Wednesday 29 October 2014

one thing made my day

I have been reading the google group today, and one thing caught my eye,

A student of mine has an after-school job and needs to learn Wordpress. She has asked me for resources but I haven’t explored Wordpress yet. Before she trawls the Internet for resources, can anyone recommend anything suitable that I could suggest for her?

It used to be that businesses wanted students with office productivity skills, it has been a while since I have seen one of those emails. Having this come across the screen today provides me hope. Hope that there is a change happening. The Digital Technologies standards were designed with the future in mind, not what was happening at the time. These standards were designed with the next six years in mind, that was in 2010.

One thing I have found in my teaching is that I am looking into the future. My courses change each year as I look at what is happening, level 3 in 2013 looked at content management systems and students starting to look at how to develop a website for a radio station that had a live stream running from it as well as what could be developed using a raspberry pi. This year we looked at individual projects that developed concepts or prototypes websites for a range of different stakeholders. I have an idea for next years class that will develop their complex skills.

Having three students in my level 3 course that went through the course last year provided them such an opportunity. The were able to use the skills that they had developed as well as the technology process in a way that made them want to extend themselves. 

The problem that we face is the standards that we have to offer, how much evidence is needed to support them.

Right, back to what I was talking about before.
Developing students understanding. Students often wonder why there is a security fix, a patch, why is their computer restarting due to an Operating System update. I often wonder if we should show them why. Is there a way that we can install a non patched wordpress install internally and then show them how they can gain access through a security vulnerability. Then get them to patch it?

This goes back to a unit that I found great interest in a while ago called Hacker High School. A way for students to learn some of the methods and understanding of why we need to patch. 

Maybe it is something that could be looked at.

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