I wrote this a year ago, which was even before freely-available programs like Claude (especially Claude) could whip up a useful program in five minutes or less. Needless to say, I still believe the views I expressed here are correct. Perhaps even more so.

Lord Puttnam once said something every interesting at a conference I attended. Having been a film producer, he said it used to be the case that to be a successful cinematographer you had to be able to take a camera apart and put it together. Now, none of those sort of skills  are required: you need a whole different set of skills in order to find employment in that occupation.

I believe a similar thing is true in the realm of “digital education”. Almost nobody needs a gasp of computer programming, and even fewer need to know how computers actually work.

Now, if you’re talking about computational thinking as a reason to study Computer Science, that’s different:

“Computational thinking” offers insightful ways to view how information operates in many natural and engineered systems.” From a Royal Society report.

I’m not entirely convinced that Computer Science is the only, or even the best, way of teaching computational thinking, but at least it’s a sound reason – and an honest reason – for suggesting it. How many pupils will need to use coding in their future employment? How many people in the games industry itself (one of the loudest voices in this debate) need to have coding skills? Almost none of them.

Also, given that in order to succeed as a programmer you need high level mathematical skills too, telling kids that lots of doors will open for them if they take Computer Science or something similar is, I would suggest, somewhat naive at best. In fact, I’m almost certain that universities would be better off insisting that students come to them tabula rasa as far as “proper” computer programming is concerned.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all in favour of encouraging young people to explore computer science options in education and employment, but not by misleading them, even if unintentionally.

Every so often there is a sort of collective nostalgia for the time when you had to do real programming. Just about every conference I go to includes a presentation that contains a photo of the BBC Micro. Using the BBC Micro, and programming with it, was fun in a way – but only because there weren’t that many alternatives in school at the time. In fact, at around that time someone drew my attention to the Atari ST. With its graphical interface, and WYSIWYG applications, it was the obvious choice for doing productive and creative work. The BBC wordprocessor of the day required you to type a code in the margin in order to make words bold or underlined, and you couldn’t see what the document looked like until you had printed it out. In what sense of the word could that be described as “fun”? It was a monumental waste of time. What’s more, the Atari had its own version of BASIC so you didn’t really need the BBC Micro at all.

My recollection of coding at the time is one of spending ages copying lines of code from a magazine article into the computer, only to have it tell you, when you typed “RUN”, that there was an error on Line 1210. Or of writing a program yourself only to realise, with horror, that you’d forgotten to put a line number in somewhere near the beginning, meaning that you had to delete everything back to that point. Not fun at all.

As for understanding how computers work, in the sense of being able to take them apart and put them together again, it’s a completely unnecessary skill, at least for 95% of the population. It may be fun, but only if you’re that way inclined. I have known people who like taking car engines apart, making their own candles and refitting their own kitchens. I don’t think I have suffered in any way at all by having no interest in developing any of those skills.

One thing I did like doing was making and editing films as a hobby. The editing was a skilled and labour-intensive job, and completely different from digital editing. I used to have a lot of fun doing it, and would spend hours at it – but I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that kids should be able to edit “real” film as part of a modern video-making course.

Admittedly, the early days of computing in schools were satisfying and fun in the way that pioneering and undergrowth-clearing activities can be, but I’d never want to inflict any of it onto people these days. I regard the nostalgic views expressed about computers and computing in the the same way as I regard the way people speak about the last world war: nothing they say will ever convince me that it was an experience anyone should have foist upon them.

   

Although this is a few years old now (2018), it has stood the test of time.It covers a huge amount of ground including, I was delighted to discover, the learning theories of Piaget and Vygotsky.

No mention of Bruner though, as far as I can tell, and Ausubel is mentioned — in the references, not in the body of the text.

Strong points, though, are the book’s even-handedness, questions to consider, and the research focus sections.

   

In my experience, most people run most meetings really badly. What are the most common pitfalls, and how can you avoid them?

Meetings should always result in something happening. Even if the meeting was a discussion, an exchange of views, there should be an action arising from it -- a good example here would be for someone to produce a summary of the views expressed.

Colleagues should know in advance what the meeting is going to be about. All too often, the Agenda appears at the last minute. You must give people time to prepare, especially if you want to have a genuine discussion about something.

Papers for the meeting should be made available well in advance. I have attended meetings where a 108-page document relating to the meeting was emailed to everyone 25 minutes before the meeting was due to start. That is unacceptable, and simply lays you open to suspicion of not intending to have a genuine discussion.

Do bear in mind, though, the well-known Parkinson’s Law of meetings, namely: a discussion about whether to install a nuclear reactor in your classroom will go through on the nod in about five minutes, but a discussion on whether to increase the contribution to the departmental tea fund will take three hours.

Someone should take notes in the meeting. As you are unlikely to have a secretary to do that, the fairest thing to do is take it in turns. But note that it is very difficult to take notes and chair a meeting. When it's your turn to take notes, you might consider asking someone else to chair it. That would also have the benefit of giving others a chance to step into your shoes and gain some valuable experience in their own career advancement.

