In order to organise for Sunday night I have created the below signup sheet as a Google form.  Please remember there is a 10 person limit and you will need to probably add me on Google Plus.

Image: ‘Meeting room stencil graffiti’

Just had excellent chat with @largerama re #digitalstudies – lots of good advice.  Would like to therefore propose a move onto the next step to push this project on and that is the first in what will hopefully be a series of Google Hangout meetings on #digitalstudies.

Let’s break this down into a set of points (prevent me from waffling)

1. First meeting will be this Sunday at 8:30pm.  Can take suggestions for alternate times if enough people are willing to change.
2. Major purpose: Discuss route forward for #digitalstudies and if enough people are agreed to go ahead then we begin setting up resources.
3. Agenda could be developed if need be.
4. Task if you wish to join is to firstly read http://briansharland.com/tag/digitalstudies and secondly bring any ideas regarding how to move forward

Ever since #digitalstudies started one of the issues has been what to
teach pupils. To begin with the strands were developed which give
good broad descriptions of ‘themes’ which could run through the
subject. Since then @teachesict has done an immense amount of work in
looking at what topics and technologies could be taught for each
strand.

I’ve been thinking about and working on the issue of how to structure
the teaching so that the approach is firstly flexible for different
schools but reaches defined aims. Years ago (2001) when I started
teaching ICT in the UK the modules of work were very much based around
the Microsoft Office Applications. So there was the spreadsheet unit,
the database unit, the word processing unit etc. Within each unit we
found a nice context we could work with and deliver a reasonably range
of skills. The following year we would perhaps do some different
units but would often just simply add more advanced skills in. There
was an overall plan but it does seem now like it was a bunch of
disparate units which although was part of a plan didn’t have any
overall goals or objectives.

In an earlier blogpost I looked at the topic of hackdays as a form of
developing the #digitalstudies curriculum. I also think hackdays
where pupils have been preparing for a while can be used as a form of
assessment for pupils. A hackday where pupils present their work
after a final set of challenges is I think to prepare pupils for life
beyond school in an innovative tech startup culture (if they choose to
go down that route). Obviously someone looking to get into a
computing career may not be working for a startup but even a context
like hackdays can allow pupils to demonstrate skills in a multitude of
ways such as database development, network design and construction and
multimedia.

By giving #digitalstudies a central purpose – provide learning and
experiences which could prepare them for work in multiple areas of
industry this should in turn help teachers focus on what pupils should
be learning and doing in class.

So how could it work? For starters at the end of junior school and at
the end of year 9 I propose hackdays where pupils present their
portfolio of work and also undergo challenges. To prepare for these
hackdays pupils (or their teachers) will choose what they are going to
work on for their portfolio. This becomes a key body of work which is
returned to frequently throughout the last years of junior school and
year 7 to 9. Possible options for portfolio work could include
multimedia production, website design or app development. Depending
on the school and the teachers and pupils a pupil could have one major
portfolio piece of work or take on more. The aim is to allow
flexibility.

Once portfolio work is chosen pupils undertake skill building units
focussing on what they need to produce that portfolio work. So for
instance instead of doing a unit where databases is the major focus
and a context is tacked on the context such as websites is the major
focus and databases is taught from the point of view of supporting the
work pupils are doing on their portfolio.

After a lot of thought this still only a provisional idea as to how to
approach teaching #digitalstudies. I felt it would be necessary to at
least get this out there for those who are becoming quite interested
in the subject so that it can be thought over and hopefully tweaked.

The last month has been quite a hectic one for the subject of ICT.
Starting with Michael Gove’s speech to BETT in January there has been
a furious pace of reports, blog posts and news articles dissecting the
ins and outs of the subject and it’s issues with a huge amount of
commentary from a number of people in different fields and industries.

Now we need to take stock, analyse what tools and resources we have
and look forward with practical solutions which will produce a subject
relevant and challenging for the pupils we teach. But who should do
this? Gove spoke of industry and academics leading the charge in
developing an academically rigorous subject but neglected to mention
teachers. This is where I see the #RethinkingICT conference as a vital
tool for bringing teachers together to develop a way forward for the
subject.

I have been promoting #digitalstudies as a way forward but I certainly
recognise that there will probably be alternate approaches in many
different schools. What I think teachers who work with ICT, Computer
Science etc should agree on is the outcomes. Gove spoke recently to an
educational select committee about destination outcomes as a target
for measuring how pupils do when they leave school. If this is he way
he is going we need to move with that and realise that our subject
should be more than just promoting a set of digital literacies for
pupils but be about pupils gaining valuable skills which can be taken
forward into the workforce.

The Nesta Nextgen report early last year went into detail about the
skills the country needs to be instilling in young people in order to
provide a sufficiently capable workforce for the computer gaming and
CGI industries in the UK. Although there are certainly many other
careers for which ICT is useful for I see this as a useful example of
how we should be directing our pupils. By showing the relevance of the
skills they are learning through extensive portfolio based work I
think we can ensure the future of the subject.

After talking about teachers taking the lead in developing the subject
I do still welcome the input of industry. If we are to be producing
pupils who are ready for the workforce then we definitely must listen
to what industry wants and is interested in.  For example if the
current tad is towards Ruby on Rails development then that is what we
should be pushing pupils towards.

Ultimately though if we focus not only on producing a creative and
innovative curriculum but also encourage pupils to be creative and
innovative we can only see the subject grow and strengthen. In the end
this will have benefits for the country as a whole in producing pupils
who create businesses, jobs and become productive members of society.