The magic of computer coding

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Is teaching computing in schools just about training programmers for the future, or is it something more? Adam Lipecz considers the liberating power of technology.

"Programming is infiltrating loads of different traditional areas, … Learning how to code allows kids to do their own thing, be creative and secure a job in an area where there will be a huge shortage."

Rachel Swidenbank, Codecademy's Head of U.K. Operations (here)

"I view computer science as a liberal art. It should be something that everybody learns, takes a year in their lives, one of the courses they take is, you know, learning how to program. Because it teaches you how to think."

Steve Jobs in 'The Lost Interview', 1995.

These are visionary people speaking from deep understanding and experience of an aspect of life, and because they feel this is something that they must stand up for.

Last September, teachers of all age groups were thrown in the deep end of teaching computer programming as a mandatory part of the new curriculum. But how confident do you feel about this subject? Could you explain to a fellow teacher why computing is important in the classroom? How can you teach it efficiently and interestingly? What tools should you use? In this article, I will shed light on some possible answers.

The importance of interaction
There was a teacher who shadowed two students over two days in order to experience what it's like to learn in schools today. She wrote of her experience: “I wish I could go back to every class of students I ever had and change a minimum of ten things”.

At one point, she describes what it's like to sit all day listening to lessons, saying: “...Students move almost never. And never is exhausting. In every class, for four long blocks, the expectation was for us to come in, take our seats, and sit down for the duration of the time. By the end of the day, I could not stop yawning and I was desperate to move or stretch. I couldn't believe how alert my host student was, because it took a lot of conscious effort for me not to get up and start doing jumping jacks in the middle of science, just to keep my mind and body from slipping into oblivion after so many hours of sitting passively.”

And as a child's body, so is their mind. If they are forced to sit, passive and motionless all day, how on earth do we dare expect their mind to be active, creative and proactive?

Kids have to be challenged in the classroom - they have to be moved. Why are virtual games and smart devices so irresistible to children? It has nothing to do with screens, buttons or ones and zeroes. First and foremost, they are interactive. They let the kids decide the path of their discovery. For every action (which they can make freely and without any fear of public retaliation), there is a reaction from which they can learn. Second, virtual games are often professional products, meaning they are visually appealing, build on core genetic impulses and operate with subconscious triggers.

This is a great opportunity which lies unused by some teachers - kids love and have grown attached to technology. With the guidance of a tutor, this can be turned to the advantage of both teacher and pupil; a perfect tool to engage and have attention advantage.

Why teach programming?

Technology is all around us - it’s here to stay - and we not only have to get kids ready to use it, but build it too. They might already be digital natives, but teaching them the principles of coding helps them grasp how technology works 'under the hood', and the ultimate goal is to explain how the building bricks of technology come together to create the world we live in.

Programming is a creative, highly interactive process, providing instant and clear feedback - a cornerstone of how kids function, and how they like to learn and discover. It promotes 4C skills (Communication, Collaboration, Critical thinking and Creativity) and helps in learning how to build efficient mental models.

But should every child learn computing? I quote Simon Peyton Jones, an honorary Professor of Computer Science at the University of Glasgow to answer this question: 

“Should every child do it? From primary school? Let me ask you this: Why do we ask every child to learn science from primary school? Not because they are all going to become physicists. It’s because science teaches us something about the world around us; and if we know nothing about the way the world around us works, we are disempowered citizens. Even when you switch on the light, you know that the light doesn’t happen by magic, it happens by electricity that comes along wires, the wires can be dangerous, the electricity comes from a power station, the power station burns fuel, it may cause global warming… all of that is underpinned by the science knowledge you gained at school, whether or not you’re a scientist.”

Computing lessons are not only to train programmers for the future. Sure, that’s also a welcome by-product, as the UK will have a shortage of 249,000 workers for technologically skilled jobs by 2020. But programming, whether a potential career route or not, is an essential asset for our newest generations. 

And that's something the government has come to realise. Just glance through the main goals of the very curriculum now mandatory in every UK school, which aims to ensure all pupils:

• Can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
• Can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
• Can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
• Are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.

What can you do?

As a teacher, you are the one expected to introduce children to the digital world of computing. This responsibility of a first impression is both powerful and potentially dangerous. You can make them love or hate it. So I would like to suggest some ideas that can help you.

