I’ve just started another 366 photos project and I’ve also got a “366 days of origami” calendar. In addition, Alan Levine and Jim Groom are about to launch a “Daily Create” project. I think it’s in testing (there’s a hint about it in Thinking in Photos on the CogDogBlog). In anticipation, here’s a video I made of one of my dad’s oldest and worse jokes:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJzxa8MaSLc]If I manage to keep all these extra curricula balls in the air it should be a busy year!
Update
I now have a Tumblr blog to showcase these 366 things at 366 Crispy Things.
The Daily Create assignments are part of the about-to-be launched Digital Story Telling open course DS106.
As it’s Friday, and it’s lunchtime, more Google fun – here’s one i used to like: confidential “internal use only” filetype:pdf site:ac.uk
- mik's blog – Thoughts on Programming Education
Last October Aleks Krotoski, presenter of of The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast, chaired a series of special “Tech City” talks. The first of these was on Skills and Education (Audio recording here) and the panelists, which included David Willets, all criticised to current Schools ICT Curriculum by stating that it didn’t actually include any coding. This issue has been raised recently by many commentators but was highlighted by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s criticism of British Education at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, and the fact that it was the “Google View” perhaps gave it more prominence than it would otherwise have had.
Well, perhaps by coincidence, there are now two free online initiatives that are trying to change this. The first that I came across was the Joy of Code — an online tutorial from Michael Kölling of the University of Kent at Canterbury that is using Greenfoot and Java and is aimed at people who:
Want to find out how to write a computer game; [are] Interested in learning programming; Curious about object-oriented programming and Java; Heard about Greenfoot, but don’t really know what it is [or are] Teaching programming to others.
The course was announced on January 1st and there have already been 7 episodes!
The second is a sort of online correspondance course from US-based Code Academy called Code Year. You just need to go to the site and leave your email address. The course will start on 9th January. I suspect it will use JavaScript but I could be wrong.
As a teacher of coding and developer of code throughout my career, I shall be watching both with interest and playing along. And if you want to learn to code, why not join me?
An interesting experiment in a development tool for teaching Java programming. Aimed at Pre-University students and teachers it is similar in to Squeak and Logo in that it aims to “grab” interest by geting kids to program game-like simulations. Still, it’s Java under the Skin which makes it more immediately transferrable to Further and Higher Education where Java is commonly used as a first language in computing and engineering courses. The lead developer has just started an on-line open tutorial which can be found at http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/mik/category/joy-of-code/. From the ‘About’ page: “Greenfoot teaches object orientation with Java. Create ‘actors’ which live in ‘worlds’ to build games, simulations, and other graphical programs. “Greenfoot is visual and interactive. Visualisation and interaction tools are built into the environment. “The actors are programmed in standard textual Java code, providing a combination of programming experience in a traditional text-based language with visual execution.”
I will be following this with interest: “Want to find out how to write a computer game? Interested in learning programming? Curious about object-oriented programming and Java? Heard about Greenfoot, but don’t really know what it is? Teaching programming to others?” Not because I need to lean Java, but because coding has dropped out of favour in ICT at schools and several people have recently asked for it to be added back.
Definitive reference to the JavaScript language. Bookmark so you have somewhere to lookup the properties and methods of the JavaScript objects you are working with. Part of the Mozilla Developer Network, which is a useful resource in itself. The “learning” resources are worth a look.
A site which tests and reports your browser’s support for new and forthcoming Html5, Css3 and JavaScript APIs and presenting the results in a simple grid. Where a feature is missing, haz.io links to a fallback resource.
“Public repo for the latest HTML5 JavaScript shim for IE to recognise and style the HTML5 elements. ” Small picce of JavavScript that assigns new HTML5 elements to DOM for older IE browsers. Allows them to be displayed and styled.
Wow! You have got to try Doceri Remote for the iPad and Doceri Desktop for the PC/Mac. This app has one feature that I have not found on any other desktop remote. It allows you to annotate on anything. Basically, your iPad, PC/Mac and Projector becomes your digital smart board. There is no need to pay for expensive and bulky smart board systems. Nor any of the wireless pen based whiteboards. Doceri is all you need. Doceri gives you the freedom to teach from anywhere in the classroom. You can annotate, open and close programs, surf the web, play flash video, control and annotate on your power points wirelessly from your iPad. It even allows you to record your annotations and play them back. For more information please visit Doceri.