Minutes are meant to be a record, not a transcription. Keep them brief and to the point. And make sure they are distributed within a day or two. The person taking the minutes should always give them to you for your approval before disseminating them to the rest of the team.

Minutes must always include action points, with a named person responsible. Note that the person responsible must be selected in the meeting, not afterwards, and only if they are present and agree -- it could be considered unprofessional to assign a task to someone in their absence, especially if it's a task that nobody else wishes to do.

Meetings should have set start and finish times. Even better, there should be some guidance in the Agenda as to how long each item will take. If these timings turn out to be optimistic, curtail the discussion and put the item(s) high on the next meeting's Agenda.

The meetings should start on time, and finish on time. No waiting for people who haven't arrived: the most important people are the ones who are actually there, and it's unfair to keep them waiting. It's also self-defeating, because they will learn that meetings start later than the time specified, so next time they will arrive late as well, because there is always something that "I just need to do quickly before the meeting."

Meetings should not be so frequent that they end up being held for their own sake -- everybody is too busy for that. Neither should they be so infrequent that there is no opportunity for a team spirit to build up. You'll have to judge this for yourself, but I would suggest that a meeting every two or three weeks is about right. If that is very difficult to fit in, consider a different pattern and structure: say, a full meeting every month, with a ten minute get-together at the end of each two week period in-between -- or an audio or online meeting just to "touch base".

Sometimes it may be impossible for someone to get to the meeting, but that need not be a problem. It's now both possible and easy to hold meetings which include people who are not physically present.

I'd also add that you could invite guest speakers to your meeting via Zoom or Google Meet, or a similar webcam-based solution. If you really wanted to push the boat out you could ask a member of your team who is attending a conference or an exhibition to report in live through their laptop.

Finally, even though they may not have a choice in the matter, the members of your team are giving up valuable time to attend the meeting. Very few people like meetings. Sugar the pill by making sure refreshments are available. If possible, invite a guest speaker in, or ask one of your team to prepare a presentation. In other words, make it a bit different: you might like the sound of your own voice, but others might not!

This is an expanded version of an article originally published on 5th April 2007.

   

I enjoy a good keynote, especially if it “delivers”. To my mind, a keynote should be informative, inspirational and entertaining. All too often, however, keynotes by so-called “visionary” speakers leave me feeling both uninspired and uninformed. I am left with having been entertained, which is all very well, but unless it’s an after-dinner speech I’m also left feeling cheated. So these days, where there is a choice between attending a celebrity speaker’s talk or that of an “ordinary” teacher who is doing great stuff in his or her classroom, I will almost always choose the latter. In fact, I have developed a kind of rubric that I follow when deciding whether or not to attend a celebrity presentation. It consists of a number of questions, which I’ve written up below. Feel free to use them if you think they are useful. Some of these questions cannot be answered until you have attended a talk given by the person in question. But you will know for next time.

We have a problem?

Do they have anything substantive to say? I’ve attended too many talks where a summary of the lecture would accurately be given as:

“There’s a problem in education and somebody needs to do something about it.”

What I’d like to know is: what is the problem, and what do you think ought to be done about it? After all, you’re being paid to talk to us as the expert.

What’s the answer?

Has the speaker suggested a solution? A good thing to do would be to suggest solutions, I think. Maybe these would be visionary, and for some time in the distant future, which wouldn’t be wonderful, but would at least be something.

What can be done in practical terms, right now?

I often hear a keynote celebrity speaker end their talk with:

“We need to have a debate about this.”

I used to listen out for the next logical sentence, which would be something like:

“And to facilitate this debate I have set up a website/online survey/conference… to which you are all invited to contribute.”

I say I used to listen for that, but the second sentence never comes. I did once, in my younger and more naive days, take literally the offer of a keynote speaker who said:

“If anyone is interested in starting a debate on this subject, come and see me after the talk.”

I did, and his answer to my statement that I would be interested in taking part in such a debate was:

“Great. Here’s my card. Phone my PA and she’ll arrange for you to have a tour of our offices.”

I wasn’t sure how that constituted a debate, and so I never took him up on the offer.

Has the speaker worked in my kind of school?

When I listen to ideas proposed by a speaker, I always try to picture myself putting it into practice in some of the schools in which I worked. I’ve worked in tough places. I was very innovative, but in my experience you can’t just do something and hope it works. The kids in tough schools tend to be very street wise. If they see a system, they know how to work it pretty quickly. Even some of the best-intentioned plans fall down because of this fact. (In one school I worked in, the school counsellor always offered distressed kids a cup of tea in her office. The predictable result was that every teacher had at least one “distressed” kid in every lesson who needed to see the counsellor, winking at the rest of the class as they left the room. As it wasn’t the same pupil each time I think they had devised a rota system,)

I’ve worked in non-tough schools too, where the kids are willing to learn and are full of enthusiasm for new ideas. But in those schools it tends to be the parents and the senior leadership team who see no need for innovation if what you are already doing is delivering the results. (And if you’re not delivering the results, you are not likely to be given a mandate to innovate anyway. You’re more likely to be told to shape up or ship out, in effect.)

