Picademy@Google

During the week an exciting email from the lovely people at Raspberry Pi dropped into my inbox inviting me to attend one of the upcoming Leeds Picademies.  I applied for a place a couple of weeks ago and to be honest hadn't been particularly hopeful of receiving a place.  I figured that they were really looking for teachers rather than HLTAs but was over the moon that I was wrong!

Picademy is two days of hacking, programming and making using the Raspberry Pi and its various add ons.  I will get to work with lots of other teachers to create our own projects, learn about how to use the Raspberry Pi to teach computing and no doubt will go home with my mind brimming with ideas.

Here is a video showing a project created at a previous Picademy.  A singing and dancing Michael Jackson tribute glove.

 

 

It looks like it's going to be tremendous fun and I can't wait.  Oh and when I finish I get to use the official title of 'Raspberry Pi Certified Educator'!

Wuzzit Trouble - A Math App with a Difference

As I mentioned in a previous post about educational apps, far too many apps that are published and used in the classroom consist of 'drill and skill' games designed purely for practising skills that have already been learned.  It is hard to see the educational value in these beyond mastery of times tables or quick visualisation of angles for example.  Sure it's useful to be able to do things quickly but the real question is whether they actually add anything other than bells and whistles to traditional tabletop games often played in class.  Do the children really have any more motivation or enjoyment because of the brightly coloured, noisy and interactive nature of the games or are they really just slightly less boring?

Wuzzit Trouble is different.  Designed by Brainquake games (whose co-founder is Stanford mathematician Dr. Keith Devlin), the app goes beyond 'drill and skill' to become an instrument upon which to learn maths.  Instead of simply practising known skills, Wuzzit Trouble teaches problem solving, mathematical concepts and critical thinking all seamlessly interwoven with enjoyable and engaging gameplay that's hard to put down.  I have tried many times to engage my ten year old son with educational apps and they just don't do it for him.  Yes, he would rather practise his times tables on an app than on paper but I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that he enjoys it.  Wuzzit Trouble, on the other hand, had him hooked from the first level, begging to work out just one more puzzle.  He even exclaimed "It's educational, I know it's educational and I don't care!".  Recommendations don't come much better than that.

Should Children be Allowed to Use Google During Their Exams?

Professor Eric Mazur, the Dean of Applied Physics at Harvard University, certainly thinks so.  He has argued that simply asking children to memorise facts is of little use in the real world where children can use Google to search for information in seconds.  He suggests that less time should be spent teaching children facts and more time invested in gaining a deeper understanding of subjects.

Using iMotion to Create a Stop Motion Animation

 

 

iMotion is a time lapse and stop motion animation app available for free in the app store.  Using its companion app (iMotion remote) you are able to use a second tablet or phone as a remote viewer to capture frames without the worry of your capture device moving out of place or suffering from shutter shake as you touch it.

 

Below is a short animation made by Emma and me using iMotion without the remote app.  We are quite pleased with it but I can see that the use of the remote would have helped reduce the amount of movement in the animation.  I had tried to source a clamp for the iPad but unfortunately couldn't find one!

 

 

80,000 'educational' apps on the AppStore.

This is a great article backed by pedagogy offering four ways to help decide whether an app has educational value or not.

http://qz.com/399360/four-ways-to-tell-if-an-educational-app-will-actually-help-your-child-learn/

Using Excel to Teach Computational Thinking

I was recently asked to teach a unit on Excel in uppper KS2 and was initially quite concerned as to how this would fit within the new computing curriculum which is weighted heavily towards learning to code and understanding logic and algorithms.

Naace - Computing in the national curriculum A guide for primary teachers

MinecraftEdu Day - Puzzling Pyramids and Terrible Temples

A few months ago the boss asked me if I would run a 'Gifted and Talented' Minecraft day for our family of schools and I jumped at the chance.  The big day finally arrived on Friday when myself and four year 5/6 children were joined by 14 very excited children from three local schools accompanied by their teachers.

I've been a huge Minecraft fan for a few years now.  It all began when my son started playing the game and asked me if I would like to have a go.  I'll be honest, I was initially reticent, wondering what the point of the game was and admit to thinking I probably wouldn't like it.  I don't think I could have been more wrong and many game playing hours later was busy buying my own account and looking into setting up a server.  I now have two servers, one where my son and I are slowly creating a fairly sprawling city and another that my son hosts for himself and his friends to come together and play and chat.

How Web 2.0 Changed the World and How Educators are Slowly Catching On

10 years ago the face of the internet changed.  Although the term was first used by Nancy DiNucci in 1999, it was not until 2004 that changes in the way websites were created and used revolutionised The Net.  Social media such a MySpace, Facebook and Twitter; user generated WIKIs, blogs and vlogs; and virtual communities like Second Life connected people around the world and allowed for collaboration and interaction like never before.