Looking at Ka Hikitia

Looking at Ka Hikitia, With the new document coming out last year there have been a couple of blog posts that have been written to explore what it means for educators.
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/NZC-Online-blog

Where is Digital Technologies heading?

I don't know of I could summarize where Digital Technologies is going, as there are the five distinct strands plus Generic Technology.
There is also the Vocational Pathways that are coming into play this year.

There is a comment made in a reply to a thread in the NZACDITT google group that resonates with me, "Yes there are some food projects that are not at level 8 of the curriculum but the number of ICT projects I have seen from year 13s that are clearly year 9 work is greater than the number of food projects!"

We need to building up the specialist Knowledge and Skills strands, we need to be moving forward with the knowledge strands, not just the skills strands. Though to be able to show knowledge, we need to have the equipment and facilities to do so. Going with the food analogy from above, doing a function for 200 using a domestic kitchen is possible, but the quality and quality assurance is just not going to be there. You need a proper kitchen and facilities to be able to do the job well, consistent quality and quality assurance to make sure that the product goes out looking the same. This is the same in the Digital Technologies spaces, are we developing a quality outcome that meets the needs of our students and the learning objectives.

The learning Objectives are detailed in the link below,
Learning Objectives of the specialist Knowledge and Skills strands
Indicators of Progression – Learning Objectives (248kb, PDF)

Next requires some outside work, from professional Development, rather than the normal PD opportunities through the Ministry of Education, we use the subject association more. As it has been talked about through the PPTA Subject Association forum, the best PD has been offered by subject associations. We need to also create better links with industry, through the IITP conference last year it was talked about how industry could be assisting the development of this area. We possibly need to be making more use of this area, one thing I talk about with teachers is the idea of real world problems. What type of assessments are we delivering to our students.

Going with some of the information,

• At least 80% of Digital Technologies teachers believe the assessment standards for their discipline(s) are sufficient, relevant, and fit for purpose.

Do teachers currently believe this?

BERG, Prototyping washing machine

Sometimes we struggle to understand the interface of all the Digital Technologies and how they work together. One example I was shown tonight was the household washing machine. 

If all washing machines looked like this and has this type of control I might want to do washing more often.(no jokes please)

I do wonder if AS3.10 could be done about the design of washing machines? 

http://vimeo.com/87522764

Cloudwash is a prototype connected washing machine. We created Cloudwash to explore how connectivity will change the appliances in our homes… and to figure out what new features will be possible.

Could students develop an interface for a washing machine? HCI for Juniors?

There is a lot more detail available at http://blog.bergcloud.com/2014/02/25/cloudwash/
and having a look at the http://blog.bergcloud.com/ there are some interesting ideas that could be investigated further by students.

metadata: Design, electronics, HCI, mobile control, prototyping

time for a reboot

I saw something interesting on twitter this evening, and i have been thinking. I need a reboot.

I'm heading over for a 'reboot' day next month so will mention your awesomeness (not that you need it)

formal languages - how good is your regex foo?

been working on ideas for more around formal languages. This idea came from something I saw at an office tonight.

Found this site http://www.regexper.com/

What does this code snippet do?…

1	/^[0-9a-zA-Z]+@[0-9a-zA-Z]+[\.]{1}[0-9a-zA-Z]+[\.]?[0-9a-zA-Z]+$/

Those with several years development expertise will realize it’s a regular expression. But even the most astute guru will take a few moments to determine that it checks the validity of an email address. Only a superior subset of that group will comprehend that it’s fairly superficial and won’t check all possibilities.

Regular expressions are extremely powerful search patterns which can be used for string matching and replacement. They’re supported in the majority of languages including JavaScript, PHP, Perl, Java, C#, Python and Ruby.

Individual rules are normally straight-forward, e.g. [a-z] matches a single lowercase character andc.t matches a three letter string starting with ‘c’ and ending with ‘t’ — such as ‘cat’. However, when rules are combined, an indecipherable string of seemingly random codes starts to appear. The one above is relatively simple compared to many you’ll find in the wild.

