Author Archives: Brian Sharland

Update on using #minecraftedu in school

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I’ve been using minecraftedu in school now for roughly 9 months now and I thought now would be a good time to write a quick summary of how it has been used so far and what to do with it next.

Firstly my general impressions of Minecraft in a school situation is that it is absolutely fantastic with some flaws in places.  It is brilliant in that it is engaging, relevant to pupils and quite simply popular as well.  It is flawed in that it is so open ended and setting up controlled scenarios can take away from the enjoyment of the game.  I think when giving Minecraftedu to the pupils to use you should be in a sense letting them head off on their own without any constrictions of a lesson.

So I therefore use Minecraftedu as an enrichment activity rather than a straightforward educational activity.  I do frequent team building / individual build competitions.  The pupils particularly enjoy free form survival play (most of this happens during lunch clubs) with monsters, hunger and night enabled.  Without telling them to get into groups they naturally gravitate towards groups in order to survive.

Having said that there is a few things I am planning to do within Minecraft in the next year

  1. see if I can build an image representation activity based on http://csunplugged.org/image-representation for my GCSE computing group
  2. set up an area showing AND, OR, NOT NOR etc circuits and get pupils to build their own
  3. yes … definitely more redstone
  4. Minecraft on the Raspberry Pi – set some programming challenges using python / javascript

There are a range of activities on the Minecraftedu wiki which cover a number of other subject areas.  The reason I haven’t done this yet is that it would take a lot of time and effort to get buy-in from other teachers towards using Minecraft and frankly don’t have that time at the moment.

 

Problem-solving not app-building #computing #digitalstudies

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Yesterday an opinion piece appeared in the Guardian about youngsters taking a self-entrepreneurial approach to building loads of nice apps for intelligent devices.  The writer was quite harsh in a sense, especially going after Apple and also casting a rather cynical eye on hordes of young men beavering away in small dingy offices to create the next big app.

Without going into an in-depth critique of the article I largely agree with the author.  Coming from an educational perspective I think the article was a good reality check for former ICT teachers wanting to dip their toes into coding.  The natural and cool thing to do when considering how to excite a room full of bored teenagers, who would rather be checking their facebook status updates, would be to get them to ‘build apps!’ because ‘everyone uses apps!’.  I generalise muchly here but sometimes even in generalisations there is a core of truth which can be highlighted.

I saw someone who tweeted an article in the BBC looking at the phenomenon of teen app developers at private schools and slightly put out saying at the end of the tweet basically that it also happens at state schools.  The implication was striking “Don’t forget about state schools, we also build apps!“  

A common theme I see coming through from my reading and preparation for teaching Computing next year for the first time is problem-solving.  I saw someone post about it in a Computing at School forum discussion the other night and have seen it pop up a couple of times again in the last few days.  I looked again at the rather excellent http://appsforgood.org which although it does have ‘apps’ in its domain name mentions very clearly mentions the notion of ‘problem-solving’.  I would also add critical-thinking, design skills, planning, implementing, evaluating and a whole host of rather important business skills (kind of hoping every time I mention skills I make a Tory cry) which kids do need.  How apps fit into that is quite simple, if a problem can be solved with a database fine, or with an app or with a piece of hardware or a deftly written song (I digress) … equally fine.

I therefore implore any ICT teachers facing Computing for the first time (willingly or not) not to rush towards making apps as the cool ‘goal’ of the course but concentrate on the computational thinking which is at the heart of the subject.  By doing that you may actually encourage more pupils to do Computing by seeing the broader value of the subject rather than just the coding.  Don’t build up that kid who built that horridly anti-knowledge (there I made a Tory happy again) summation app but instead a better person or persons to build up might someone like the crew and ground support of Apollo 13 who in order to save the craft employed not coding skills but computational-thinking skills in order to get them back.  Of course using that example might just make most pupils go “Apollo what sir? …” and that in itself is an argument for knowledge!

JISC Inform - Social Media, Who Needs It?

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Reblogged from mattbritland.com:

Last summer, Kingston Grammar School ICT teacher Matt Britland opened up the debate about the benefits and risks of using social media in teaching and learning in an article for the Guardian Teacher Network. Here, Jisc Inform looks at how universities and colleges are tackling those issues and asks – do we really need to bother?

Read the rest here

Never reblogged before on WP and couldn't think of a better post to start with

My memories of Chris Allan @infernaldepart (cc @lisaallan8)

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I woke up this morning to find out rather belatedly about the unfortunate and tragic death of Chris Allan.  I had first come to know Chris through twitter as @infernaldepart a while ago now and had the pleasure of meeting him, regrettably only the once, at the #rethinkingict conference last year.

