Friday Reflection!

I've seen this before!

Twitter and the real world!

+Philip Spalding  

also on holc.co.uk and twitter: @HOLC1

Half-term week in Suffolk and Essex.  Little call on my time from Cambridgeshire so have been working on the Haverhill Online Learning Community.  Have been confident enough in the content and where we are going to start to use the twitter account!  

Twitter does require a bit of effort as I have found over the years that I have had personal twitter accounts.  Finding people to follow is not a problem.  Getting people to follow and continue to follow is the challenge.  Choosing who you follow back when they have followed you is also a judgement call.  Have had this on Google+ Communities recently where obviously some people passionate in their interests  have invited me to some potentially dubious groups that at best conflict a little with the web presence I am trying to maintain.  Once it's out on the web, it's out or exposed so to speak!  Some of the invites are enough to scare the horses (old English saying)!

Gathering pace this week then, HOLC has tweeted a bit,  but not a lot?  In the #fridayreflection for HOLC I have described the meeting I attended yesterday organised by +Elaine Carr of Best of Haverhill at a local hotels' conference venue.  The value of meeting people such as the local mayor and other stakeholder groups will often only reveal themselves on these stages.  You cannot do it all online in a local community you have to meet face to face!  It also provides that personal connection that builds lasting local networks!  

MOOCs this week have seen Coursera become the largest online campus.  The numbers at 2.8 million are still relatively small compared to total populations of students in universities globally but it is massive grow than in just a year!  I struggle at the moment to find the time and inclination to enage with the MOOCs I have signed up for at present.  Work commitments and other interests such as HOLC are taking precedence.  The fact that I already have a Masters and I am not depending on future advancement  upon completing the course are other factors.  It will be interesting to see the measure of drop outs at the end of the first year from the people like myself who have joined out of curiosity to see how they work.  

Genuine figures of engagement of students who are using the MOOC to further their career as opposed to attending a full time residential campus course will be difficult at the measure in my opinion at the moment.  the question will be are they sustainable from a financial point of view?  Should they be sustainable from a financial point of view as a direct replacement for campus based instruction (or do I mean learning)?  Should they be considered as part of the role of providing access to universal education that Universities/Colleges have to satisfy in order to be allowed to grant degrees?

So my reflection for this week is can the MOOC stand on it's own or is it part of the blend of learning offered by Universities and Colleges for the benefit of society?

Next week getting back with the plan for spending more time on the OLC Google + Community that +Jeannie Crowley facilitates and trying to do some Python Programming on the Raspberry Pi! 

 

  

The Friday Reflection

Cat thinking it's in Charge!  You
probably realise it's an old photo!

Last thoughts for 2012?

Well we all survived the Mayan End of the world, didn't we?  I hope the festive period lived up to all expectations.  Now we are in that period of reflection for most who are not returning to work until at least the 2nd of January 2013. The end of the year review not quite ready for today but then we still have 3 days left of this one to go! 

The week has certainly been busy.  I have taken the view that if I am to grow the Haverhill Online Learning Community I would need to try and interest people in the time that they might be bored with festive TV.   The time on their hands might be pushing them towards career or lifestyle choices for 2013.  Their New Years Resolution list of good intentions is being written. With this in mind I have been avoiding the pub and the once a year drinkers and committing as much to possible to the websites, blogs and Google Plus communities.

I have picked up a few members before Christmas for the Learning Community whom I am very pleased to have on board.  I have set out a calendar of events to give a bit of focus to HOLC (Haverhill Online Learning Community).  The use of Google+ Hangouts, SlideSpeech (many thanks to +John Graves for this resource) and Google + Communities within the context of the interactions between the community I hope will prove enlightening.  The Circles feature is also being used (I will have to review some of them for relevance) to not so much as fine targeting tool but a  broadcast medium.  I have noticed there are many Google Plussers in the same circles.  It would be interesting to find out how many active Google Plussers there are actually out there!

The first resources for HOLC projects have been uploaded, a "100 Grid" for Keys stage 1 and 2 Maths for parents to download for their children to use or use with them.  A SlideSpeech presentation is needed to illustrate it's use but that should be be a mere trifle, hopefully.  This fits in with the first project on the Calendar Maths for Parents Week and the Number Square page.  Later topics range from Lifestyle and Leisure topics such as Local History, Hactivate Nursey Rhymes.  The work-life balance topic focussing on a degree of cross over in wellbeing is the Introduction to Telework Week Project.  This is one of my interests as a former director of the Telework Association. I will be building up a bank of materials and using the Google+ Hangouts and Communities Group to explore this topic in the context of Haverhill, a rural area.  A follow up week is planned to coincide with one of the local trade exhibitions.