Creating your own regular expressions is difficult enough and many of us resort to using the force. But it’s easy compared to parsing someone else’s code — which is normally written by someone who has an irrational aversion to comments!

Fortunately, Jeff Avallone has created a solution to your regex woes. RegExper transforms meaningless JavaScript-based expressions into a graphical representation:

Admittedly, you’ll still need a reasonable understanding of pattern matching, but it’s far more evident the expression is analyzing an email address.

Behind the scenes, RegExper is a Ruby application which translates regular expressions into an SVG image. The SVG is embedded in the page, but it should be possible to extract or copy it for use in your own documentation.

Also: great slides that describe regex, http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse154/13sp/lectures/slides/lecture12-regular-expressions.shtml

Microsoft Office for students

This has been an interesting experience,

Student Advantage enables every school in New Zealand that licenses Office for staff and to be eligible to get Office 365 ProPlus for students at no additional cost. You can get it now!

This supports the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or 1:1 learning programmes that you may be looking at implementing, or are currently running in your school. Office 365 Pro Plus is the full version of Office and allows each student to install the full version of Office on up to five PCs or Macs.

To take up this benefit, the next steps are:

1. Contact Datacom to add the zero-cost license Student Advantage SKU to your Microsoft agreement.
2. To do this you will be invoiced a $75 administration fee from Datacom.
3. If you do not already have Office 365 A2 plan ordered, this will also need to be ordered and will be included in the $75 administration fee above.
4. Check with Datacom that your contact person for Office 365 and Student Advantage activity is correct.
5. Deploy the Office 365 A2 Plan service for staff and students; then Students are able to download the Office ProPlus client software to their devices (up to 5 devices per student).

Please contact your Microsoft Reseller for more details:

▪ For schools enrolled in the Microsoft Schools Agreement with the Ministry of Education, please contact Datacom on nzschools@datacom.co.nz.

• For all other schools, please contact your Academic Reseller or partner.

Now we need to get the Single Sign on working

dropbox on linux server

Been thinking about this one for a while, was shown it at some pd last year. It has taken me until now to get something up and going..

http://ubuntuserverguide.com/2012/06/how-to-install-and-configure-dropbox-on-ubuntu-server-12-04.html

There is one more part that I am working on, and that is getting the dropbox folder _httpd_ linked in to the www folder, so any changes I make are automagically updated.

for that part, see in this section
http://gathergather.co.nz/resources/building-the-web/Building%20With%20Wordpress.html#Installing Wordpress

Computer Lab issues

We have an issue going through the school at the moment, something that I have not encountered for a while now and surprisingly never happened in my computer lab, until now.

The messed up keyboard. It seems that the thing to do is to change the keys on a keyboard and see what words you can make.
I will be having a chat with the students that sit in particular seats this week. Surprisingly the students sit at the same seats each period, so it is easy to sort out who has done what. But why do it? boredom, work too hard? Guess I will find out.

Digital Technologies Challenge

“One of our major challenges is that, whichever way you package it, study in Digital Technologies is demanding. There are no easy credits! On the other hand, realizing you can script websites and write code is intensely satisfying and provides its own rewards and motivations, as well as pathways into an exciting future.”

What do people see when they see Digital Technologies

I have been thinking about this for a while now,

Digital Technologies is a difficult area to see outcomes from

A finished website, a poster on a wall, a network operational, meeting clients outcomes is what people see, they don't see the behind the scenes work, the learning that has gone on. They don't see what is seen in other Technology areas. They see outcomes that they can touch, taste, wear, sit on, put books in, a design in action.

I have been working on some work for three weeks now, and all people see is the entry and outcomes. They don;t see the setup of markbooks for each subject, 189 in all, four terms each, a global markbook, calculating every single subject in each level, and the report that is sent to parents. For them its an issue to enter data. Data which is essential to make sure that what we have done is correct, right and operational. It sorts out issues, incomplete markbooks, non associated teachers with markbooks.

