Sep

27

Open Source Projects as Communities of Practice

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It was a great pleasure to attend last Tuesday’s Mirandamod to hear Etienne Wenger discussing communities of practice (CoP), with particular relation to education, both in schools and, particularly, in relation to teachers’ continuing professional development. I’m sure that the CoP approach to CPD is both more fulfilling for the individual and more effective for the profession than the traditional training model of courses and powerpoints that we see so much of: my own professional development has owed far more to colleagues in the various staff rooms, communities and networks with which I’ve been associated, not least MirandaNet, SchoolForge and Naace, than the training courses I’ve occasionally been sent on; I doubt my experience is that unusual.

Mirandamods are a particular style of unconference, bringing something of the reflection of an academic seminar to the participatory, micropresentation format of a teachmeet, and thus I took my turn presenting, taking the above title as my theme. Read more

Sep

20

Firefox is my PLE

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firefoxMoving between Windows computers in my new office and teaching rooms, my Ubuntu netbook and my MacBook Pro, I find myself relying more and more on web-based tools, particularly google mail, calendar and docs. I also find myself valuing ever more highly Mozilla Firefox’s rich armoury of extensions, which are rapidly transforming the humble web-browser into my portable desktop and, in effect, my personal learning environment. Below are a few of the extensions I’ve discovered, but I’d be very interested to hear about extensions you use yourself, and any you use with pupils. Read more

Sep

18

TES on 10,000 new undergraduate places in Stem subjects

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An article in today’s TES about ways in which schools might encourage more pupils to take up places in science, technology, engineering and maths, including comments from me and others involved with Computing at School:

“With an extra 10,000 undergraduate places in ‘Stem’ subjects, how can teachers encourage sixth formers to take the technical route into higher education? Hannah Frankel reports

So you thought the dot-com bust in 2001 spelt the end of the computing boom? Well, that’s not what the Government thinks. Despite the chronic shortage of university places this autumn, it recently announced 10,000 extra undergraduate places for the so-called “Stem” subjects: science, technology, engineering and maths.”

Read more on the TES website

Sep

17

Meaningful Learning and ICT

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Some notes written as introductory material to this year’s primary PGCE course

What is meaningful learning? It is learning with a purpose, learning which allows those who engage in it to attach more meaning to the world around them, learning in which things make more sense. Jonassen’s exploration of this area (2007) argues that meaningful learning is characterized by its being: active, constructive, intentional, authentic and cooperative. It is worthwhile thinking about each of these aspects to consider how ICT might make learning more meaningful. Read more

Sep

11

Michael Kölling on Greenfoot

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Originally published at http://opensourceschools.org.uk/michael-k-lling-greenfoot.html

It’s great to see Open Source Schools community member Michael Kölling’s new book, an Introduction to Programming with Greenfoot published.

Greenfoot is one of the new wave of graphical programming environments written with learners in mind. Like Scratch, Alice and E-Toys, it’s open source software, and as with these other examples, it’s a toolkit which lets learners start writing code for themselves, taking control of the computer and learning through problem solving and experiment, providing a powerful way of looking at the world. However, where Scratch, Alice and E-Toys all nod in the direction of the historically significant (and still used) Logo programming language, Greenfoot supports Java, with its users learning standard object-oriented programming in Java, admittedly within a development environment that makes working with interaction and graphics very easy. As Michael puts it in his introduction, “While Greenfoot is an educational environment, Java is not a toy language”. Read more