Revisiting the Online Learning Collective is a priority.  I have not yet in the busy time of the last few weeks written the Python code for the Google Course Builder Project:  Project Scratch.  I have invested in a Kindle Textbook Core Python Programmng  and am busily ploughing my way through this, along with a few diversions into Sicily with Inspector Montalbano.  After all it is supposed to be the holidays! 

    

  

Friday Reflection

In ancient shadows

Well last week in November been and gone!  Have spent an interesting week working in Ely and refining the Haverhill Online Learning Community(HOLC).  The poor camera phone photograph shows the view from the window towards the cathedral (better images can be seen on this Google Search).  Ely Cathedral  is a successor to the original buildings recorded in 673 AD.  These were founded by St Etheldreda  who was a daughter of King Anna of East Anglia.  Thus the site of  worship and learning pre-dates the founding of the English State.

Ancient learning is further emphasised in the city (city in the old sense that it has a cathedral) with the King's School Ely  founded in 970 AD turning such old boys out as Edward the Confessor, the patron Saint of England before the popular symbol of St George took over fully in the 1300s.

Ely has had it's rebels in the past.  Hereward the Wake who opposed the Normans taking over and whom some think was the basis for  Robin Hood legend, used the  fen (wet) lands around the Isle of Ely to avoid capture .  The other rebel of note who left an indelible mark on British History was Oliver Cromwell.  Oliver Cromwell lived in the city for 10 years prior to turning the English Parliament on it's head and creating a republic that lasted for about 13 years.  Ely has had a lot of influence on shaping what we now call the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland over the last 1300 years!

Side step into history over  and back to task!  The Reflection for the week!  Have continued to use what I have learnt from the OFLC (Online Faculty Learning Community) of Bank Street College New York to develop our own local Online Learning Community.  We have incorporated a SlideSpeech generated presentation as a link on the homepage of HOLC.  There have been many emails off to various different people and have received some very positive replies.  We have contacted the makers of StudyRoom  (as used by edX and Coursera) and have been granted a private room in principle  for HOLC for which we are very grateful.  Hopefully this should be set up and being used by the New Year!

Coding has started to be be looked at again but not to the stage where I can upload anything yet to the OFLC.  Getting excited though at the possibilities as I delve further into the coding.  Want to get a Raspberry Pi  and programme in Python on this platform, may even be able to run Chrome OS on it as well will have to look into this?  Really cheap basic access for less than £40 (with appropriate accessories).

So next week continue programming with course. Gather collaborators for HOLC locally and further a field. Have an idea of trying to get U3A  members in Haverhill involved in Local History projects, the Church Crawlers and Historians, Digital Camera Group, Garden Group and Art Group.  Already put the information out to local members so will see what happens.  Contact the myriad of local groups and charities (even our county council libraries are being run by a charitable trust on behalf of the council) and present the case for peer to peer learning!

Couple of more weeks of potentially travelling to Ely until the end of the school session.  I have a good journey along picturesque country roads.  The only major "traffic jam" is waiting for the race horses to cross the Fordham Road from  Exning (village where St Etheldreda was born, link back to first part of the reflection, knew I'd be able to get it in somewhere) as they go out to exercise on the gallops!  Very pleasant to watch as they come of the mist!

  

Coding for Google Course Builder

Stepping up to Code

Over the past fifteen years or so I have flirted with coding in my position as Head of Science and Head of ICT in a middle school.  The requirements for coding has not been a part of the UK education systems' relationship with computers in the classroom.  The use of WYSWYG applications such as Macromedia Flash, Microsoft's FrontPage is about as close as most  teachers of ICT have come to coding.  We now have a need for coding skills in schools.   

Having tinkered about with coding in HTML and other languages along with  a very long ago remembered relationship with early BASIC and Machine Code a formal "Hello World" approach was needed.  So looking for a "modern" start I enrolled on the edX course Computer Science CS50x.  This is a whole semester course (half an academic year to those of us used to British University systems of terms).  So far this has been a great course, something that should feature in Year 1 of all UK university courses no matter what your discipline as a core passing course (ie you not do have a grade just pass or fail).  Certainly something similar  would have been useful later when I was grappling with analysing data from large field and pot experiments for efficacy of fertilisers.

For the short term I needed to get up to speed again (?) very quickly with how to code.  I selected a course from ALISON.com , Diploma in Programming in C.  Having had a little experience with C,  I started to work my way through the course.  A little hard to follow as a lot of information delivered by white board and screen capture, since there are no notes to download.  This is in contrast with the edX course where there are full transcripts of the lecture and the possibility to download resources to go on your iPod Touch, MP3 player, PDF on Kindle etc.  The ALISON course is quite taxing on the memory where assessments come about with 80% pass rate needed for the assessment.  It is possible to bale out and restart the start the test.  I needed to do this twice since the string reading for the answer and the  question were often not specific enough to allow success.  A feature of validation is that at any time after certification you can  login and sit a test again to validate your understanding for anybody that is interested.  This makes sure that skills are maintained to be current apparently.