An easy to use, powerful, and flexible framework for building prototypes and production code on any kind of device. As heard on The Changelog http://bit.ly/vxND7J.
the point about coursera is the enormous publicity value...i think the report from the previous edcmooc said that most participants had heard about the course via coursera
Interesting question Chris. You might find one of the readings from next week useful as one perspective on this : Stewart, B., 2013. Massiveness + Openness = New Literacies of Participation? Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 9(2). http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/stewart_bonnie_0613.htm There are some advantages to having a centralised space, but we also wanted to challenge that idea and show what other useful and interesting pedagogies might be able to take place on the open web. Of course 'open' is a contestable term. One might argue that the Coursera platform is less 'open' that other spaces, but aspects of the 'public' web also have constraints and limitations. I take the view that we are always compromised in the digital. The themes and topics of the EDCMOOC are also related directly to the web, so it seems appropriate to think about these issues while working and being 'in' spaces that reflect the distributed and disruptive nature of the digital, rather than the enclosed safety of the classroom.
I can see that the coursera branding might have this affect and it seems that last time around 60% of the students it was their first MOOC (this time it's not the case maybe - there appear to be lots serial MOOCers at least in Twitter). But once you've found the twitter hashtag and the resources list what's left for coursera to do? The conversations in the bulletin boards were too intellectual for me (and this isn't my first MOOC) so I left coursera almost immediately when I realised that other more accessible conversations were happening in the social networks.
What are the advantages of a centralized space? Cousera and its ilk seem to assume that it's the model to go for but the original distributed MOOCs promoted a more distributed approach. It's interesting that you've decided to do both. Perhaps coursera is needed only for the certification at the end of the process but monitoring what's happening must be a challenge when yo don't have control of the space that it's happening in.
sure but no everyone is talking like that. Im not.check out my blog if you want the proof. http://elearningmoocedinburgh.wordpress.com/ I even actually completed the course in january but i did hardly any reading
I think the publicity value, as expressed below is definitely part of the reason. The ‘xMOOCs’ have attracted many more participants than the original ‘cMOOCs’. As the Stewart paper argues, a positive take on this would be to acknowledge that, at the very least, more exposure to online learning (and opportunities for engaging in digital literacy practices) must be a good thing. Part of our interesting in working with Coursera is to be critical of MOOCs, from an inside position. By critical, of course, I don’t mean negative. I mean that we can actively engage in both centralised AND distributed course spaces in order to get a sense of what works and what doesn’t. I don’t claim to know what MOOC pedagogy is, but being involved in teaching one might help me work towards that. I think the certification element is interesting, and we are certainly getting the sense that this is valued by a lot of students. However, there is also a lot of interest in centralised teaching, or ‘instruction’, and this is something that a centralised platform would seem to incorporate more readily.
Thought provoking blog post from David White. Some interesting ideas that have come out of interviews related to his Digital Residents and Natives and Open Edducational Resources research, viz the “emergency collaboration” 24 hours from coursework submission (I’m sure that goes on a lot in Swansea) and Google> Wikipedia> References which is a popular technique with students but is kept hidden because of the overt discouragement of academics for Google and Wikipedia as valid academic research tools. I’ve personally never had a problem with either G or W in my own learning. Am I prejudiced against them in my students’ learning?
“This study investigated the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) use on teaching and learning. To achieve this, the project team reviewed current research in the area; surveyed, interviewed and ran workshops with suitable participants to collect data; and produced an accessible report on the study findings. The report considered the use of OER from both an individual and institutional perspective looking at the benefits OER can offer each and identifying the pedagogic, attitudinal, logistical and strategic factors conducive to uptake and sustained use of OER, as well as the associated issues and challenges.” Video, “accessible” report and full report available. Cited on Paul’s e-Learning Resources https://sites.google.com/site/technologyenhancedlearning/home/the-resources/open-educational-resources-oer