• Encourage children to tell their parents about what they learn in computing lessons, and motivate parents to be interested. As Bill Mitchell at BCS says: “I suspect children will be delighted to tell parents something they don’t know about!” 
• Be open and motivated. Speak to fellow teachers about their ideas and methods, organise meetings on this topic or join an existing movement like CoderDojo or the UK initiative Coder Club.
• Be prepared to accept help and be lectured by people whom you never thought you would get advice from. Even from pupils.
• Be innovative. You don’t need pricey iPads to introduce computing ideas to kids. With some clever games, like 'How to train your robot', developed by Nikos Michalakis (aka. Dr. Techniko), basic concepts can be easily taught in a fun way. Also there are affordable tools like Codie - robotic toys which work with a smartphone app, and allow children to interact and make codes in just two minutes. 
• Do your research. There are plenty of online tools, tablets and other touch-screen based apps, as well as educational toys and packages that you can integrate into your computing lessons.

And remember, at the end, the most important player in this game is you, the teachers, who are actually in the classrooms, helping kids to reach their dreams.

By Adam Lipecz, co-founder and CEO of Codie, making robotic toys that teach the basics of programming. Find more information on Codie at: www.indiegogo.com/projects/codie-cute-personal-robot-that-makes-coding-fun. 

Have you cracked the code of the new computing curriculum?

The new computing curriculum came into force back in September, so the pressure is now on to deliver outstanding results. Here, primary deputy head Anthony Sharp explains the steps his school has taken to successfully deliver new terrifying topics such as algorithms, logical reasoning and debugging.

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In a recent survey from CPD for Teachers, 52 per cent of headteachers who responded said that they felt their school was not successfully delivering the new computing curriculum.

And it's not surprising. There have been seismic shifts in what we expect from teachers to deliver the new computing curriculum. ICT used to focus purely on computer literacy, teaching pupils how to use software packages - for example, creating PowerPoint presentations or producing documents in Word - and e-safety. With the new curriculum, the focus has changed to understanding how computers work, including how to program them.

We have good teachers here at Midfield Primary who are competent and can teach ICT to a more than acceptable standard. However, when we reviewed the new computing curriculum and compared it with our current teaching programme, clear gaps emerged. Quite quickly for example, we saw that there was a gap in programming skills in our school, as well as a lack of confidence from our teachers who were concerned that they would not be able to deliver parts of the new curriculum.

My suspicions were confirmed by the results of the aforementioned CPD for Teachers survey, which showed that we were in the same boat as many others. Forty-four per cent of schools who felt they were not delivering the new computing curriculum effectively had also not received any face-to-face training.

First steps
It was clear that our teachers needed more guidance. We needed to prioritise computing curriculum training to re-set teachers’ thinking, eradicate the fear of programming and give them further information on how to deliver it effectively. We selected a course that met our needs in terms of being practical and hands-on from the start. It covered the fundamentals of computing programming through exciting tasks such as drawing computer graphics, creating simple games and interfacing with the real world.

Resetting thinking
When you talk to someone who doesn’t like maths, there’s often no particular reason they don’t like it - they just don’t. The same applies to a lot of teachers and adults with computers. The approach taken in the training course really helped to break down those feelings and reset their thinking.

Now, for example, the teachers explore how they can engage the children in programming, rather than the preconceived idea, which was along the lines of opening up a computer and looking at wires. This gave them the confidence to approach it. Now, far less concerned about what they don’t know, they focus on what they do know. The cross curricular content from computing compared to science, English and maths is quite extensive, so using the skills and working with these experts to help deliver programming was a great starting point for our school.

Bringing coding to life
Much to our surprise, we didn’t even go near a computer at first! The course instructors had us push all the tables and chairs to the side of the room and literally walk through a program.

One of the methods we used was to create an obstacle course which was navigated by answering/asking questions. The responses to the questions determined the player's next step. This brought programming to life and helped us to understand the way that coding works. It was a simple way of demonstrating binary logic, and we will use this to introduce basic programming to our primary pupils.

In the afternoon, we applied the knowledge from the activities of the morning to digital situations. Overall, the face-to-face training was great and broke down any aversions teachers may have had about how to engage the children. It was fun, engaging and very motivational.