Sometimes it is a little bit much.

2014

Challenge

This year is a challenge, a challenge to engage, and a challenge to learn and put into practice what I have been working on last year.

One of the challenges is to engage students

To share my practice and resources

To develop a collaborative group of teachers

To look at what is happening outside of my school and the region

cs4hs New Zealand

CS4HS New Zealand has finsihed, here are some of the notes that were taken at the end.

what are you planning on doing in 2014

• Learn python
• do 3.44
• Review database plans
• do python
• introduce cs 1.44
• have a go with 3.44
• To look at level 2 and 3 computer science, support what they are doing.
• Programming and digital media combined, with javascript, code avengers
• Fun things for year 10
• waterfall process for planning, development, depth. Rather than just in time agile.
• industry visits
• , preparation
• level 3 course to be more graphic orientated, computer graphics
• do the edem626 course
• cs externals and work together to develop,
• develop a cluster of teachers
• javascript into level 2
• formalise coding club, digital badges,
• edem626 course
• not doubling up on work, using other work to deliver
• ready for level 3 programming
• using databases for one standard and doing regular expressions on the standard to show evidence - practical application.
• getting network protocols chapter sorted to build on top of the infrastructure standard
• Who will you keep in touch with

What questions still need answering?

• Computer clubs to get stronger, dynamic, connected to each other
• How can I get capable students work placement, get out of the school
• Rural is an issue…
• Tour through leading companies
• Sponsor some students to experience companies through google
• NZOI New Zealand Informatic Olympiad (STAR funding)
• Catalyst High School Academy
• Codeavengers
• mashup
• Ministry of Awesome
• How do I encourage the students to come to digital technologies, when it was easy, but now it is hard.
• Credit values for work… This is a new subject, new to the area, we are doing too much for the work…
• Resources that show achieved, merit, excellence.
• Each of the sections and what they got 1.44, 2.44
• how would a video presentation be shown…
• 1.44 why is only 3 credits not 4, doesn’t help with endorsement(14 credits),
• Is there such as things as an IT labourer, what does the non IT professional look like?
• IT Labourer, installation, infrastructure, training and support?
• Developing a range of courses

What is missing?

• Need a DT scholarship
• Literature credits - internal standards need to count for these
• Standards need to last us at least 4 years, they need to be holistic and not dependant on one type of software/application, flexible

Notes from the Unconference

• More computer science for the junior school
• CS Unplugged, more fun activities for juniors/seniors?
• Department of Fun Stuff! Engagement,
• Scratch at Level One, Lower it down to the junior levels, python happening at level one
• Bringing more Science into the junior school, confidence for year 13 class, bring programming in.
• 5 minute things that can be included within the class, lots of little things.

• Just do it!, teach the standards
• Getting intermediate students involved
• Be more adventurous with teaching
• Change from scratch to python
• Using technology to be more mobile while teaching - Splashtop app
• Do more generics, and more CS, using 3.14
• Bridge the gap between what we are going to teach, and how to assess it. Feeling less confident about how to assess than about how to teach.
• Scalability of assessment is difficult

Year 13 digital media ideas

Thinking about projects for students

Virtual rugby competition

Testing system for computing skills, an alternative to moodle

Feedback system for me

Competition system for judging

Spelling quiz

MySQL php system out of the yoobee book could be a good start

Also look for ideas out of last years ideas for digital media apps for the school, most of these require a database to run

I don't know how this would work,
There needs to be a brief, outline what they are trting to do and what outcomes are needed. Inputs and output requirements. Needs to have wireframing and developments of the look and feel of the site. The student could create a fantastic backend, but if the frontend looks bad, its not going to be used.