Some of the ideas I’ve heard would either be illegal, or would result in parents complaining that their children weren’t being taught. What I’m saying is that even if an idea is stupendous, there are usually practical realities to implementing it – not to do with the idea itself but the ethos of the school, legal matters, pupil and parental expectations, and the willingness of the senior leadership and other colleagues to take it seriously. I never hear any big name speakers even acknowledge such issues, let alone suggest how they might be tackled.

Does research appear to back up their claims?

Research is good, especially if it is genuine research and has not been not cherry-picked, or is not a conflation of different elements of research that has the (hopefully) inadvertent effect of giving a misleading impression, or leaves out statistically-significant evidence that would give a rather different picture.

What does your gut say?

Call me unscientific, but I do believe in the concept of professional judgement. If someone is saying something that doesn’t feel feasible, even if they appear to have the research to back it up, then I think there’s a good chance your professional expertise is making itself felt – quite literally. When I am about to spend a fait amount of money on a product, I do my research. I look at customer reviews, for example. I ask around. If someone is trying to sell me an idea, I do the same. I look for their name on the web, to see if anyone has analysed what they’ve said or felt an unease similar to myself. I look at their social media profile (which can be very telling. I once came across a self-styled “publicity expert” who had about three subscribers on Linkedin.) This can be useful if you don’t think something is quite right, but can’t quite put your finger on why not.

What about their kids – or yours for that matter?

Quite often the ultimate test of an idea is: would the person advocating it put their own kids through it? (I thought this story about Silicon Valley folk who send their kids to a non-tech school quite interesting, for example.) If you are not in a position to answer that question, then ask yourself: would I want my kids to be subjected to this? You can ask this question even if you don’t have kids. If the answer is “no”, then there is clearly a fundamental flaw in the idea. Or it’s proof of something that Andreas Schleicher said at the Education World Forum back in January 2015:

“All parents want school improvement – as long as it doesn’t involve their own children.”

(Disclaimer: that is not an exact quote.) I took that to mean that parents tend to be in favour of initiatives to improve schooling, as long as implementing them doesn’t disrupt their own kids’ education.

Conclusion

For me, if the answer to any of these questions is likely, on past experience, to be “no”, then I will spend the time networking, attending a talk by someone who has something useful to say, having a coffee break or checking my email.

For more articles like this, plus news, commentary and freebies, sign up for my ezine Digital Education, for great content, longer articles, book reviews, news, comment and guest articles.

   

10 things you can do in 5 minutes in a Computing lesson

I don't like to waste a minute. When I was teaching, even the apparent "downtime" was planned. If you have just one hour a week with students, every second counts. So how ight you make use of 5 minutes, whether at the start or end of the lesson, or between finishing one activity and starting the next? Here are my suggestions, some of which may be more appropriate to some age groups than others.

Give out homework

This is best done at the start of the lesson, not at the end as is usually the case. The reason is that it gives you more time to make sure everyone understands it and that everyone has made a note of it.

Plan your work

It’s good to allow people 5 minutes before the end of the lesson to plan what they’re going to do next lesson, especially if you’ve implemented project-based learning. Planning for next lesson also involves planning homework: if you want to crunch some numbers next time, you’re going to have to ensure that you obtain those numbers!

Print out and log off

This takes around 5 minutes sometimes, and is best done not in the last 5 minutes of the lesson, but 5 or even 10 minutes before that. The alternative is to have the kids flying out of the room while their work is still flying out of the printer. In fact, I always barred any printing in the last 15 minutes of the lesson. 

Q & A for revision

This is a good activity for the start of the lesson, once the students have settled down. What do they remember from last time? How much do they understand? (You can gain some insight into that by asking questions that require them to apply what they learnt to a new situation.)

Stimulated recall

This is where you ask a student or group of students to show their presentation or video, but instead of having them deliver a commentary, you and the rest of the students ask them questions about it. Eg why did you do X? Would Y always happen?

Q & A for terminology

A quick test or Q & A related to terminology is always useful, and can be done if there are a few minutes left before the end of the lesson.

Check your comments

As far as I am concerned, there is no such thing as being at a loose end. If a student has finished her work earlier than her friends, one thing she can do while waiting for the next class activity or the end of the lesson is check the comments you’ve made on her last piece of work.Is there something she can do right now in response?

Help a friend

If someone is struggling in the class, perhaps a student who has finished (for now) could spend a few minutes with them to help them out. Note that this should not involve doing the work for them, and you may need to give students  a brief lesson in how to give peer support — and how not to.

Update their e-portfolio

Another activity while waiting for something else to happen is for students to update their e-portfolio, or whatever equivalent you have in your school. For example, if they corrected some work in light of your comments, perhaps they can upload it if they are happy with it. Indeed, they should check when was the last time they updated their e-portfolio: once every few months is probably too infrequent.

Read something

I’m a firm believer in encouraging students to read. If you don’t have a collection of books and magazines available in your room,  they can read articles online. It would be a good idea for you to collate a few useful blogs, news and magazine websites for them to choose from.

I’m sure this is not a definitive list, but hopefully it will prove to be a good starting point.

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