One tricky area for us in teaching the new curriculum to primary school children was making it engaging and fun for children of a young age. The course gave us some really innovative methods of delivery, which has helped us engage children so that they enjoy it.

Confidence to deliver
The feedback so far has been very positive. We now deliver and prepare for lessons as teams so that we can share the knowledge and use a collaborative approach. It has made our teachers less nervous and has increased confidence in the classroom, as it gives them ways to approach it and they are far less concerned about what they don’t know. The focus now is on what they do know and what other existing skills they can draw on to help them deliver programming.

Embrace the IT geniuses
The fear at our school for many teachers used to be that once you set children on their way, it’s possible that they will steam ahead of the adults. This is natural, as adults are scared to press the wrong button, whereas children don’t have that fear so are free to explore. We’ve learned not to fear this situation - in fact, the opposite! We are embracing the possibility of this as a positive outcome, and we can use those skills and even channel them into our own teaching.

We are still at the start of our journey but, I believe, in a good place to move forward in delivering the new computing curriculum with confidence.

Five top tips for delivering the new computing curriculum:
1. Focus on what the teachers already know.
2. Explore curriculum crossover from maths, English and science.
3. Invest in face-to-face training to give teachers confidence.
4. Team up in a collaborative effort to engage your class.
5. Focus on making it engaging and fun for both teachers and pupils.

Anthony Sharp is deputy headteacher at Midfield Primary School in Bromley, Kent. Midfield chose to prepare their teachers for the new computing curriculum with the CPD for Teachers 'How to teach programming' course. Find out more at: www.cpdforteachers.com.

Looking for a short but thorough introduction to programming? In this free training video and accompanying article, Chris Thomas explores the basics of programming and two tools that will make teaching it a lot simpler.

Can maths really be creative?

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Image: schoolatoz.nsw.edu.au

Carey Ann Dodah of Explore Learning thinks it can. In this week's guest post, she considers a few simple ways to promote the development of problem-solving skills and creativity in maths lessons, as expected by the new primary maths curriculum.

'Creativity in Maths!? Isn’t that an oxymoron?' was the response from many when we launched our creative maths programme last year, a weekly class for eight- to ten-year-olds. However, we are strong believers that creativity defined as ‘a process where something new and valuable is created’ is the very essence of maths and it’s those inquisitive mathematical minds that we want to develop in our future generations.

The new National Curriculum supports this - problem solving is implicit across all subjects in the maths Programme of Study and with the recent announcement from the government that from 2016, Key Stage 1 and 2 tests will now include more problem solving, we can see the emphasis being placed on this skill.

We love solving problems at Explore Learning – it’s a life skill that we want every child to enjoy and have the confidence to tackle, not just in our centres but in their school experience. However, first there are some hurdles to overcome.

What makes a good maths problem?
In classrooms, problem solving is typically taught in a formulaic manner. The problem is introduced, a technique is demonstrated, the process is practised and then used to apply to other scenarios until practice makes perfect. In life though, and in maths, there is not always a technique or set route to follow to reach a solution and remember if you know how to solve something then it isn’t really a ‘problem’. A problem has to be new and without an obvious route to solution to genuinely challenge us. In maths, as in life, we need to develop children’s confidence to find a route themselves. They own the problem and they can fix it. 

At Explore, we have been very fortunate to work with NRICH – a team of inspiring mathematicians, teachers and trainers based at the University of Cambridge. Together we have created the annual National Young Mathematicians Award competition. Its goal is to bring rich, creative problem solving into primary schools. Last year,1000 schools took part, entering a team of their top four mathematicians (typically two girls and two boys).

Unlike conventional maths competitions that are based on individuals attempting paper-based tests involving equations, computations and problem solving, the National Young Mathematicians Award allows young people to create maths. The problems are real, they are without an obvious solution, and they often involve making something. They provide opportunities for logical thinking, identifying patterns, looking for all possible solutions, hypothesising and perhaps most importantly communicating and working as a team. 

