#Fail

#Fail / Leadership / Teaching — No Comments
25
Sep 11

Where ‘Behind the Screens?’

I thought it would be simple, open up my browser, search “Behind the Screen” AND Willetts and I would be able to read more about David Willetts  brave new world for ICT education. Epic #fail. Surely, if we are going to teaching about the use of IT, ICT and Digital technology we are going to use it effectively ourselves?

behind

Instead I found a lot of press coverage and ‘knowing agreement’ that an appropriate education was indeed important for this nation (and all nations) and for the rapidly changing IT industry sector in particular. You only have to briefly scan the number, no spreadsheet skills required, to support change. The take-up of IT qualifications has fallen in the past five years: a staggering 57 per cent decline between 2005 and 2010.

The total value of internet sales by UK non-financial businesses employing 10 or more people in 2008 was £222.9b, up 36.6% on 2007, which shows in economic terms the pace of this change.

A change that many ICT Departments up and down the country have been screaming out for, for quite some time now.

And it did not take long for that most annoying of phrases associated with digital literacy to appear in an article.

Willetts also said that he wants to see 21st century skills in school, and that includes writing programs. Read more: TechEYE

For goodness sake, that statement is itself 11 years out of date! All this in the wake of Google CEO Eric Schmidt criticism in Edinburgh last month? Not if you accept the review has been underway since 2010.

So, to the reason for this post. Do we really need to be teaching children how to program code in school? Learning ICT? Or do we need to be encouraging children to be creative with technology. If one of those pathways is being creative through coding and programming, then provide a pathway to follow with opportunities to extend that interest ‘beyond the curriculum.’ Yet, equally so, it maybe digital media, digital storytelling, digital journalism, animation, digital marketing, game creation and digital _________ (blank). ICT is no longer a broad enough title for learning with and about technology. Nor is it satisfactory to accept that software skills should be taught discretely by an ‘ICT Department,’ but let’s not digress.

Shouldn’t industry be given the opportunity to communicate how best to progress and evolve the curriculum and also take on their share of the responsibility to develop the learner? Why not introduce the industry to the education process, rather than merely delivering the ‘educated’ to the industry, whose skills are by then, quickly going stale? Do we not have a social responsibility to educate the whole person sitting ‘behind the screen’ and not just the academic?

I can not see why a path or qualification framework can not be presented and extended to include industry rather than service industry. A symbiotic model also presents an important decision fork in the road for both the young person (at 16, at 18) and industry, particular important given higher educations recent fees hike.

Which learning environment (industry or Academia) best prepares me, for my future?

Can we afford to let this young person leave our business? Do we wish to support their educations, lead their education or employ them full time?

Finally, I am going to throw back to David Willett’s need for students to be ‘writing programs.’ Can we not inspire them first? Let them explore platforms such as Kodu, Scratch, Alice, Panther, Construct, GameMaker and Quest….. let them design, create and learn to love the possibilities of coding.

Ironically, some of these platforms aim to remove the need to ‘know code’ just at the time when we are about to teach them how to programme? Anyone else see something fundamentally askew here?

Just for reference, lets not exclude our Primary colleagues, some of whom are already leading the way, hat tip to @IanAddison and @chrisleach78) who have the students in their school experiencing coding, in amongst many other digital things.

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#Fail / Behaviour / Challenge / Teaching — No Comments
11
Sep 11

Are Lesson Plans Flawed?

I have been reflecting  a lot this week on lesson planning and design as I am teaching a new subject for the second year in succession. The time required to create NEW resources, and learn NEW knowledge can be exhaustive (although I am somewhat reassured that having “advanced content knowledge” is worth only 4weeks learning, so if I get my act together I should be able to recover this deficient).

This aside, I know I have to move my students on. Here is how I intend to do, my teaching mantra for this years RE classes.

First I aim to start the lessons with a ‘Thunk’ either sourced or based on the topic. Setting a tone for reflecting and investigative thinking.

Second, to clarify and share learning intentions and criteria for success. As much for me, as for the students.

Third, I am aim to openly and actively encourage students to look for opportunities for further and deeper discussion using the ABC question framework of (Answer, Backup or Contest).

Pupils taught to look for things and have discussion or wrote about what they think believe. @richards_james

Forth, I am going to try and write one significant hinge question, to really get to the bottom of whether students know what it is we are discussing and it is at this point my lesson planning has faltered.

If I want to assess and evidence learning midway through the lesson, the lesson has to be responsive right? To be able to adapt in real time to meet students’ learning needs? Agreed? If you are in agreement, how do you then plan for flexibility? I am certainly not planning 2 or even 3 possible second halves to the lesson?

