Group items tagged

CS Unplugged learning activities that teach Computer Science through games w/out computer

If you're not already using Dropbox - you should. They had a developer conference and will likely end up everywhere in every app. Some very cool things coming. Just like Evernote - who has a powerful "trunk" features where developer work is showcased - Dropbox is going to find that opening up to development opens a whole new marketplace and ingenuity beyond what they have in house.  Some info from the wired article.  "But after all that single-mindedness, Houston and Ferdowsi now want to let their baby sing. Today, at Dropbox's first-ever developers conference, the company is officially launching a new set of coding tools designed to push Dropbox into every corner of your digital life. Not content to stay sequestered inside the box, the company's co-founders are unveiling ways for developers to meld their service with every app on every device you own. For the first five or so years of its existence, Dropbox was synonymous with its "magic folder." Save your files in the Dropbox folder on your computer, and they "magically" reappear in your Dropbox apps on your phone and tablet and in your Dropbox account on the web. Now, if developers take to the company's new tools, the service will escape the confines of this folder, fusing with third-party apps running on practically every computer and smartphone operating system. Houston wants Dropbox to become the "spiritual successor to the hard drive." He says the hard drive needs to be replaced because so many of us are doing so much computing on devices that don't fit the traditional paradigm for working with files. Users don't interact with files on iOS, Android, or the web the way they do on PCs. Apps don't have "open" or "save" options that launch a separate window where you tap through a folder tree."

Encouraging pupils to develop computer science ideas

Visual recognition and intelligent identification of objects is making progress. Soon, just a picture of a child could tell everyone that child's name if simple facial recognition is used. This is more than just facial recognition but is rather, trying to teach a computer to learn. This is an interesting article. "The aim is to see if computers can learn, in the same way a human would, what links images, to help them better understand the visual world. The Never Ending Image Learner (NEIL) program is being run at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. The work is being funded by the US Department of Defense's Office of Naval Research and Google. Since July, the NEIL program has looked at three million images. As a result it has managed to identify 1,500 objects in half a million images and 1,200 scenes in hundreds of thousands of images as well as making 2,500 associations."

Exciting description of a wonderful individual research project at the elementary level with limited resources and a very hard working teacher.

I love the pictures on this blog showing the students using the computer, on the floor... everywhere, working on individual research projects. (Got to this blog to see the final products.) At first I said, "display boards?" but then I realized the amount of computer work required to create these display boards and I saw the age of the students and the number of computers in this classroom. This is a tremendous amount of work. Applause here from me to Kristi, another teacher blogger who I "met" from yesterday's post (hey go back to yesterdays and leave yours!)

This sounds like I can sit at one computer in a room and control each of the others -- just by moving the mouse of the side of the screen in the direction of the next computer -- keyboard input to the computer with screen display

Looking at the fourth "R". Computational thinking, a way of looking at problem solving in all areas of life, not just computer science.

"An open source computer monitor system which allows you to see and control the your pupils' computers from one central teacher device."

A.I. Duet is a great Artificial Intelligence computer piano keyboard that responds to sequences input through your computer keyboard. Developed using Google's Magenta project, the algorithm uses a neural network to learn how to respond through to the key strokes. Simply use a keyboard, use your computer keys, or even plug in a MIDI keyboard. A.I. Duet is built by Yotam Mann with friends on the Magenta and Creative Lab teams at Google.

Terry Freedman from the UK makes some great points about expertise in Computing. This is particularly relevant in the UK where every student age 5 and up is expected to be taught programming in school. (Wake up world.) Terry says: "Some Principals and Headteachers think that a good way around the problem of teaching computing is to not worry about whether teachers have subject knowledge at all. "All we need are facilitators", they say, "while the kids can teach themselves and each other." This is, as any teacher knows (or should know), easy to say, less easy to do, and not altogether the most desirable thing to do even if you can do it. However, just in case your school happens to be "led" by one of the aforementioned Headteachers, here are some arguments you may want to use. I think that any one of them should suffice, and all of them together make for a cast-iron case." Read more... this is a topic that will be increasingly discussed in other countries.

ABCya! Kindergarten computer activities and games have large and easy-to-use navigation buttons as well as voice instructions. The first activity is an interactive tutorial demonstrating how to use navigation buttons. The following activities include: learn the alphabet, uppercase to lowercase letters, categorizing, mouse manipulation, drawing, counting numbers and much more. These activities are great to use in the computer lab!

Conversations about Computer Science education week are beginning to float around. I think we can do many easy things including webinars and sessions with leaders that students can interact with live and even just a hashtag for people to follow on twitter who care about the topic would be useful.

Resource to support computing in Primary schools

Take time to read this PEW research about teachers and how they are using technology in their classrooms. It is shocking that 73% say they or their students use cell phones to complete assignments. I wish they had separated out this number to know exactly how many let their STUDENTS use their cell phones. To me, this number shows the tide has turned.  Some of the highlights of the research: "Mobile technology has become central to the learning process, with 73% of AP and NWP teachers saying that they and/or their students use their cell phones in the classroom or to complete assignments More than four in ten teachers report the use of e-readers (45%) and tablet computers (43%) in their classrooms or to complete assignments 62% say their school does a "good job" supporting teachers' efforts to bring digital tools into the learning process, and 68% say their school provides formal training in this area Teachers of low income students, however, are much less likely than teachers of the highest income students to use tablet computers (37% v. 56%) or e-readers (41% v. 55%) in their classrooms and assignments Similarly, just over half (52%) of teachers of upper and upper-middle income students say their students use cell phones to look up information in class, compared with 35% of teachers of the lowest income students"

Grading handwritten answers by students as a feature of a copier? Producing data analytics as a result. IF this works, it will not only sell more copiers, but also make handwritten work more of a commodity. Maybe if a computer can quickly grade the easy stuff, teachers can spend more time assessing project based learning and other work that computers cannot do. This won't help me much - except when I teach binary numbers and memory conversion which do require me to check work (I never do multiple choice.) I could see how math teachers would be thrilled. "Xerox later this year plans to roll out Ignite, a software and web-based service that turns the numerous copiers/scanners/printers it has in schools across the United States into paper-grading machines. Unlike such staples of the educational system as Scantron, which uses special forms where students choose an answer and fill in the corresponding bubble, Ignite will grade work where the answers are written in by the students, such as the numeric answer to a math problem. Ignite takes right and wrong answers and turns them into web-accessible data for teachers with reports that say whether a student or groups of students are consistently having more trouble with certain kinds of math problems. Those reports can be used by teachers to tailor what they're teaching - such as by identifying what group of students needs more help with a certain topic - or given to students so they know where they should focus their studying. It also opens the door to specific tests or homework assignments for specific students becoming more the norm, each tailored to academic strengths and weaknesses."

Important and well written

If you run a computer lab, you would do well to train your students how to use a portable fire extinguisher. This training video is one you can use. Forward this to teachers and those with computers, in particular.

Computer Science education week is this week. Download and share information here. Give the students a present of their future during the holiday season by taking a day of class to talk about computer science. This is important. Talk about it even if you're not great with technology.