So I think I might start blogging again, and I need a test post to see it my workflow is still functioning.
This is it.
Every Lesson Should Be A Hackathon
a note for readers outside of the UK. Year 10 students are equivalent to 8th-grade in the US
This year I wanted to do things differently. It was an experiment; one that could go disastrously wrong, and nearly did, but I was determined to go ahead. Let me explain.
I ...
One Year On
About a year ago I wrote a post called Kids can’t use computers… and this is why it should worry you.
In the post, I expressed my opinion that the concept of children being digital natives was a misnomer, that computer literacy is on a decline thanks to the ...
Computer Games Are A Waste Of Time
When I was a kid I played a lot of computer games. I once played Betrayal at Krondor for so long that I started hallucinating from sleep deprivation. When I was at Uni I chose to mow-down humanoid warthogs in Duke Nukem rather than learn metabolic pathways for amino acid ...
Please stop sending me your shitty Word documents
Throughout this rant I use the second-person personal pronoun (you) quite a lot. This does not necessarily mean I am speaking to 'You' the reader, but rather some other 'You' who will probably never read this anyway.
When Microsoft announced Office for iPad I shed a small tear. Excel is ...
Installing Pygame on Mac OS X with Python 3
This has been a bugbear of mine for sometime now. I like using Python 3.x. I like teaching kids how to use Pygame. I use a Mac. Trying to get all three to play nicely with each other has been impossible for me up to now.
I've trawled ...
What exactly are we teaching anyway?
On Twitter, numerous education blogs and even on Hacker News, there have been more than a few debates of late regarding the education of students in Computer Science/Computing/Coding/IT. In the UK, in particular, the debate has been fueled by Lottie Dexter's "Year of Code'; a government ...
X Days of Christmas
Just a quick one from me today.
I woke up this morning with a lesson idea in my head, that was also a Python script.
I've a few teacher followers, so I thought I'd shove it up here for others to use if they want. You'll have ...
How I rediscovered experimental learning and why it doesn't matter
A few months back I received this tweet.
@coding2learn We loved your recent article about kids & computers & want to send you some Bits. Can you DM your email address?
— littleBits (@littleBits) August 12, 2013Computing is much more than coding?
Trying to justify that every student in the country should learn computing is quite a tricky endevour, and it shouldn't be. We're all users of technology after all, and benefit from the advantages and disadvantages of being so. We should all have a basic understanding of computers, networks ...