is the new Latin" argument in the article. It is not stated explicitly but it is suggested we are not teaching children to program because we want them to learn programming; no, we want them to learn citizenship and democracy, or logical thinking, or... But I want them to learn programming because I think it is good to be able to program! The fact that most pupils will not go on to be professional programmers is neither here nor there - there's loads of stuff that I learned at school that is apparently of no practical use to me in the job I do now - but I still believe it was worth learning and worth doing in the first place. Education and knowledge have a value beyond the utilitarian.

My other concern is the article talks about ICT education in "this country" in a way that seems to assume there is a common curriculum in "British secondary schools". Despite having Computing courses (and programming) in Scottish schools for around 30 years, we are still facing almost the same problems as the ones the experienced in England. We are finding numbers taking Computing at school are in decline and there is a drop in numbers for Computing courses at university too. We also see the same confusion between ICT and Computing muddying the water for pupils, school management, politicians and employers alike. My concern is that teaching programming in schools may be a necessary or even a desirable first step but on its own, it is not sufficient to bring about the changes the more enthusiastic supports of the Raspberry Pi hope to see.

The comments generated by the article are interesting too. Take time to read it and let me know what you think.

Fun On Friday #139: Copyright, shmopyright!

It is, of course, right that composers and lyricists are recognised. It is right that people do not make money by ripping off other people's effort. And it is right that the creativity is rewarded. But sometimes the copyright law is an ass.

Here's an example of someone challenging a particularly daft copyright claim:

For reasons beyond reason, the song Happy Birthday To You is (allegedly) protected by copyright. So thankfully Barats... or is it Bereta has produced: "...a copyright-free little ditty about an Egyptian river god who finds a place to sleep atop two sheep and a deer named Harrison, who also happen to be governors of Algiers before the French conquest in 1830."

Thanks to Daughter 1 for bringing this to my attention.

Rasberry Pi Is Launched

The Raspberry Pi is launched and officially on sale... probably. The problem is that the sales website seems to have gone into meltdown with the volume of people hitting it this morning. :-)

QR Code from @RaspberryPi

I've mentioned the Raspberry Pi before (see ET Phone Home!) and, now that it's here, it will be interesting to see what kind of impact it has beyond the already converted - like me for instance.

As far as programming is concerned, I tell my students that sometimes, in an effort to make programming accessible, we end up making it boring. It may not help children to learn programming if we spoon feed them everything. There is a danger that all that happens is we teach children to follow a set of instructions - like we are trying to program them instead of teaching them how to program.

I hope I'm not alone in saying that half the fun of programming is that it is difficult. It is the challenge that makes it exciting or at least engaging. I remember a lecturer I had in first year at university who was trying to introduce us to assembly language programming. Her introduction started with reasons why you would want to use assembly language in the first place. Her final reason, which she revealed with a flourish, was "...because it's fun!". To be honest, at the time I thought she was a brick short of a full load but in retrospect, I understand exactly what she meant. It is worth noting that this is not a phenomenon that applies only to programming. Why do people do crosswords, or jigsaws, or sudoku, or play computer games, or sports, or...? If these activities were too easy, or lacked challenge, people wouldn't do them. You do sudoku because it is difficult. Crosswords are fun because you have to work to beat the crossword compiler.

The trick, and in my opinion, this is the really tricky bit when teaching programming, is to make it challenging without making it discouraging. Get the pupils involved and engaged in problems that are difficult but achievable and you are at least half-way there. I think this is (at least in part) the philosophy behind the Raspberry Pi. Give children something that will challenge but not overwhelm. Don't direct and control the children but let them explore and discover.

Will it work? That's a whole other question. Certainly, the launch today has generated a bucket-load of interest which has already led the Raspberry Pi site to put up a static page with basic information and the volume of traffic has caused at least one of the suppliers to struggle. BBC news has featured the launch (see Raspberry Pi - a rapturous reception for example), and Twitter is all in a flutter (see @Raspberry_Pi and #RaspberryPi - currently number three in the UK trending topics list) but I'm not sure yet if it is only of interest to the already converted. With me, the Raspberry Pi is pushing at an open door. The real test will be if the it reaches beyond the existing nerd herd and ropes in children who might otherwise have no interest in Computing.