But this was posted tonight,

now this links to a website which ranks schools in auckland

now, thats not really what I want to get into at this point. Instead it has given me an idea, 

For Level 3 Digital Technologies, students need to create a relational database, we have all the school information available to us through education counts http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/directories/list-of-nz-schools

Which also provides us with, 

Description of Variables

Variables	Description
School Number	Unique number assigned to each institution
School Name	Full name of each institution
Telephone	Telephone number for each institution, including area code
Fax	Facsimile number for each institution, including area code
Email	Email address for appropriate administrative contact for institution
Principal	Current principal at school
Street	Street for location address
Suburb	Suburb for location address
City	Town or city for location address
Postal Address 1	P O Box, Private Bag or rural delivery number for postal address
Postal Address 2	Suburb for Postal Address
Postal Address 3	Town or city for Postal Address
Postal Code	Postcode used by NZ Post for Postal Address
School Type	Type for each institution
Definition	Definition provides further descriptive information on the type of each institution
Authority	Describes the ownership/operation or registration status of each educational institution
Gender of Students	School gender i.e. Gender of students that schools cater for
Territorial Local Authority	The territorial authority area the school is located in.  The territorial authority boundaries are defined by Statistics New Zealand.
Regional Council	The regional council area the school is located in.  Regional Council boundaries are defined by Statistics New Zealand.
Census Area Unit	The census area unit area each school is located in.  Census Area Unit boundaries are defined by Statistics New Zealand.
Ward	The Ward area the school is located in. Wards are subdivisions of territorial authorities.
Ministry of Education Local Office	Ministry of Education Local Office district each institution is located in
General Electorate	General electoral district for the area where an institution is located. Based on the electoral boundaries for the 2008 election
Māori Electorate	Māori electoral district for the area where an institution is located. Based on the māori electoral boundaries for the 2008 election.
Longitude	Longitudinal co-ordinate where the institution is located.
Latitude	Latitudinal co-ordinate where the institution is located.
Decile	A schools decile indicated the extent to which the school draws its students from the low socio-economic communities. Decile 1 schools are the 10% of schools with the highest proportion of students from the low socio-economic communities, whereas decile 10 schools are the 10% of schools with the lowest proportion of these students. A schools decile does not indicate the overall socio-economic mix of the school.
School Rolls	The most up-to-date roll data available.  The roll information will be older that the date of the release of the directory.

Everything someone needs to present information about a school... I love the Longitude and Latitude parts, could make for some interesting Google Maps, but that is not what I am on about at present.

Now, the students would need to gather all the standards that NCEA has to offer, but wait, this is the other relational table, 

Standard Number, Domain, Name, Credits, Internal/External

Simple enough, could try getting the information out of NZQA or out of a student that I know that has it from another school. 

The last part, getting every single secondary schools curriculum guide, be it online or having to get it from the school itself!

Now, do we do this for just one subject area, say Digital Technologies, or do we look at the bigger picture? How would we go about categorising all the courses that are on offer within schools?

Could make for an interesting project.

Brief development, with database with digital media on top and prototyping, credit values 4, 6, 4, 6, it makes a 20 credit project for a student.

The work involved is immense, but I think this could be done. 

---------

UPDATE: Through a tweet this morning,

@ I am thinking of getting students to create a new http://whichschool.co.nz

@ Sounds like a good brief. Also makes students consider relevant data too!

@ I like the comment "relevant data"

This is something that we need to start thinking about, relevant data, I know a majority of teachers have used the information from the resource, which related to a DVD store, but as someone posted in a tweet

@ Yep, I know what you mean... ("What's a DVD sir? I just stream stuff off the net!") ;-)

Are we being relevant with the contexts that we are giving our students.
I now need to make sure that what is being suggested will work with the standard.

UPDATE: One thing that worries me, is that how do I know that a project is complex enough. this is something that haunts me from my polytech days. 

microframeworks

I have been looking over the holidays at flask, http://flask.pocoo.org/ it is a microframework used to create websites with python backends. This could provide a link between programming and web development.

The reason why I have gone down this track is that I have been looking at Computer Science and Technology for Urban Youth. http://cstuy.org/

This looks to be a path that students could get interested in, I have been looking at a program that that are associated with, stuycs githib source and investigating the idea...

https://github.com/stuycs-softdev

This look to have merits and where I think effort should goto.

