@Ideas_Factory The blog of Julian S. Wood

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Welcome to Computing Corner (renamed in light of new English National Curriculum) this is a regular column about computing and coding in the classroom. Written by Dan Aldred (@Dan_Aldred) who is well worth a follow on Twitter. Dan’s article is about Raspberry Pi V’s iPad.

Last week every teacher at work was given an iPad 2. Stylish design, slick operating system and a web-browsing experience that rivals everything else. But, what has the iPad taught us, what have we learnt? Ironically last week my forth Raspberry Pi also arrived. What is the relevance and role of these two very different devices?

Software developers and companies have simplified operations and procedures for the masses. They have shortened the process time for animating and video editing to minutes as oppose to hours. This has allowed more students and teachers to access the benefits of these and other media as teaching tools. However, has it come with a dumbing down of our understanding of how it works? Taking for granted that a device “just does it”.

Once students stop asking why and how and we dilute their enquiring minds, then they stop discovering, learning and developing. How can we transition forward if we don’t know where we have come from?Or is progression destined to become the digitisation and digital form of everything analogue? I used to write a letter, I now send an email, I listened to a record now I listen to an MP3, I used to buy a book and read it, I now download it and store it on my device. (Not true, I still buy books)

Computation forces you to question, think and understand concepts, too many students take it for granted that something happens and that is it.Can you imagine a time when so many humans don’t know how stuff works that we begin to believe it is magic?Imagine taking a laptop, charger and digital camera back to 1950s. Would it be viewed as technology or magic?Or would it be so advanced for the time that it would completely pass people by.

Considering the analogy with magic is relevant. Magic tricks are illusions, tricks and skills that engage, until you understand how it works and then the engagement comes from impressing and fooling others. I often get my A level computing students to learn one magic trick and share it with the class. It requires the skills of learning how it works and also perfecting the illusion of the trick. This is the subtle balance between trick and technique, ICT and Computing, content consumption and content creation.

Maybe there is a fear that by understanding how technology works it takes away its engagement and makes it mundane?The iPad operating system looks great and is stylish. This is its strength, it makes things very engaging. However, if you were presented with the coding behind the software would I still be in awe? (Would you want to change the coding to see resultant change on the display?)

With reference to learning and the iPad, students ask me “do you know how to change the brightness?, can you install this app?, have you seen this video?, I’ll make a podcast, I can use this app to mind map my ideas”. Fundamentally, in this process students are uninterested in the understanding of how the programs, interfaces and software are developed and created.

In stark contrast the Raspberry Pi forces you down a road of learning – students ask me “how do I connect to the Internet because the Pi does not have Google, well Google is not the internet, It is a search engine, you need a browser, what is a browser..?”. One of my students, with an enquiring mind was given a Pi for their birthday. They are a huge Minecraft fan and wanted to be able to create their own server to host games, (basically because they keep getting killed and raided!) The Raspberry Pi is a powerful vehicle where a student no longer plays games and consumes content. Now they are learning how to create and solve problems. This 11 year old setting up his own serving, asking me about IP addresses and DHCP is learning so much more than the student downloading the latest app. Students MUST develop the independence of an enquiring mind, understanding and overall question how things work.

Therefore, use the appropriate tools and devices to consume content and the appropriate tools to create it, but overall, it has to be engaging.

Dan’s new website has some brilliant ‘How to’ programming guides http://itecdigital.weebly.com/

Dan Aldred is a teacher of Computing and Head of IT. He is also a member of the school extended leadership team and teacher learning group.  He’s interested in how technology and software move learning forward.

So as promised (a while ago) my school’s journey from a traditional ICT suite of rows of computers to a ‘Discovery Centre’ fit for the 21st century. Taking a cue from my 5 year vision for ICT (unbelievably a year to the day of posting on here)

Here’s a picture of the original ICT suite, complete with rows of desktop computers and an obligatory interactive whiteboard at the front. The senior management team felt that the suite didn’t properly represent the school’s creative ethos, didn’t reflect our vision of  learning and wasn’t capable of delivering the future curriculum needs of our pupils.

So we started gathering ideas from pupils about what ‘future learning’ might look like and what they needed to make it happen. We asked staff about what they thought was needed to teach a future curriculum and did a lot of research! Most of the ideas pointed to a place that combined research, books, science, technology and computing. A place where several activities could happen at once-a science experiment, building a robot, finding out about asteroids or just reading a book. A ‘movable’ place where everything could be easily moved-technology, furniture and resources. A place large enough to teach a whole class, comfortable enough to learn with a small group and snug enough to learn in private.