I intend to try and acquire one and to that end, I'll be putting a bid in today to see if the university will buy me one to play with ...but if that fails I'll invest some of my own hard-earned.

So what do you think? Will Raspberry Pi create a new generation excited by, and interested in, computers and programming? And more importantly, did anyone I know manage to get one today?

Fun On Friday #138: Movie Titles

Thank you to Daughter Number 3 for directing me to this one. Twenty-six clues to twenty-six movies - one for each letter of the alphabet and helpfully in alphabetical order.


ABCinema from Evan Seitz on Vimeo.

I managed a disappointing seventeen out of twenty-six. How did you do?

Twitter, storytelling and serendipity

It's taken me a while to get around to writing about this so, with the ephemeral nature of Twitter, it has not been easy to piece this back together but I thought it was still worth a try.

I mentioned in Say hello to BEd Bloggers that I was working with a group of BEd students and trying to introduce them to social media and creative uses of ICT. In one session I wanted to introduce them to the potential of Twitter as a means of building a Personal Learning Network and, crucially, how it is a source of rapid feedback. One of the things I did was to send a tweet at the start of the session: "Talking to BEd students just now about Twitter. Why do you find Twitter educationally useful? Please let them know."

This worked reasonably well and within a short space of time, I had replies from other students, from teachers, advisers, and a depute rector. So far, so good. My intention was then to move on to creating a "Fortunately/unfortunately" story. This is a consequences style technique where one person begins a story and then people take it in turns to add a sentence. Each additional sentence must alternate between starting with "Fortunately" and "Unfortunately". It is quite a simple idea and I hoped by starting at one end of the class and each person nudging their neighbour when they had added their Tweeted sentence, we would quickly and easily build a story with multiple authors. I hoped it would let the students be creative within the strict confines of the fortunately/unfortunately structure but more importantly, I hoped it would show the easy flow of information on Twitter.

Unfortunately, it did not quite work out that way!

Here's how the story started with a Tweet from me and the next few Tweets that were generated by the students:

I was walking to school yesterday when a tree blew over in front of me. Fortunately, it landed a metre in front of me!

Unfortunately, it hit an old women who was too slow moving out the way. 

Fortunately, she had her hard hat on that her husband Bob gave her the previous day.

Fortunately, the students were all arriving for their 9am lectures and one particular student knew exactly how to save the day.

You can see how it goes. I accept that it it not going to win any prizes for literature but a story was being developed. The reason it was not going to plan was nothing to do with the story and everything to do with the lab I was in. The lab was full of old machines, with an old version of Internet Explorer, and frankly they are showing their age! Everything takes forever to do on these machines. Add to that the Internet and/or Twitter was also on a go slow that morning and my idea for a quick, creative, collaborative story-writing exercise went out the window. It took over half an hour to generate the four contributions shown above!

I felt it had all gone wrong. My learning intentions unmet and the students frustrated and scunnered by and exercise that was supposed to excite and inspire. Then something happened, which at the time I didn't fully appreciate but thinking about it later that night, I realised that while not what I expected, it was nonetheless a useful lesson.

What happened? It started with a Tweet from Christine McIntosh asking if she could join in the story telling. I replied that the story generation was intended as a student exercise but that she was welcome to join in as she felt fit.

 

After the second or third message had been posted by the students, one asked me, "Who's Christine McIntosh?". I explained she was a friend, a retired English teacher and Ewan McIntosh's mum. The reason they asked was that she had started pitching in:

"At the risk of being a pain, I'd say a striking first sentence is as important as a striking conclusion, whatever comes between. Like: 'The tree, when it fell, was shocking in its sheer enormity.'

Two of the first three tweets have changed the first person narrator to a third person.

#BEd2012 students: never write a boring sentence in story!

They've not hashtagged assiduously ..." 

Only four messages... but eventually I realised what a valuable contribution they had made. The story took longer to form than I'd intended but while that hadn't gone to plan, what the students got instead was a lesson in story telling from a skilled English teacher exactly at the point they needed it. In fact, never mind the students I got a lesson on opening sentences! 

So a real and timely demonstration of the value of a good Personal Learning Network. Excellent!