I largely got to know Chris in a professional capacity as a dedicated and passionate ICT teacher.  Myself, Nic (@teachesict) and Chris were working on a project to rebuild the ICT curriculum and he threw himself into it wholeheartedly.  Chris was especially interested in Open Badges as a form of assessment and he brought a keen and knowledgeable insight to absolutely everything which was discussed.

In our work together with Nic, especially through some late night google hangouts, we got to know each other a bit and beyond his passion for ICT education and his professionalism it was clear how much of a dedicated father he was to his boy James.  It is quite poignant to note that his last tweet was about his boy on the football pitch and how proud he was of him.

My lasting memory of him will be of him on a Google hangout with myself and Nic, sipping on a beer, chatting about his boy and teasing me about my lack of interest in football, a poster of his beloved Liverpool behind him.

Go well Chris.

Designing the educational use aspect of a #BYOD policy for school

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At the moment our school is investigating how to use our current Wi-Fi provision better across the school and that will include looking at how it would be possible to extend the use of the Wi-Fi to the pupils especially with a BYOD policy in place.

For obvious reasons simply allowing a BYOD policy without any educational structure is not a good thing.  The technical side of supporting a BYOD is being worked on so my concern is how to ensure that pupils, staff and parents know that tablets and other similar devices are being used to their best ability in school.

I am therefore going to proceed with the following draft approach within our school and see what happens:

Use of Devices

  • We operate a full BYOD where if a pupil has a usable device which connects to the WiFi and can support a good range of apps which can be used in class
  • Pupils can therefore use iPad, Android, Kindle etc

Recommended approach for apps

  • I am not a fan of the ‘magic apps’ approach to learning where some whizzywig edutainment creation is meant to instantly enhance learning.  They have their place but as a sideshow.
  • I am a fan of devices and apps being used constructively to support (not necessarily replace) current learning methods
  • This will therefore be a case of pupils having exercise book, textbook and tablet next to each other
  • Depending on the class, subject and teacher some may be used more often then others
  • I therefore will be recommending that teachers support the use of tablets in class in the following areas
  1. supporting note taking
  2. synthesis
  3. productivity
  4. revision / study
  5. communication
  • For each area I will therefore be looking for apps which can be used across as many devices as possible
  • So for ‘note taking’ I will be recommending Evernote.  For ‘productivity’ I will be recommending Google Drive etc
  • This will also give teachers who feel uncertain about the use of tablets a more structured approach to how they should be used in class

This will hopefully be updated as time goes on.

Why I have an issue with this ‘anti-office, it’s boring’ approach #digitalstudies #digitalliteracy

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This morning I saw on Twitter an article about the Scottish ICT curriculum and how it has been praised by Hal Abelson, who I respect greatly and I’m also reading one of his books,  which quite rightly praises the approach the Scots are taking (and many sassenachs are taking as well!) to craft real-life and relevant approaches to the ICT curriculum.

The article then also quite rightly takes a boring and repetitive approach to office skills to task but I think it is missing quite an important point about ‘Office skills’.  The problem with this, as I wrote in the comment underneath the piece, is that they shouldn’t be seen as ‘Office skills’ but as ‘productivity skills’ as using the term ‘Office’ instantly equates it only with what Microsoft has to offer.  Pupils should be taught good productivity skills both to support their learning in other subjects but also to prepare them for tertiary education and employment.

Whether they use Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Zoho, Openoffice etc or any other productivity suite is irrelevant they must still be learning how to …

  1. Write a good document which is suitable for a target audience
  2. Create a usable and engaging slidedeck (and present with it)
  3. Manage and manipulate data within a spreadsheet and draw results and conclusions from it
  4. Store and manage data within a database and extracts information from it
  5. Manage communication in a professional manner through channels such as email
  6. Research and synthesise relevant information

Like grammar, basic algebra etc pupils should be leaving school with these skills so that employees do not have to waste time teaching them just as much as they shouldn’t be having to give remedial english and maths skills.

So the question is – how to teach it?  When I see examples of schools doing fancy mobile app development projects I think to myself: are the pupils being asked to write decent technical documentation? Are they creating slidedecks to demonstrate their products as if they were seeking investment? Are they using spreadsheets or databases to track inventories and test runs?  Productivity skills can still be taught but instead of being the main focus ‘This term we learn Mail Merge!’ they become a support to what is being asked of them in collaborative group work projects.

This blog post is not an attack on computing and computational thinking in the classroom.  I am full supporter of the increased role of computer science in class.  I just do not see this approach of ‘computing’ first, everything else ‘boring’ or second as the right approach.  Productivity skills have their approach and can still be used and taught extensively and effectively in class.

Image attribution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Microsoft_Office_2013.svg in public domain

my #code365 exploits next year

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Last year I did a #project365 where I took a photo a day for a year.  Only missing one day overall I ended up with a great blog filled with lots of nice pictures which don’t really provide me much value for the future or provide anyone else any value at all.

