Fortnightly Mailing

Regularly updated snippets, with RSS feed

I bookmark things I find using a service called FriendFeed. This page updates itself automatically with the last five items. You can subscribe to these snippets by RSS, or on Twitter; and you can review the last 30 of them here.

Aaron Sloman's "What is computational thinking?"

Updated 16 November 2012

On 11 September Aaron Sloman gave an invited talk at the 2012 ALT Conference entitled "What is computational thinking? Who needs it? Why? How can it be learnt? (Can it be taught?)". Above is a very comprehensive Slideshare version of the talk, which is best viewed "full-screen". A video of the talk is available on the ALT YouTube channel, and I've embedded it below.

Udacity's approach to course improvement

Small "on re-reading this" edits almost immediately after publication.

You may have read this fierce critique of one of Udacity's courses by Daniel Collins, an experienced  and articulate community college maths teacher who will for sure appreciate at first hand the challenges faced by students who do not take naturally to learning mathematics.

What particularly caught my eye was the unusually open way in which Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity and teacher of the Statistics 101 course has responded to the points made by Collins, and the gracious and constructive way in which Collins acknowledges this.

All three posts are well worth reading, along with their developing discussion-threads.

This is the kind of relatively open and self-critical dialogue that needs to be taking place between people who understand the problems and possiblities of the different kinds of mass courses that are currently under development, and who understand their fields from the point of view of how people learn. And if I am judging the underlying quality of a mass course provider, then its openness to criticisms and the extent to which it is committed to incremental improvement in its provision is a key consideration.

Talks I gave at the 2012 ALT Conference

Last week I took part in my twelfth ALT conference. This was the last one in which I will have had any kind of production role (and a minor one at that). Here are links to two talks I gave.

1. Learning Technology – a backward and forward look. This was a somewhat chaotic personal reflection, the first half of which was better prepared than the second. Presentation, with notes. [PDF]. The ALT YouTube channel now has a video of the talk.

2. Learning Technology-based interventions in adult learning: how should priorities be determined? This was a PechaKucha session - 9 slides at 45 second intervals - written with Clive Shepherd, Dick Moore, and Adrian Perry. Presentation. Notes. Abstract.

It is a matter of regret.... [Hillsborough Disaster post from 2012 updated]

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with Press Secretary Bernard Ingham, second right, and others at Hillsborough on 16 April 1989, the day after the disaster [Source: Page 185 of the Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel]

[Addendum from Inquest added 26 April 2016]

With the publication of the coruscating Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel [PDF], I am rereading my copies of Lord Justice Taylor's August 1989 Interim Report [PDF] and January 1990 Final Report into the 15 April 1989 Hillsborough Stadium Disaster (Cm 759 and Cm 962).

I am also looking again at my copies of a few papers about the disaster, including letters to the press by the then Labour MP for Hillsborough Martin Flannery, and materials from  Sheffield Trades Union Council, including the Trades Council's 3 October 1989 media release "calling for Police Officers, irrespective of rank, found to have been responsible in any way for the disaster, to be dismissed",  and the Trades Council's submissions to the Taylor Inquiry of May and October 1989, in which I had a hand at the time.

Snippets from 18 August to 17 September

How Are Teachers in Finland Evaluated? Amanda Ripley's WSJ article appears via @dianeravitch on her driven & excellent "Site to discuss better education for all". - http://dianeravitch.net/2012...

 

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Interesting sections on infrastructure and on universities in this (. @xtophercook) speech by Mike Bloomberg (Mayor of New York), looking back 4 years after the onset of the financial crisis. - http://www.mikebloomberg.com/index...

 

 

The end of the beginning? Guest post about the ESRC/EPSRC TEL programme by Richard Noss

The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Research Programme ends this year and a final public event showcasing our hardware, software, and thematic work is set for 6 November at the Royal Society (see www.tel.ac.uk). [The 17 minute documentary from the final public meeting is here.]

It’s an obvious time to assess where we are, where we started from, and where we are going. TEL was a result of 2003’s ‘consultation on e-learning’ and ‘An e-learning research agenda’ report calling for interdisciplinary research into technology’s potential for improving education. The programme initially formed part the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (which ended in 2010 - see www.tlrp.org).