uLearn: Keynote 1 - Larry Rosenstock

P2P: Future of Learning - Computer Science and Computational Thinking

Technology is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the people who use it. From the printing press to washing machines to robotic lawyers, the only real difference is the rate of change.

There is a real need to tinker, to make, and to create in order for us to make sense of our world.

Coding is also being recognised as an important part of modern learning. In Australia, Coding has become part of the curriculum (although possibly at the cost of history and geography), and the Ministry of Education in NZ has also recently announced plans for digital technologies to become more explicit in the Technology curriculum.

Maker resources:
Wired Magazine
Howtoons
Instructables
DIY App

Coding

Coding has come a long way from the first coding machine, used for sending Morse code.

Coding resources:
CS Unplugged
Hour of Code
Code Academy
Khan Academy - not only courses on coding languages, but also on computational thinking
Google CS First - has theme based clubs so you can learn to code based on your interests
CS4PS and CS4PS
Raspberry Pi
Scratch
Snap - preferred program for computer science as it's more 'pure'
Kodable

CS4PS: Computer science and telescopes

Over the last couple of days I have been immersing myself in CS4PS:Computer Science for Primary Schools - a two-day workshop run by Tracey Henderson and Tim Bell.

The idea that computer science is not about computers was not a new one for me, but it was a timely reminder. With a recent announcement that digital technology is to 'become' part of the NZ Curriculum (I thought it already was!), I imagine that many teachers are thinking: but we don't have enough [insert preferred device here] in our classrooms to do that!

Over the course of this workshop, I learnt quite a bit about teaching CS in an unplugged way, eliminating the need for a device for every student. And even if you only have one computer in your classroom, you could quite easily set up a station for students to cycle through to complete CS activities.

Throughout the workshop, the why questions came up a lot: Why should we teach CS to five year olds? Why should I be spending valuable learning time on CS? Why should we teach it at all? Reflecting on this, I thought about the skills we're trying to equip kids with. According to CareersNZ, the top 10 skills employers look for are:

• communication skills
• customer service skills – in person, on the phone, and online
• ability to work well in a team
• literacy and numeracy skills
• confidence learning about and using computers and technology
• planning and organisational skills
• initiative and a can-do attitude
• problem-solving skills
• good work habits and independence
• health and safety skills

It could be argued that schooling is about more than creating good employees, and many of the things on this list would be on my personal list of must-haves for good citizenship too. The NZ Curriculum lists also has a list of the "capabilities people have, and need to develop, to live and learn today and in the future." These are known as the key competencies. They are:

• Thinking
• Relating to others
• Using language, symbols, and texts
• Managing self
• Participating and contributing

So, how does learning about computer science enhance the development of all these skills? By developing computational thinking. This teaches kids to problem solve: to break up complex problems into smaller, more manageable parts. It also reminds us to focus on the end-user: the person who will be benefitting from the solution we develop.

So, by teaching computer science and computational thinking, we can develop students':

• thinking (and their ability to think things through logically)
• use of language, symbols, and texts 
• confidence learning about and using computers and technology
• planning and organisational skills
• problem-solving skills

And, depending on how we do it, their:

• communication skills
• ability to work well in a team
• ability to relate to others
• ability to self manage
• desire to participate and contribute

This seems like a pretty good hit rate of essential skills!

I'll be writing more on this subject in the coming weeks, to flesh out my ideas around the presentations I attended. These included:

• Teaching binary numbers and computational thinking
• Engaging students using computer 'magic'
• Demonstrating how encryption/secure communication works
• Beebots unplugged
• Debugging (and it's relationship to writing)
• Problem solving using Scratch
• Everyday technology secrets
• Teaching programming concepts within the context of an inquiry unit

If one of these topics is particularly interesting to you, let me know via the comments below and I'll focus on that one first :)

CS50 - So it begins

So, today I started watching the lectures etc. for This Is CS50 2014 via iTunes U. Each week there are problems to work through, and I figured it would be a good idea to put down my thoughts since there's no real accountability other than to myself.

This week's questions:
How do you represent the integer 50 in binary?

• 110010

How many bits must be "flipped" (i.e., changed from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0) in order to capitalise a lowercase a that's represented in ASCII?

• Well uppercase 'A' is 65 in ASCII = 1000001
• Lowercase 'a' is 97 in ASCII     = 1100001
• So only 1 bit must be flipped to change case. 

How do you represent the integer 50 in, oh, "hexidecimal," otherwise known as "base-16"?

• Base 16 would go: | 4096 | 256 | 16 | 1 |
• So you'd need 3x16 =48 PLUS 2x1=2 to make 50
• So it would look like: 0302 (assuming each column made up of 2 digits to represent one state)

Finally, there is a practical task to complete: Your mission is, quite simply, to have fun with Scratch and implement a project of your choice (be it an animation, a game, interactive art, or anything else), subject only to the following requirements:

• Your project must have at least two sprites, at least one of which must resemble something other than a cat.
• Mine uses four: a penguin, a snowflake, a lightning bolt, and a Game Over sign.
• Your project must have at least three scripts total (i.e., not necessarily three per sprite).
• Apparently in total I've used 22 scripts :P Some are repeats though. 
• Your project must use at least one condition, one loop, and one variable.
• Check - I used the if/else condition several times, the forever loop, and the score variable.
• Your project must use at least one sound.
• Check - I used pop, bells, and duck quack 
• Your project should be more complex than most of those demonstrated in lecture (many of which, though instructive, were quite short) but it can be less complex than, say, Pikachu’s Pastry Catch and Ivy’s Hardest Game. As such, your project should probably use a few dozen puzzle pieces overall.
• Although not the most complex of games, I think it's more than what was demonstrated. It's certainly taken me a while to work out! I did look at the scripts of others to see how they worked, but didn't directly copy anything. Much, much fun though :)

You can play my game, Penguin Popper, by clicking on the picture below:

Teaching as Inquiry

We had our second session of learning about teaching as inquiry with Tamara Bell from Core Education today. My takeaway from this is that when starting an inquiry I should think about the specific students in my class, and focus on 1, or 2, or 3 students who have specific needs. This makes sure that my teaching will impact on those students. Students could be selected for remedial or extension work. 

I also loved the questions on how to integrate e-learning tools (note: replace [my target student] with specific student/s names)

• How can I  use a wiki and digital recording apps to support individualised learning for[my target student]?
• How can I improve [my target student]’s writing- using sentence structure and sequencing through Storybird?
• What instructional strategies and e-tools can I use when teaching narrative writing that will  have a positive impact on [my target students]' writing?
• How can I use  a class blog regularly to improve writing for [my target student] and share learning with others (e.g. http://kidblog.org/home/ or http://blogger.com)?
• How can I use Google Docs to encourage collaboration in my class to improve writing?
• I want to find out how I can use eLearning tools (web 2.0) to support [my target students] to communicate their experiences, ideas and information creatively
• How can I use e-tools to improve [my target student]'s reading fluency?  (e.g. Vocaroo)

One of the challenges will be how can I capture the student's voices effectively? Tamara suggested that when I collect student voice information, I ask those kids I want to know what's going on for, not necessarily the whole school. Questions could include:

• What do you like about maths?
• Which way of doing maths do you like the most? (e.g. iPads, written work, using materials, etc.)
• What do you struggle with in maths?

You could collect this data by videoing children's responses. 

Googly Goodness

This week I visited Core Education for one of their Enable courses. The course I did was called  Google Apps as a launching pad - Supporting Modern Learning Pedagogy in your classroom. It was a bit more of a beginner course than I had anticipated, but I still managed to pick up a couple of great tips.

My favourite one was about how to insert a table of contents in a Google document. I've already used it in one of our team meeting minutes documents. We've had the same document for all our meetings this term and it's been a bit hard to find specific information at times. The table of contents helps you skip straight to the section you need. Best of all, as you add new information, you can automatically update the table of contents, too!

Drowning in email

I've recently been on a quest to try and reduce my time spent on emails. I always seem to have about a million of them unread in my inbox! One of the things I've done is review all my subscriptions to see which ones are actually worth keeping. If you subscribe to a list or newsletter, but never read any of the messages from that list, is it really worth staying connected? I've decided it's better for me to subscribe to only a few high-quality lists instead. That way, I know I'm getting messages that can actually help me improve my teaching practice (and why would I bother wasting time on anything that didn't help me?). So far, these are the lists that have made the 'keep' list:

1. Common Sense Media
This non-profit organisation has a huge resource bank for educators as well as parents. It's quickly becoming one of my 'go-to' websites when it comes to cyber safety, emerging technologies, and best practice with IT. Their newsletter always has something interesting (like this link on using Sketch for digital storytelling, with a very handy project outline that ties in BEAUTIFULLY with my current science topic!)

2. Interface Magazine
I love the fact that Interface is a NZ publication focusing on how technologies are being developed and used in NZ classrooms. There's always something to inspire me in their mags, and their newsletters send the best of that straight to my inbox.


It's a pretty small list, I know, but it's still a work in progress.

Auckland Discovery

We didn't even get to see a reflection
of the Sky Tower!
Credit: United Nations Photo
(CC BY-NC-ND)

I have just recently recovered from a huge PD day in Auckland. It involved getting up at a ridiculous time in the morning, hopping a red-eye flight to Auckland, and driving my colleagues around in a hired van all day (my apologies again for all the stalling, but at least I remembered to put the hand-break on before getting out on a slope!). However, the main purpose of our trip was to explore modern learning environments and learn about how others have embraced a more collaborative way of teaching and learning.

We visited two schools in Auckland - the first was a rather new school, purpose built for a collaborative environment. The second was both old and new (they had expanded their school to meet demand) and the older part demonstrated how you could adapt your existing buildings to create a more collaborative environment.

What I got out of it though, was that buildings were just a start. The real magic was happening when teachers changed the way they thought and the way they taught. It made me think of ways I could encourage more collaboration in my classroom RIGHT NOW. One tool that I had already started using last year and plan to use more this year is Google Drive. The Year 8 students I had last year found that once they knew what they were doing, it was usually easier for them to have their documents available on the drive. It meant no more 'forgetting' to take homework to school, or work home to complete. It meant they didn't have to worry about loosing a USB stick.

This year I want to improve the way I encourage the kids to collaborate with each other. My first goal will be to teach them how to share their documents, and give them opportunities to comment on each others' writing. Check in with me later in the term to see how I'm going!