Image: getsurrey.co.uk

I am always inspired observing the final each year. I especially love seeing the children working together. It highlights that maths is not a solitary subject – its true power is seen in collaboration. All the tasks that children get involved with require collaboration and therefore good teamwork is essential. The tasks are also very open ended with limited instructions so the next ingredients to success are using logical thinking, working systematically, using trial and improvement and taking ownership of a problem. You can really tell the schools that have incorporated this type of problem solving into their lessons previously. Those children that haven’t find it very difficult to know how to start given so open parameters – so much freedom!

How can we teach problem solving?
So how can schools introduce these skills into existing maths teaching? How can we make maths more creative today? First, let’s adopt one important rule – maths is about more than a right answer. It’s about exploration and letting your imagination go!

Try this exercise to demonstrate the concept to students and colleagues. Ask for three volunteers and instruct them to tell you a two-digit number, it doesn’t matter which ones they give. Get students into pairs and ask ‘which is the odd one out?’. On the board, draw five bullet points. 

Let’s say you have been given 62, 27, 36. Give a couple of minutes to the group and ask each pair to tell you their ‘answer’ and the reasons why. Record all the reasons on the board and try to fill the five bullet points. 

You may have something like this:
• 27 – it’s an odd number
• 62 – it’s above 50
• 62 – not a factor of 9
• 27 – it’s below 30
• 62 – ones are smaller than the tens

These are all correct answers! Well done! 

Now add several more bullet points to the board and allow the group much longer this time to think up some other possibilities. Thinking time in maths is vital – if cut short then you are unable to uncover the rich, deep thinking that everyone is capable of. Too often this is missed because time is pressured.

Now you will have less obvious associations made:
• 27 – has a diagonal in the digit
• 62 – adding the two digits together does not equal nine
• 36 – square number
• 27 – the words have a different number of syllables to the other two
• 27 – has ‘open’ figures rather than ‘closed’ ones

And you can keep going and challenging your group to think of more reasons. It can be anything as long as they can explain it! You’ll be amazed at the amount of learning that can be gained from such a simple task and how many different directions this will lead your learners. Those without the confidence to share initially might suddenly find a gem. 

Your role is as a facilitator: little talking, lots of listening and then jumping on the great ideas that could pull out more maths from the activity (‘what is a square number? Can you think of any others?’) and in doing so help children clarify their ideas and share their knowledge.

This exercise demonstrates the power of peer learning. It tells students that you value different ideas, strategies and routes. It encourages clarity in explanation and opens opportunities to introduce new vocabulary in a subtle but powerful way. Last but not least it encourages creative, imaginative thinking.

Making maths accessible

Image: willowbrook.leicester.sch.uk

The task described above is a good example of the kind of activities that we cover with our children each week on in creative maths course.  Every week our centres fill with a group of excited mathematicians awaiting a new challenge. They are not all ‘strong’ mathematicians, in fact many of them lack confidence in class but this is maths with a difference!

All the activities apply the NRICH philosophy of ‘low threshold, high ceiling’. In essence, low threshold means that all the exercises are accessible to the whole group. To access the task, you may need a basic ability to add numbers or use a ruler – everyone can have a go. High ceiling refers to the task having the potential to result in very complex mathematics, nth terms and formulas, should the individual be able. 

One of our favourite examples in the creative maths course is buttons! This is an exercise that could run over a couple of classes.

To begin with, describe that you have a cardigan with three buttons. You like to do the cardigan up in different ways every day. Sometimes you might start at the top, sometimes from somewhere else. How many different possible ways can you do up the buttons on the cardigan? This can be a great practical task and you could have a pot of different coloured buttons that the children could use or they might prefer to use T M B (top middle and bottom). It’s about the children finding a method that makes sense to them, rather than the way you would do it. 

Quite quickly children will come back with answers – it’s great to ask at this point that you need to be convinced that they have found all the different ways. Once children have convinced you, ask if they can find out what happens when you have four, five or six buttons and the task becomes a greater challenge. Your able mathematicians may start identifying a pattern and they might use conjecture and develop a theory. They are reaching for a high ceiling but in gentle, structured steps that allow you to see them grow (intellectually and in confidence) within a matter of hours.

You can find more similar problem solving activity ideas here and here.

What other skills will creative maths develop?
This practical maths allows children to improve key mathematical skills which also translate into other subject areas such as science, technology and are used in later life: 

• logical thinking 
• developing a systematic approach 
• trial and improvement strategy 
• exploration and explanation skills 
• convincing and proving 
• collaborative learning.