We need to start getting students to think about the bigger picture with this, and with where we are at the

moment we need to see some good resources come out. But it does come down to, who is going to create the resources. Should this be being created by the owners of the Standards, which are the Ministry of Education, or should it be the association that comes up with the resources for this...

UPDATE: If on python check out django.
https://www.djangoproject.com/
This uses the python language as well.

Setting up django on the Raspberry pi http://blog.mattwoodward.com/2013/01/setting-up-django-on-raspberry-pi.html

UPDATE http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/

Thinking again

As I sit here after celebrating christmas, I start to think of the 365 days till christmas. Yes, not too long to go. With some more weeks of holidays, then the beginning of the school year. It soon turns into the end of the school year pretty quickly.

I have been thinking over the last couple of days about the courses that I run and what I want to students to get out of them. Or should that be that the students want credits out of the courses that I run, oh and they want endorsements, and they want to do little work, oh did I mention that they have 6 subjects.

Typical course for your bright student, wants to go to university?

English = 19 credits
Maths with Calculus = 23 credits
Biology = 22 credits
Chemistry = 28 credits?
Physics = 23 credits
Religious Education/Theology = 18 credits

133 credits... that is twice what the students need to obtain to receive there NCEA Level 3...

So... why?

Zombie Simulation at Boy Scout Jamboree: Bioinformatics At Work

how would you even start developing something like this?

The 2013 Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree – a great place to celebrate scouting and… get virtually infected by a zombie virus? This year’s Jamboree includes an activity designed to teach kids about the movement of infectious diseases. What better way, than to allow them to simulate a zombie epidemic?

Zombie Virus Game

How does it work? Scouts must have a Virus Tracker app downloaded in order to play, and they must register with the game in order to be ‘infected’ with the virus. Dr. Kristy Collins of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech explained the game to Decoded Science, saying that the zombies, ages 12 to 18, “…are given an opportunity to receive the needed vaccine by correctly answering an epidemiology quiz question, or by using the app to scan other players who have already obtained the vaccine.

Throughout the day, notifications are sent out to announce “newly discovered” mutations, which will turn the vaccinated players into Zombies if they do not obtain an updated vaccine. (Players can again obtain the needed vaccine by correctly answering an epidemiology quiz question, or by interacting with others who have already obtained the latest vaccine. There is also a resident scientist at the VBI tent, who will dispense the vaccine to those who ask good science questions.)

Individual and Team points are earned through recruiting others to join the game, and by scanning others with the virus and vaccinating them. Overall standings, individual and team rankings, and a variety of individual, team and game statistics can be viewed at any time.”

How do the players infect other kids? By scanning the code printed on a the scout’s address label, wrapped on his lanyard or scan the other child’s QR code, displayed in his Virus Tracker app. Dr. Collins tells us, “Players with labels can also vaccinate each other by visiting one of the multiple scanning booths that we have at the Jamboree.”

Infectious Disease and Bioinformatics

The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute Booth, the source of the zombie virus, is the result of funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health MIDAS group and Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. According to Dr. Collins, “The information we are collecting from the scouts is being used in simulations on how infectious diseases spread.”

Why is it important to simulate the spread of infectious diseases? Understanding the way in which a highly-contagious disease spreads among groups of people can help reduce the affect, by identifying at-risk populations and encouraging safe behavior as a preventative measure. One major obstacle is the sheer volume of data available, but computer algorithms can sort the data with ease, once given an appropriate sorting structure.

Using computers to sort and make sense of biological information has been around for yea. Not only does Google keep a regularly-updated Flu Trends Map every flu season, with fast and accurate information about the spread of the flu around the nation, researchers are also using Twitter and other social media signals to track flu symptoms to determine the spread of disease. With vast stores of information available online, only a computer could make sense of it all.

Of course there are no real zombies, but using the popular topic to teach kids about disease can increase interest, and spread information as well as a virtual virus.

