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Yesterday I spent most of the day as a judge in the local Opti-Minds Challenge. Opti-Minds is a problem solving event/competition. Groups of at least 4 have to develop a 10 minute presentation/play to present a solution to an open-ended question. I volunteered for the Social Sciences challenge which was to develop a new method of education because of changes in technology and the observation that no-one wants to be a teacher anymore....more...
The following graphs are based on statistical information provided by the Queensland Studies Authority. The intent was to explore what was happening in terms of enrolments in the Senior High School course Information and Processing Technology (IPT)....more...
In an earlier post I wondered if how high school classes in Information Technology(IT)/Computer Science(CS) are being taught is turning students off and, if so, is this why enrolment numbers are dropping. In the comments on that post Tony suggests some other reasons for this decline. Including the observation that IT courses in local schools (both Tony and I live in Queensland, Australia) are primarily seen to serve the needs of students who want to be IT professionals. The further suggestion is that since...more...
As part of my study to become a high school teacher (Information Technology and Mathematics) I have to develop a unit of work for a senior class (defined here as being in Grades 10-12). As part of this process I'm meant to...more...
So, gamification is one of the flavours of the month in the ed tech community. The Khan Academy are doing it and there's a growing list of people writing about it: various gaming folk are talking about how it might work, an EDUCAUSE article, some smart folk are doing interesting stuff around Moodle course design and professional development, and some high school teachers are actually doing it....more...
Following up on my previous suggestion that High-school classes in information technology may be turning students off IT, I decided to do a quick literature search to see what was out there. Ain't procrastination grand. Here's what I found. I haven't had a chance to read them, back to the assignment....more...
The following is a quote from Steffy and English (1997, p. 6) cited in Ramirez (1999, p. 206) about schools from a standardised test in the USA....more...
This post from Mark Guzdial is the last of three looking at a PhD thesis examining the influence of using computational/programming approaches to teaching physics. This post talks about the finding in the thesis that students attitudes towards computational modelling became more unfavourable after instruction....more...
The presentation slides below are the basis for a talk I'll be giving this Thursday as part of my study toward a Graduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching. The aim is to analyse the Digital Education Revolution (DER) and identify any shortcomings and strengths (hint: I found it heavy on the former and light on the latter). The talk is being done in Elluminate to other students. Don't know the connection details, but if you wanted to participate I could chase that up. Let me know....more...