I’ve been trawling through the archives, and came across the following article. If you missed it the first time around, here’s a chance to read it. If you read it when it was first published, well here’s your chance to enjoy it again!
It’s about flash fiction, and how it can help teach ICT – don’t be put off by the old-fashioned terminology: it all still applies to the new computing curriculum.
I don’t think rules, as commonly formulated, are very useful in the context of Computing lessons. Rules are usually framed in the negative. For example, in a computer lab I went into a few years ago on one of my school visits, there was a poster on the door listing all the things that people shouldn’t do:
Do not leave the computers on.
Do not leave printing next to the computers.
Do not just switch the computers off.
and so on.
There are two main problems with this sort of thing.
I mentioned recently that in his book The Craft of the Classroom)
, Michael Marland provided very useful advice on very practical issues in the classroom, and good routines to ensure a smooth lesson. Routines are good, because pupils know what to expect. They are able to predict what is going to happen, and when. Some pupils, whose home lives are chaotic and unpredictable, may even feel safe because of routines. Here are some routines that I think are useful for Computing lessons.
ITTE held its annual conference recently, and I bought a ticket and went along. As far as the ITTE conference is concerned, I was a newbie, and so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I do recall dragging my carcass to the local station in sweltering heat, mumbling to myself something along the lines of “Please let the trains be cancelled; I’d rather be in the garden.” Well, that proved too much for Transport for London to arrange, and so I made it to the conference.
I don’t know what the opposite of “bumper” is (as in “stupendous, 200 page bumper edition”), but the latest issue of Digital Education is small – but perfectly formed. Here’s what it contains:
It is fashionable these days to avoid the ‘F’ word – by which, of course, I mean “Fail”. This is not confined to the area of teaching Computing, but enough people in this field have written about it to nudge me into writing my thoughts on the matter. So, the FAIL acronym, in case you haven’t come across it, is First Attempt In Learning. The idea of it is that instead of telling kids that they have failed at something, you tell that they have not failed. They may have not succeeded, but that is fine, because it was a First Attempt In Learning. Well, I have always been a believer in telling it how it is, and so for me the FAIL acronym does not benefit kids at all. Quite the opposite in fact. Here are my objections:
How do you decide what to spend money on when it comes to ed tech? Do you have a list of things you’d like to buy, or do you decide on an ad hoc basis when you read review of software and so on? Do you know how you would spend a small amount, like £10, or do you take the view that unless you’re allowed to spend at least £500 you don’t want to know?
I attended the Apps for Good Awards last night. Very inspiring it was too. As always, the young people were very impressive. Whatever question I threw at them, they were able to answer it. But for now at least, I just wanted to repeat something that the co-CEO of Apps for Good, Debbie Forster, said at the end of the evening.
Technology and Learning over in the USA has published a list of its choice of the top ten people in education. The list makes for interesting reading.
Have you noticed how everybody seems to be an expert on education these days? In fact, you only have to pick up a newspaper more or less any day of the week to find some minor celebrity saying something asinine like “Schools should teach kids how to stay safe online” (Really? What a great idea. How come we didn’t think of that?!). I don’t take much notice of these people, but it does annoy me when they somehow get on to conference programmes.
Just in case you thought the difficulties of assessing pupils’ attainment in Information Technology are a new thing, and how terrible Levels were (are?), I thought you might like to read a report dating from 1995.
Why do some school and local authority initiatives, not to mention government initiatives, fail, especially when they concern education technology. In my experience, the cause can usually be found in one or more of the following. The next time you read about a 1:1 project turning into a nightmare, or a fantastic opportunity being wasted, it is almost certainly going to be because of one or some of the following
I’ve been trawling through the archives again (I don’t get out much). The following appeared in the very first edition of my newsletter, which was originally called Computers in Classrooms (but is now called Digital Education), on 3rd April 2000:
I enjoy a good keynote, especially if it “delivers”. To my mind, a keynote should be informative, inspirational and entertaining. All too often, however, keynotes by so-called “visionary” speakers leave me feeling both uninspired and uninformed. I am left with having been entertained, which is all very well, but unless it’s an after-dinner speech I’m also left feeling cheated. So these days, where there is a choice between attending a celebrity speaker’s talk or that of an “ordinary” teacher who is doing great stuff in his or her classroom, I will almost always choose the latter. In fact, I have developed a kind of rubric that I follow when deciding whether or not to attend a celebrity presentation. It consists of a number of questions, which I’ve written up below. Feel free to use them if you think they are useful. Some of these questions cannot be answered until you have attended a talk given by the person in question. But you will know for next time.
In this, the last of a three-part series on girls and women in computing, PhD student and Further Education lecturer Amanda Wilson describes how an early interest in computing followed by picking up everything she could while working led to a dream job.
In this, the second of a three-part series about girls and women in Computing, school student Ellie Gregson suggests why girls tend not to choose STEM subjects.
Young people love to use technology. In school, we jump at the opportunity to use the iPads for research, or to use laptops for typing up essays or creating PowerPoints in class. In my school, when an iPad trolley is dragged into the classroom at the start of a lesson, there is always a race between the students to the front of the classroom, desperate not to have to share it with others, or be stuck with a tablet with a 10% battery life remaining.
This is the first of three articles about girls and women in Computing.
On March 8th it was International Women's Day.
Ada Lovelace died young, at the age of 36, and Charles Babbage never built his Analytical Engine. Had Lovelace lived, and had Babbage actually built his invention, the computer would have been invented a hundred years before it was.
Isn't that an astonishing thought?!
Have you ever studied Computer Science? If not, teacher Roger Davies, who teaches at Queen Elizabeth School, Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria urges you to read a wonderful new book.
(c) Terry Freedman All Rights Reserved