The challenge was to prove that maths can be creative, collaborative and stimulating. I hope this post has given you some insight into how this can be the case and some inspiration to challenge your young students. Perhaps you can try some of these rich, low threshold–high ceiling exercises out before entering a team for the National Young Mathematicians Award this autumn. Let’s see how far they can go!

Carey Ann Dodah is Head of Curriculum at Explore Learning.

To enter a team into the National Young Mathematicians Award, visit www.explorelearning.co.uk/youngmathematicians. Registration closes 30th September so hurry!

For further activities to help students practise for the competition, visit nrich.maths.org. For more information on Explore Learning, visit www.explorelearning.co.uk. 

Image: explorelearning.co.uk

For serious curriculum reform look west, Mr. Gove!

Gove’s ‘tough and rigorous’ new National Curriculum, which will be dis-applied to children in Academies, Free Schools, Private Schools and SATs years in mainstream schools, is the very antithesis of rigorous in conception. It adheres to no known knowledge of child development and follows no known educational research. It’s a hotchpotch of personal prejudices which have been repeatedly ‘cleansed’ by officials in his department. 

The idea that it will somehow bring us up to international standards and help our international competitiveness is, frankly, arrant nonsense. PISA, the education division of the OECD is quite clear that it is children who can apply high level thinking, communication and problem solving skills in rapidly changing contexts that will be the movers and shakers in the modern world and contribute most to economic performance. Other than in Science, England is not producing too many of these …interestingly PISA doesn’t even think much of our private school system which it says creates little additional value when you strip out the socio-economic privilege of its participants.

The one major country which has been doing worse than England is the USA. The home of psychometric testing and CAT scores performs poorly at Grade 8 (15) in all subjects with its international competitors and there is increasing concern that the memory and drill approach to education is leaving children totally ill-prepared for college and careers. Teachers have, according to surveys, lost all faith in the effectiveness of assessments and the curricula, which vary from state to state.

This deep crisis in education has now been acknowledged by 42 states and the District of Columbia, and the federal Government. They have bought into a set of Common Core Standards. These will, initially in Maths and English, set the benchmark for student performance. What is so interesting in this attempt to establish a national curriculum is the determination – even rush – to abandon old concepts of education and to go for depth rather than breadth, analytical skills rather than memorisation of facts, and team working and collaboration instead of individualised learning and assessment.

The big issue though, recognised by the federal authorities in a way that seems to have escaped Gove, is that to transform teaching and learning and the curriculum, to create higher order thinkers you have to radically reform the assessment system. The federal Government has weighed in with $50 million to develop new assessments, and a key feature of the grant is the ‘crucial integration of instruction, curriculum and assessment.’ Coming from an English context, the sheer common-sense of this is breathtaking! 

The new assessment system will be ‘performance-based’ and will ‘require students to demonstrate higher order thinking through problem-solving, essay writing and research projects. It’s a very different architecture from the type of assessments the states give now’, according to Michael Chester, the Massachusetts Education Commissioner whose state was central to developing one of the assessment development agencies.

The International Centre for Leadership in Education in its overview of the new generation of assessments says: ‘These assessments will range far beyond the usual multiple choice and short answer questions. Instead students will have to apply their knowledge to real world situations through performance events. They will have to work in inter-disciplinary situations. They will have to use technology with facility. Some performance events will take weeks to complete… For teachers this new form of evaluation means developing a dull understanding of performance events; how to construct them and how to evaluate student work. In addition the new assessments require teachers to make substantial use of formative assessment techniques. Final results for each student will comprise a combination of performance events, in course assessments and more conventional standardised tests.

The implications of these changes, say the authors of the overview, ‘are nothing short of a complete retooling of American education’.

Commentators are unanimous in their view that the Common Core Standards and the new assessments will place a huge challenge on students and teachers alike. But what is amazing is the unanimity amongst educators and political leaders of the need for it to happen. It doesn’t take a genius to recognise that the US is now marching forward, whilst Gove is pushing us in the opposite direction, in curriculum design, instruction and assessment. Far from putting us at the top of the international education and economic tables, Gove’s changes are going to leave us floundering in the Little League.