Fifth, I am using Classdojo for feedback, for both classroom behaviour management and rewarding proactive learning behaviours. Its quick, instant and visual.

The final two steps are getting students to assess their own and one another’s learning. Both self-assessment and peer-assessment will focus on the examination structure and learning how to be ‘great’ PSRE exam takers. I believe that this skew is possible given the emphasis of the points.

What is formative assessment_

Still, that leaves me with an unfinished lesson plan. I am going to have to get comfortable with being ‘uncomfortable’ working with incomplete lesson plans.

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#Fail / Games Based Learning — No Comments
10
Aug 11

3DGameLab Quest – Graphic Adventures

I am not sure what the ‘playing’ aspect added in terms of quality of gameplay..

There are positives, its another medium to engage with the character, however that engagement (in these early style games) is moderate and there is no actual game play skill involved. The narration remains the key driver. Here lies a percentage of the design, the puzzles the remain percentage. The super computer (the brain) is kind of let of the hook and I would like to have played the same game in a text only format for comparison.

The accidental death chance was amusing, with the autosave a good example of failure as fertiliser, the scoring system out of / 150 providing a target and progress features as points were scored.

Investigating the game a little further I learnt that I could run around the bad dude by speeding up my character. I gained a few extra points, found a few new characters to talk with, but it did not grab my attention. Having written a little IF, I am impressed by the effort the authors made to second guess, our guesses, but the sarcasm was certainly getting a little annoying. In fact I enjoyed it less than the text based adventures.

Are pictures necessary? I guess not for this game player.

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#Fail / #Success / Games Based Learning / Teaching — No Comments
29
Jul 11

Quest 5 Day 2

questDay 2 started with custom commands and made use of the attributes the tutorials had me create yesterday. Again the tutorials were pretty straightforward although again, there is a need to underline the importance of syntax. Using the attributes and commands, I was able to set responses to a group of attributed objects and equally as important, appropriate responses for all non-attributed objects.

Now for more things to do with objects. Time to bring Bob back to life I guess. So here was my first real interaction with the gamer or player. The tutorial took me through the process of creating an object that has a bespoke purpose. Basically, I was learning how to create ‘an object flag,’ a way of accessing an attribute of an object, in this case Bob. Using the defibrillator to revive and “flag” Bob as alive. Now I can see how this is a crucial feature of Quest and I am sure it is a staple of most adventures. Giving, asking and telling, work in pretty much the same way.

Double ShockNow here was the issue…. I created the defibrillator, and the responses to Bob being revived but I wanted to add a little ‘dark humour.’ I wanted to zap poor old Bob a second time and I expected my players to be as sinister, and I wanted  to be ready…. To add to the difficulty, the outcome was linked to the players ability to question Bob’s about the cause of his horrific heart attack.  This coding conundrum took far too long to solve and I struggled. For me, that is a plus point for Quest, it means students will struggle and a ‘struggle’ is an opportunity for learning, debate, facilitation and ultimately success. It may only be a five step solution but boy was I proud of myself.

If a player now revives Bob and decides to double zap poor old Bob they will be meet with this sarcastic response, but hopefully engaging response,

Hey ease up there electro boy!

From there on in, giving an object and the ask/tell options were pretty straight forward. With the cause of Bob’s heart attack revealed through simply asking Bob what happened…

A cheeseburger, pizza and ice cream pie, smothered in bacon, which I’d washed down with a bucket of coffee and six cans of Red Bull.

Using containers really benefits from the menu tree in Quest 5 as objects can be created and positioned a lot quicker than in INFORM7 for example. Open, closed, lockable, surfaces, transparency,  when to show contents, was all straight forward. Just two points to consider. It is very tempting to fill containers with object, but remember that all objects created need to be consider and implemented properly. Second, consider how the open, closed container might impact on the environment. For example an open door may let in light or sound.

At the end of Day 2 I am confident that I have enough resource to create a very playable game and yet I understand that I am but 10% into project Quest 5.

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#Fail / Teaching — No Comments
28
Jul 11

Expectations

One education input leads to the next, from RSS article, to Slideshare presentation, to practitioner blog.

The technology barrier excuse definitely exists in education but after a long day teaching myself how to write interaction fiction with Quest 5 I am not in the mood for excuses.  Clearly, neither is Chris Betcher,

No child should have to put up with out of date learning experience just because their out of date teacher is "taxiing to the hangar."

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