So tools downloaded and followed  so far with ALISON are the Codeblocks C++ compiler .  A useful website is  Codepad which is an online compiler and more importantly also covers Python.  Python is used with the SDK AppEngine to create Google Course Builder e-Learning Courses.   Python also seems to be embraced as well by the Raspberry Pi community.  

So conclusion can now programme a little more efficiently  in C++ with a better understanding of the Computer Science.  Next step is to start to get to grips with Python and look to writing a Google Course Builder App!  

Google Course Builder: Pythons and Apples

Android vs Apple

A school decides that that pupils can keep their mobile devices on.  This may go against most school policies but will become more common.  This is the choice of a Federation of schools in Cambridge.  They have gone down the route of having work available on the website.  IPods are the device of choice.  IPads would be even better.  Having a niece attending the Federation the cost implication is something that this of concern.

The cost of using the mobile device for data transfer is prohibitive if it with 3G connection.  The coverage in East Anglia is quite sparse outside the A12 and A14 corridor.  So WiFi hot-spots would be the connection of choice.  The so called free WiFi operated by most internet providers are not actually free as you have to be a subscriber to that IP.  "Public" WiFi within a school usually requires a key or Login, a bit like a Fon account.  In Cambridge there is a cheaper alternative the Cambridge Matrix outside of school, allegedly there are many places in Cambridge where access is actually free.

Assuming the connection you have is cost effective what should parents be consulted on if they are being asked to buy the device that enables the education.  The choice is obviously now between two platforms Apple based or Android based.  The speed which Apple appears to be turning out new products is a bit like a post cold war arms race.  Can parents afford to have the most recent Apple incarnation?  Question need also to be asked on the reliability of the technology and ethos of releases  as Apple struggle with complaints of  handset   quality and access to Apps. This also against the background of the reliability of Apple suppliers as their Chinese suppliers experience industrial unrest!

Android is available across a number of different suppliers.  The solutions are often cheaper than Apple's and may with Android based operating systems have greater longevity.  The use of  an Android fork version by Amazon for it's Kindle Fire tablets, Google's own Nexus.  The Nook (Barnes and Noble's) offering also provide some new insights to 21st Century digital classrooms.  The big question is what is driving this the needs of the students or needs of the needs of the companies' to establish their product as the must have educational tool to exclusion of other platforms.  

Sitting in the background is the Software giant Microsoft.  I can consider myself one of the first generation of IT literate teachers to be trained.  Owing to the nature of Geography and the School Centrered Initial Teacher Training Course in 1996 to 1997 we were provided with Laptops.  In conjunction with BT had the possibility of using video conferencing to link up schools and training sites in the hinterland of the north east Essex coast.  The Microsoft Academy status of some schools has in my limited experience of being attached to a said Microsoft Academy had not been implemented across whole school.  Looking at the website again it appears to be again a system designed for large organisations and expensive laptop and PC solutions with  limited portability between institutions unless you are a licensed Microsoft Academy or educator.

So the choice.  On strictly cost basis both for educator and student the route of Android would seem to be most likely to promote longevity of resource relevance both technological and economically.  This is also a consideration as the nature of classrooms change for 11 to 18 year olds where the educator does not need to be in front of the pupils all the time.  Investment in buildings is increasingly becoming a concern in the UK, the size and shape of schools is proposed to be standardised.  Digital classrooms and virtual classrooms will increasingly be looked at especially by rural education providers.  As school transport becomes more expensive educating pupils in their own neighborhood in smaller groups in rural areas may become an option for part of the week.  The term Teleschooling may become an everyday term. 

So more Google Course builder investigation.  Today I am downloading Python and preparing to have a go at my first coding in the next few days.

The Google Classroom

Online Course delivery

A variety of online courses are now on offer (edX, Coursera, ALISON).  Monitoring the Google Teacher newsletter there is now a set of course construction that they are making available.  

A set of Wiki pages (https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/wiki/CourseBuilderChecklist) outline the methodology of producing a course.  This may or may not lead eventually to a set of standards for Google accreditation for the course.  

An initial reaction is that the materials do require a degree of computer literacy beyond the average skills of a recent UK  PGCE graduate.  The skills are therefore arguably beyond the remit of a lot of the profession.

However, using some of the courses offered by edX, Coursera and ALISON it would be possible to acquire the skills.  The use of Google tools will probably become part of Education degrees as time goes on as tailored curriculum become more individual and compulsory.

In the next few weeks I am looking to get to grips with the software and looking to relate the development of a course for my own purposes.  As a former Head of Department for Science and ICT in a middle school I will be looking to develop initially short courses on analytical skills in Science and Safety.

So grab the Python by the tail and see what happens!