So we came up with our ‘Discovery Centre’ a multi-curricular, multi-discipline, multi-technological headquarters. So what tech do we have?Two multi-touch screen TV’s, two multi-touch interactive whiteboards, a laptop trolley, WiFi and the obligatory iPads. Our school library is based in the centre, so are our Science resources.We have ‘zoned’ the room into five areas-Experiment and Investigate, Research and Development, Explore and Explanation, Read and Relaxation, and Wet Zone. This doesn’t limit the learning that takes place in these ‘zones’ merely highlights what resources are available there.

We even have a secret reading den!

Wybourn Discovery Centre on PhotoPeach

Here’s a plan to see exactly what it looks like.

Yes it’s quite a transformation and yes it did cost a great deal of money (30,000 English Pounds!) and yes it really is the same room as the top photograph!I am really pleased with the results and the pupils love it too, already we have had some outstanding teaching and learning using the Discovery Centre. I can’t help feeling that in few years time it’ll all seem ‘old hat’! What do you think?

This video by Melinda Kraft about teaching in the 21st Century inspired me.

Welcome to Computing Corner (renamed in light of new English National Curriculum) this is a regular column about computing and coding in the classroom. Written by Dan Aldred (@Dan_Aldred) who is well worth a follow on Twitter. Dan’s article is about his students use of programming to work with triangular numbers.

Charles Babbage or ‘Cabbage’ (as many of my students refer to him), spent a considerable amount of his time calculating all sorts of numerical values. This included triangular numbers. He was fascinated with statistics and used information and data to make predictions, calculations and decisions surrounding what might happen. Babbage was so obsessed with this, that he created an engine that would allow him to input a number; the machine would process it and then produce an output. He called it the ‘Difference Engine’. This was the beginning of computation even though the machine was only a theoretical model with smaller working example models. A complete working version was never built, but Babbage’s thinking was way ahead of his time.

Babbage spent numerous pain staking years calculating and recording these numbers in books and selling them to engineers, accountants and scientists. What is incredible is that 200 years later, in the present day we can code a simple program that will calculate any number of triangular numbers that you so desire.

I asked my students to think about triangular numbers and how they could work them out, we come up various formulas,

For example to calculate the 10^thtriangular number, (where zero is the first triangular number)

((The position of the triangular number minus 1)multiplied by 0.5)) multiplied by the position of the triangular number

((n-1)*0.5))*n

Next step was to create a program to test the formulas, using Python,

This was a great exercise to introduce and use the ‘definition’ feature. A definition allows you to create a set of steps or procedures that are called by a single name, for example the formula to calculate the triangular number,

deftriangle_value(n):

"Print the Triangular numbers for a given list"

tn1 = (n-1)*0.5

tnf = tn1*n

printtnf

Then the user can call the definition by using the name of it, triangle_ value(insert a number of your choice). It saves time having to type out the formula for every single number that you enter.

The program can then be adapted to add in a pause and use a while statement to count down the triangular numbers from say, 10 to 0.

import time

deftriangle_value(n):

"Print the Triangular numbers for a given list"

while n > 0:

tn1 = (n-1)*0.5

tnf = tn1*n

print "The", n, "Triangular number is", tnf

n = n – 1

time.sleep(1)

x = input("Enter how many triangular numbers you want to find?")

triangle_value(x)

I hope this has inspired you to try some of this programming at home.

Dan’s new website has some brilliant ‘How to’ programming guides http://itecdigital.weebly.com/

Dan Aldred is a teacher of Computing and Head of IT. He is also a member of the school extended leadership team and teacher learning group.  He’s interested in how technology and software move learning forward.

It’s not often a teacher gets to realise their ideas but this weekend I may well get to do it.

I’m heading off to Startup Weekend Education in London.

It’s a cross between Dragons Den & Why Don’t You. The weekend starts with people pitching tech ideas that they feel would benefit education. Ideas are voted on,teams formed & then the rest of the weekend is spent turning the vision into reality.

It really is a busman’s holiday with most days lasting way into the night, in an attempt to complete the projects in time for the Sunday close.

Along the way you have plenty of help from ‘coaches’ with a variety of backgrounds-Oliver Quinlan being one of a list of big names.

On Sunday each of the projects is judged, this years panel contains the brilliant Dawn Hallybone
The winner is given financial & business advice to turn the idea into reality.

Last years winner was the incredibly successful Night Zookeeper Paul Hudson one of the creators of NZK is one of this years organisers.

Last year I contributed some ideas from afar but they couldn’t be taken on board as I wasn’t there but this year the organising committee have sponsored some teachers from the north to attend.

I am being sponsored by MediaTaylor (Richard Taylor). He has invested in Night Zookeeper and has helped with the org of the event. Who has paid for my ticket & my accommodation.
If it wasn’t for the sponsorship I wouldn’t be able to attend-let’s hope I can payback their generosity with a wining idea.

Look out for more Startup Weekend posts over the next few days.