Resources:

Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. Virus Tracker. (2013). Accessed July 19, 2013.

http://www.decodedscience.com/zombie-simulation-at-boy-scout-jamboree-bioinformatics-at-work/33530

Where are we at?

I started thinking after an interesting post the other night, what are we getting our students to do in our classes, "the number of ICT projects I have seen from year 13s that are clearly year 9 work" What happens at the senior level, why is this the case?

There are 340 secondary schools throughout the country, what are we seeing that is showing the best from these schools? 

What are others doing?

Earlier this year the UK released details about what they were doing to support Primary Schools http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/data/uploads/CASPrimaryComputing.pdf

NCEA Level 2 Canterbury Summer School

NCEA Level 2 Canterbury Summer School
The Ministry of Education is supporting a pilot summer school programme based at Hagley Community College which begins on January 20. Summer school is aimed at students who require about 8 credits (or one or two standards) to gain a Level 2 NCEA certificate.

This is a fantastic idea.. would be interesting to see how many take up the offer.

coding and cs4hs

Reflection of last week.

Last week I have some awesome opportunities, to try some of the hour of code tutorials with year 9 and the annual google funded cs4hs was in town.

This year was the third cs4hs held in Christchurch, this is now getting to be an almost unmissable event for any Digital Technologies teacher in New Zealand. It provides an excellent array of practical tutorials and workshops through to discussion around the x.44 computer science standards. 

I myself was not able to attend full day sessions this year as I had Big Days Out at school. Where we suspend the timetable and give the junior students an experience. This year for me it was coding. I developed coding based on the hour of code tutorials.

It went like this
code.org video http://youtu.be/r990CWYtx_o

Algorithms, My robotics friends, http://hourofcode.com/ts
Data representation, http://hourofcode.com/th

Processing, programming language for visual artists http://hourofcode.com/pr
artificial intelligence, a taste of python, http://hourofcode.com/gr
code combat http://hourofcode.com/cc

This gave the students an ideal introduction to what is in the programming and computer science standards at the senior levels.

What did the teachers get out of cs4hs and what will they do for next year

Learn python

• do 3.44
• Review database plans
• do python
• introduce cs 1.44
• have a go with 3.44
• To look at level 2 and 3 computer science, support what they are doing.
• Programming and digital media combined, with javascript, code avengers
• Fun things for year 10
• waterfall process for planning, development, depth. Rather than just in time agile.
• industry visits
• Jane whyte method, preparation
• level 3 course to be more graphic orientated, computer graphics
• do the edem626 course
• cs externals and work together to develop, 
• develop a cluster of teachers
• javascript into level 2
• formalise coding club, digital badges, 
• edem626 course 
• not doubling up on work, using other work to deliver
• ready for level 3 programming
• using databases for one standard and doing regular expressions on the standard to show evidence - practical application.
• getting network protocols chapter sorted to build on top of the infrastructure standard

What questions still need answering

• Computer clubs to get stronger, dynamic, connected to each other
• How can I get capable students work placement, get out of the school
• Rural is an issue..
• Tour through leading companies
• Sponsor some students to experience companies through google
• NZOI New Zealand Infomatic Olympiad (STAR funding)
• Catalyst High School Academy
• Codeavengers
• mashup
• Ministry of Awesome
• How do I encourage the students to come to digital technologies, when it was easy, but now it is hard.
• Credit values for work… This is a new subject, new to the area, we are doing too much for the work…
• Resources that show achieved, merit, excellence. 
• Each of the sections and what they got 1.44, 2.44
• how would a video presentation be shown…
• 1.44 why is only 3 credits not 4, doesn’t help with endorsement(14 credits),
• Is there such as things as an IT labourer, what does the non IT professional look like?
• IT Labourer, installation, infrastructure, training and support?
• Developing a range of courses

Database tutorials

I have been trying to find some decent database tutorials to get my students to have more examples of practice. I was introduced this one yesterday.

http://www.sqlzoo.net/wiki/Main_Page

Great ideas and a great webpage that gets students working through developing their understanding.