I thought I therefore need to do something which will provide me with a bit of ‘value’ for myself and others.  It didn’t take me long to think of http://codecademy.com as an inspiration for this.  Codecademy encourages learners to hit ‘code streaks’ where you code at least once a day for a streak (site obviously run by Americans – batting streaks … :-) ).  My highest streak so far is a gigantic 5 days.  A #project365 for a year focussing on coding might therefore be a great idea.

Truth be told I have zero idea how long I am going to be able to keep this up but believe me I will have a go.  I will probably be blogging on a daily basis mostly about what I do in http://codecademy.com but will also try and blog about anything else I learn whilst teaching myself Python.  I realise also that this blog might become of use to other ICT teachers who are learning how to teach computer science so I may blog as well about general programming and GCSE issues.

Good luck to me … I think I will need it!

Baseline #assessment of #digitalstudies skills using @yacapaca

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A short while ago on the wiki (http://digitalstudieswiki.pbworks.com) a discussion was started about baselining pupils in #digitalstudies. That reminds me I need to add this blog once I have done to that page.

I left that discussion for a while but have come back to this issue as our own school exam week is very fast approaching. Recently I have been trying out http://yacapaca.com which is an online quiz engine. Yacapaca I think is immensely powerful and at being able to set quizzes and analyse the results. It has a bit of a learning curve but I stuck to it and I think it os starting to pay off.

On yacapaca I have set up an authoring group for baselining #digitalstudies. Within the group you setup questions and then from the questions you build tests.

The group is here

http://yacapaca.com/teacher/agroup/5798/ (hope the link is visible, may need to create an account to view)

I have started building questions for our exam and I hope to have 40 questions set up and ready to go by tomorrow. But here is where you can both benefit and help. Obviously you can use the test as well yourself (I don’t know whether Yacapaca can compare results between schools but would be cool if it could) but if you have any ideas for questions for baseline tests I would very much welcome those questions been added to the pool.

Each question is tagged in the following way:
- tagged with one of the four #digitalstudies strands
- tagged with a topic such as programming, spreadsheets or databases
- tagged with a level. These are not NC levels but a simple level numbering system where the first test I am building is a level 1 which every pupil from year 7 to 9 will get (resetting the clock almost). Next year I will build a level 2 test for year 8′s and up and so on. Eventually if the year 7′s get too good at Level 1 then year 6 will start doing level 1 test and the other tests will be readjusted. I know I have had a go at levelling in the past but it is simply a tool to manage who gets what tests.

Hopefully this could grow and multiple with a whole bunch of questions in the framework of #digitalstudies strands!

#Minecraftedu Pedagogy – some thoughts

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I’ve been talking with Santeri Koivisto who is one of the head honchos to do with Minecraftedu about issues to do with the game and pedagogy. This post is therefore a summation of what I feel about Minecraftedu and pedagogy.

To start I headed back to the wikipedia page on pedagogy and the following line right at the top stands out:

“Its aims range from the full development of the human being to skills acquisition”

So – how does Minecraftedu contribute to the science of education and the development of human beings and skills acquisition? Firstly I am not trying to be grandiose and claiming that Minecraft is vital to the development of pupils but I do think it is a good tool which teachers can use as part of their armoury in class. I’m not one of these teachers who tends to think in one dogmatic way or another. I think that skilled teachers should be using a range of tools and approaches in class. Essentially there is a time for getting pupils to be facing the front and learning in a ‘lecture’ style format and there is a time for pupils to be learning independently and setting their own tasks and boundaries. This is where Minecraft and its Edu flavour come in.

Well development of a human being and skills acquisition to me go hand in hand. One acquires a skill it helps develop one as a person. In turn one develops in maturity and outlook in life and this could lead the ability to pick up new skills. It’s not a perfect symbiosis but it works.

Minecraft I think does both.  It allows for the general development of pupils and encourages skill acquisition.  It does this through allowing pupils the opportunity to work independently, or as some people might say self – directed learning, but still within an educational environment.  If a pupil is playing Minecraft at home there still may be some benefit but they lose out on the nature and atmosphere of playing the game but within a school environment.  Playing Minecraft at school gives them access to educational support primarily through their teacher so that when they do something within the game their teacher can then respond to that, challenge them and then help shape what the pupil could be doing next.  This to me is part of Minecraft helping pupils develop as individuals.

As for skills acquisition Minecraft’s collaborative nature is the key here.  Yes there is some benefit to pupils being able to design stuff in single player but for me the real and obvious benefit is working as groups in multiplayer.  This is where pupils are being compelled to work together without it being overtly directed by the teacher.  This isn’t a typical classroom where pupils are forced to work in groups by their teacher but a classroom where pupils can either choose to work as a group or not.  I’ve heard two pupils who weren’t even working together negotiate a boundary between their building areas as they found some nice geographical elements they wanted to use which were close to each other.