Welcome to Coding Corner-this is a regular column about computing and coding in the classroom. Written by Dan Aldred (@Dan_Aldred) who is well worth a follow on Twitter. Dan’s article is about his students use of programming to write thank-you letters.

Christmas is a time that you may, if are lucky enough receive some gifts. Then comes that time when you should politely write and thank the givers of the gifts. How about if you could write a program to create these letters?

This will be the basis of my first lesson back with the students.

First I created some variables,

yn = this is your name

r = this is the person that you are writing to

p = this is the name of the person that gave you the present

t = [a random list of various nice comments for the recipient]

Next create the letter using the print function.

I have also used the new line feature \n to place the sentences on new lines.

Extensions activities would be for students to code the letter to print out or write to another file, maybe allow the user to create all the letters at once.

Example code

#Christmas thank you letters

import random

yn = raw_input("Please enter your name ")

r = raw_input("please enter the name of the person you are writing to " )

p = raw_input("please enter the present that you were given ")

t =['It really was a lovely present',

'I am so touched that you purchased the present',

'How very lucky I am I feel warm inside',

'It was such an amazing present']

print ‘\nDear’, r

print ‘\nI am writing to say thank you for my Christmas present, I have always wanted a’, p

print "\nIt was very kind of you"

print(random.choice(t))

print "\nMany thanks again"

print "\nFrom", yn

Why not try some of this programming at home?

Dan’s new website has some brilliant ‘How to’ programming guides http://itecdigital.weebly.com/

Dan Aldred is a teacher of Computing and Head of IT. He is also a member of the school extended leadership team and teacher learning group.  He’s interested in how technology and software move learning forward.

This is way too late but just haven’t had the time to post it before now!

 

So I completely ‘Magpied’ this great idea from the On an E-Journey with Generation Y Blog by Anne Mirtschin  a teacher at Hawkesdale P12 College, in country western Victoria, Australia. Follow Anne on Twitter as @murcha

I wanted the advent calendar to be interactive and on the internet but Anne’s post didn’t really go that far.

So I dug around the internet and found out that you can now upload PowerPoint onto Microsoft Sky Drive and then create an embed code which will let you ‘play’ the powerpoint as it was meant too! ’How to’ article here.

I think you’ll agree they look great! Especially when you consider Robson and Daniel in my Y3 (7 year olds) class created it independently.

You can also cheat by using Advent templates like this useful article but I think it takes the fun out of the creation.

I’ve been using Bit.ly for sometime now. It’s a URL shortening website and it’s a very useful service. Not only is it excellent at shortening long web addresses-very handy for younger pupils but it also curates several links into ‘bundles’.

You don’t have to sign up for the Bit.ly service but you do get access to customisation and bundles if you do.

I would recommend you sign up with Twitter as there are great benefits to linking your Twitter account. 1.It curates links you tweet that are shortened (most are customised through Bit.ly )-whether you use Bit.ly or not. 2. You get access to a host of analytics that give you information about how many clicks certain links received.

I discovered a Pinterest board on iPad lessons, I wanted to share the link with colleagues. As the link- http://pinterest.com/techchef4u/ipad-lessons/ was rather long and cumbersome, I pasted it into Bit.ly here-

Once pasted into this section Bit.ly shortens the link and shows this window-

As you can see it has shortned the link to j.mp/UPABU7 Much more manageable to type but not very ‘child-friendly’. This is where the unique customisation comes in to it’s own.

By pressing this Customize text this next box appears.

Now just type in any word that is associated with the link and as long as no on else has used that combination, it will be customised. I use capital letters to find unique customisation words but be warned, the customised link is case sensitive and will only work with a reminder of any Caps changes. So the long link http://pinterest.com/techchef4u/ipad-lessons/ got shortened to j.mp/UPABU7  and customised to j.mp/ipadpins. My colleagues and students find the customised addresses much easier to remember and don’t often need to write them down.

The real beauty of Bit.ly is that you can collate links together and share loads of links with one URL.

Just click the ‘Add to Bundle’ text and select an existing Bundle or create a new one. As you can see I added the iPad Lesson Pinterest board to my Ipads in Education section.

I use the ‘Bundles’ a great deal, whether it’s sharing a load of links from one of my Teachmeet presentations or getting pupils to use certain websites for research.

Here’s one I did for my pupils when I wanted them to research ‘The History of Sheffield’, no wasted learning searching for the right website.

Bit.ly also gives users the opportunity to create their own customised ‘Domain’ linked to your Bit.ly account. As you can see in my own account I have created the domain idsfac.me custom domain name. Not only does it look cool but the web address links to all my ‘Public’ Bit.ly shortened links.

There are a lot more features of Bit.ly that I haven’t written about that will be of use-like the analytics and data. I’m sure if you’re interested you’ll find out about those yourself.

In summary, Bit.ly is extremely useful in Education. It’s great for Pupils, teachers and CPD-with Bit.ly you really do shrink the web!