We spend so much time in school getting pupils to work according to our rules and guidelines that sometimes we forget that they can be quite good at setting up these rules and guidelines themselves through collaborative discussion with one another.  In doing so, as long as there is a teacher present to pick up on pupils and groups who are getting into a negative feedback loop, pupils are without knowing it beginning to build the collaborative team building skills they need for future careers.

If i think about any further issues to write about to do with Minecraftedu and pedagogy I will continue to post them.

My experience and some advice with starting #minecraftedu in school

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I’ve written a bit about getting #MinecraftEdu going in my school so far and now that it is successfully up and running I thought it would be a good idea to summarise what’s happened and give some advice for those who are also considering it.

 Technical Issues

Looking back I would say the one major issue we had was the fact that our school uses mandatory roaming profiles.  This means that Minecraftedu version 0.982 would not work as it installed to the %Appdata% folder.  On our network this is a standard folder which although can be temporarily altered is reset once pupils log off.

Fortunately 0.983 prerelease was put out last week as a test release prior to a fuller 0.985 release.  This brought in a very welcome feature of being able to choose the install location of the full minecraftedu install. This meant we could ignore %appdata% and install it the 25 computers we wanted to use.  Our server was then setup (interestingly using a 6 year old desktop which works reasonably fine) and we could login and get going with our first maps.

First run through

I decided to spend a week in school of getting pupils to go through the tutorial world in lessons.  After that they would only use Minecraft as part of set activities or during lunchtimes.  I have been introducing it to Year 7 through to year 9 (more senior pupils have been seeing it when they can get a chance).

It was an exhausting week to be honest.  What I discovered very soon was that amongst my pupils (all girls) many of them had never manipulated an avatar in a 3D space on screen.  Getting them to move in a 3D environment therefore took a lot of work in helping them understand the relationship between mouse and WASD.  I found a number even after an hour were positioning their mouse, then using a key to move in a direction, then turning their mouse and then going back to the keys etc.  This is not a criticism of Minecraft but an indication of a potential benefit of Minecraft in teaching pupils how to operate in a 3D space.  A lot of serious jobs involve the use of 3D environments and this is a good opportunity to start to build in those skills.

What I also noticed was that those pupils who were struggling to move in 3D space were then struggling immensely with the ‘on-rails’ nature of the tutorial.  They could see they were being left behind and then when they hit an issue which they really struggled with (such as the jumping and swimming tutorial) they started to get very frustrated with themselves and the game.  In sorting out a number of girls in one class I missed that one girl spent easily 5 minutes attempting the hard jump in that initial house.  When I could see tears were beginning to form I teleported her past it but I felt this was not the best outcome as she now knows she couldn’t complete it.

Some of my girls are very skilled when it comes to minecraft (one or two I occasionally need to ask for advice!) and they were quite happy running through the tutorial world.  On average though (skipping or shortening some tasks) we got through in about an hour.

Some suggestions therefore

I like the tutorial map a lot but I also have some reservations.  I can understand the need to train pupils in basic minecraft skills but the mildly ‘on-rails’ nature of the world I think goes against the premise of Minecraft being an open-world sandbox where the primary motivation is ‘explore’.  What I have therefore started working on is my own tutorial world which will cover some of the basics but also include more advanced stuff like redstone or rail.

I think this would be a better approach for pupils who are very unfamiliar with not only Minecraft but also using a 3D game environment.  By taking the tutorial aspects off-rails pupils will be able to choose to attempt an obstacle without feeling like they have to keep up with the rest of the class.  It will also mean they can bail out of a tutorial without any pressure.

Some general building advice

Not only are the extra Minecraftedu blocks awesome but the building tools like fill and place are great as well.  Fill/place can be a bit ‘quirky’ and I’ve had a couple of situations where I forgot it was on, put a block down, walked to another part of the map and started building again to suddenly find the map filled with a giant slab.  The extra building tools like long distance building work nicely although I’m not quite used to changing the set and dig distances.

I started to use the fill tool to create small areas where pupils were blocked from editing by digging down a block or two .  I eventually realised that even this would take a while.  A simple solution was, with the fill tool enabled,  to dig all the way down to the bottom layer of the bedrock, place a disallow build block, and then move to another location on the map far away and put another disallow build block in the bottom bedrock layer.  This created a massive area whIch I control and the rule now is that area now belongs to me and outside that border pupils can do what they like.  It did take some work to draw the border in but i think it was worth it.

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Only a little bit of work done so far but hopefully this will grow.

I remain thoroughly convinced as to the worth of Minecraftedu in school.  It has a lot of educational value but I also think it has worth simply as an enrichment activity where pupils can simply do something they enjoy without feeling they have to meet a teachers requirements all the time.  As a teacher I still have control and knowing that my server has been setup not to be a public server means that I know it’s only my pupils on there.