Welcome to Coding Corner-this is a regular column about computing and coding in the classroom. Written by Dan Aldred (@Dan_Aldred) who is well worth a follow on Twitter and also has a great new website that has some brilliant ‘How to’ programming guides www.tecoed.co.uk. Dan’s article is about using programming Robots to dance in the Gangnam style!

Last week I started coding with Yr7 students. We have spent some time looking at Binary and Hexadecimal calculations and getting an understanding that a computer basically processes instructions. We looked at the Turing test and they had fun trying to work out whether www.cleverbot.com is areal robot/program or a real person.

Then we moved onto coding. We have started with RoboMind, a free open source program that allows students to program a robot to move, see and grab objects around a variety of maps. The first lesson was a basic introduction to the commands and practicing each movement to perform and solve certain tasks. These included moving objects out of the way, escaping a maze and drawing a smiley face and various polygons.

At the end of the lesson I asked the students what they had learnt about coding, (I used Socrativean excellent whole class feedback tool.)

I then asked the students what they wanted to or needed to learn next. The students had already figured out that writing the command forward (1), forward(1), forward(1),forward(1), could be simplified into forward(4), but still too much typing involved. I was surprised how many students had already identified the concept of looping and making the program easier to code.

(What I need to learn next lesson, great response from some students who said they wanted to learn how to create loopholes!)

Last lesson we looked at the concept of looping. The students were introduced to the repeat function and the various required syntax. Some students struggled with when to use the brackets (), and when to use these {}. After explaining that instructions go into the {} and the number of times you want something to happen goes into the () it soon clicked. The finale of the lesson required the students to combine all their new coding skills to create and program a dance routine to enable the robot to move to Gangnam Style! (At this point the Head of Year 7 walked in!)

Again, at the end of the lesson I asked the students what they thought about learning to code,

What do you think about programming so far?

Next week’s lesson we are introducing if and if else statements. They are a secret mission team that have to program the robot to drive automatically along a ‘safe’ white path. Then they will create their own maps and challenge their friends.

Dan Aldred is a teacher of Computing and Head of IT. He is also a member of the school extended leadership team and teacher learning group.  He’s interested in how technology and software move learning forward.

I was lucky enough to get voted for last year and thought I would put forward my nominations this year.

• Best individual blog

@DeputyMitchell The brilliant Blogging philanthropist David Mitchell-has migrated to deputymitchell.com but his fantatsic AskSir blog was an inspiration.

• Best ed tech / resource sharing blog

@SimonHaughton Brilliant sharing blog (simonhaughton.co.uk) full of tips and help for teachers.

• Best teacher blog

@ianaddison Great blog sharing resources and class experiences.

• Most influential blog post

Kevin Mclaughlin’s @KVNMCL Great post about innovative learning requiring innovative spaces was brilliant.

• Best individual tweeter

Far too many to mention-could not possibly single out one tweeter, so I nominate the whole of my PLN!

• Best twitter hashtag

#UKedchat

• Best free web tool

Class Dojo-fantastic class reward system that now links to a great App.

• Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast

@redgierob Rob Smith’s brillaint the literacy shed  a great store of films for learning.

• Best educational wiki

Martin Burrett’s @ICTmagic amazing resource sharing  ICT Magic wiki .

• Best educational use of a social network

My (@ideas_Factory) continued interaction,collaboration, sharing and discovery with my Twitter PLN .

• Best mobile app

Flipboard-makes following thousands of educational blogs and sharing content a whole lot easier!

• Lifetime achievement

I nominate @TimRylands  His To badly go… website is amazing.  He inspired and continues to inspire thousands of teachers and students-he definitely deserves this.

Welcome to Coding Corner-this is a regular column about computing and coding in the classroom. Written by Dan Aldred (@Dan_Aldred) who is well worth a follow on Twitter and also has a great new website that has some brilliant ‘How to’ programming guides http://itecdigital.weebly.com/. Dan’s article is about using programming to solve the Rubiks cube!

Before the last half term break I brought my Rubric’s Cube into school. I left it on my desk and instantly several students wanted to play with it. Interestingly, they all knew what one was and knew what the objective of the Cube was.

However, they did not know how to solve it

The next day one student had been out and bought one, at that time the German exchanged students had also arrived and to the amazement of the class, one of them solved the Cube. Other students began to show the student how to complete it. The students discovered the key to this was the use of algorithms.

And if you really want scary try this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOilnrGrKsY&feature=related

Now try writing a computer program to solve the Cube for you!

http://www.wrongway.org/cube/solve.html

It took me about two weeks to Master the Cube, now I am looking at single handed solving!

Dan Aldred is a teacher of Computing and Head of IT. He is also a member of the school extended leadership team and teacher learning group.  He’s interested in how technology and software move learning forward.