CESI Meet at #ictedu

The CESI Meet on Friday 10th May, on the eve of the ICT in Education Conference, was a great night of chat and sharing and learning.  It was a bit different from the previous CESI Meets I’ve been to, because Bean an Tí Mags Amond decided to try the marshmallow challenge with the group.  Essentially the challenge involves creating a structure to support a marshmallow from pasta, string and tape (more info in the post from the conference blog here).  We arranged ourselves into groups of 3 and it was great fun seeing how people tackled the challenge.  My group included myself, a colleague Laura Dargan and my son Dave.  We had exactly 18 minutes to construct our structure.  I couldn’t believe how quickly the time went and how competitive people got!!  Our team decided to go big or go home!! which was unfortunately a risky strategy that didn’t work too well for us  Our final structure looked like this

the sad news is that as soon as we let go it smashed into what seemed like a million pieces!  Seeing the different ways that people approached the challenge was fascinating with some taking a low risk strategy …

which ended up being the eventual winner and others suspending their structures from the ceiling …

and yet others spearing their marshmallow near the ceiling

The conference centre in LIT was a hive of creativity for the duration of the activity

What followed was a series of soap box sessions on ‘Flipping the Classroom’ from Bianca Grogan, ‘Leap Motion in Maths Teaching’ from Stephen Howell, ‘Curation and Junior Cycle Reform’ from John Heffernan and ‘Raspberry Pi’ from Bill Quinn.  Next came the gorgeous nibbles from Mitchell House

The last session of the CESI Meet kicked off with a Skype call with Steve Bunce in the UK to hear about the similarities between coding and knitting.  It was a very interesting session and it would have been great to follow through by getting the attendees to do their own finger knitting.  Unfortunately this wasn’t possible due to the time constraints on the night.  Next time!!

Finally we heard from Mary Jo Bell about Voki, Conor Galvin about the power of using images in education, Joe Dale about classroom management apps, Marco Booth about his new education start up freded.ie and Hellie Bullock about the How I Learn book in aid of Barnardos which will launch soon.  I missed John Heffernan’s presentation so I’m not sure what he presented on but he’s beginning to get a reputation for x-rated presentations at the #ictedu CESI Meets

Lots of interesting ideas were shared – a great appetite whetter for the following day.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

It was a case of planes, trains and automobiles last week as I made my way to Plymouth for the Pelecon conference.  I’ve followed the conference via twitter over the past few years, and decided that this was the year I would make the trip to Plymouth, to see for myself what everyone seemed to enjoy so much.  I was lucky to have Catherine Cronin, Mary Loftus and Helen Crump as travelling companions for the trip.  If you ever get a chance to take a trip with these ladies grab it – you’ll have a ball  The intangible that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts at Pelecon, is the friendliness of the attendees.   There’s a real sense of community about the event and what a warm and welcoming community to be a part of

Unfortunately I missed the Wednesday sessions, which was a pity, as from from what I heard, they were a great start to the event.  The student session and Steve Bunce’s knitworking among others seem to have been highlights.

I arrived at 9 on Wednesday evening and one of the first people I met was Grainne Conole. We’ve connected on Twitter and Flickr but had never met in person which was hard to believe as we immediately fell into an easy chat.  This seemed to be the case for many at the event.  Proof again of the power of social media to connect people in so many powerful ways.

First up on Thursday morning were Grainne Conole and Doug Belshaw. Grainne took us on a tour of the digital landscape, pedagogical approaches, digital identity and learning design before talking about the challenges ahead.  She introduced the thread of digital literacies which was picked up by many over the couple of days.

Doug made animated gif’s a feature in his presentation about Mozilla Open Badges.  Risky strategy with so much going on on screen but he pulled it off perfectly!  He almost lost me on the Hypno Cat slide but moved on just in time I was very interested in Open Badges as I think they would work very well both for CoderDojo and for the short courses proposed for the Junior Cert reform here in Ireland.  After hearing Doug speak about them I’m even more convinced!

Next for me came a session on Digital Literacies.  Nadja Guggi kicked off the session telling us about the importance of students on work placement developing their digital identity.  Catherine Cronin was up next reflecting on the blurring of the lines between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’, sharing her experiences of working with students as they enact their digital identities and discussing practices and resources.  Clare Spiret concluded the session by sharing the challenges faced in the glocal (global local) online learning environments.

In the first of the afternoon sessions I chose to hear about VLE’s from Matt Lingard, tablets and PLE’s from Brian Whalley and Engaging Legal Minds from Emily Allbon.  Matt shared the University of London project to enhance the students and staff experience of VLS use through usability testing.  As a Moodle user it was interesting to see that some relatively simple changes could significantly improve the user experience.

Brian’s session provoked a lot of discussion on the backchannel with his contention that tablets would replace laptops and netbooks.  As a user of both I would be of the view that there is a place for both but I wouldn’t see them replacing each other.  The session concluded with Emily sharing the lawbore website, a rich and varied resource for law students.

Next up was a session on Problem based learning with Palitha Edrisigha and Arunangsu Chatterjee and Programming and trainee teachers with Miles Berry.  Miles Berry’s session was thought provoking as we don’t have computer Science as a subject in Primary in Ireland and we are just introducing it at Secondary School.  The aspirations on the learning outcomes seem quite challenging in the UK system.  One example given was that 11 year olds would understand how Google Search works!

The closing session on Wednesday was from Steve Warburton . He spoke about the jobs of the future, big data and learning analytics.  He also picked up the Digital Literacies thread which was woven throughout the day.  His look to the future was a good reminder of the changing nature of education.

The conference dinner was held at the National Marine Aquarium but there was still lots to learn from an educational point of view.  Both of our guides were brilliant but I think it’s fair to say that Leona stole the show.  Her enthusiasm and passion for her job were inspirational.  It’s lovely to see that joy shine through.

Friday morning’s first session for me was all about the Steve’s – Bunce, Wheeler and Margetts.  Steve Bunce spoke about the importance of books electronic and otherwise.  We also made our own books from a sheet of paper but it didn’t work out so well for Zak Mensah and I!! Steve Wheeler and Steve Margetts again brought up the issue of tablets.   Next up was a session on Open Badges with Doug Belshaw.  This was a very hands on session and I really enjoyed it.  We broke into groups and worked on developing various badges based on our own interests.  I chose the conference badge group.  It was interesting to hear people’s views on badges for conference attendance etc.  Teasing out the issues gave a real insight into what is involved in designing badges.  As with everything what you get out is very much influenced by what you put in.

The final session gave us keynotes from Joyce Seitzinger and Donald Taylor and again they didn’t disappoint.  It was very much a case of ending on a high with your brain fizzing with ideas.

Joyce contended that it’s about filter failure and not information overlaod

and urged us to develop our own filters

Donald then delivered the closing keynote by looking to the future and the changing nature of education.  He began by quoting Yeats

and then asked

Fitting end to a great event, an event where I got to chat with people who challenged my ideas on various topics, who backed up my thoughts on other topics and who were generally very good fun to be around.

Some of the many people I met and chatted with at #pelc13

Thank you Joyce Seitzinger for this lovely reminder of a great couple of days

They came …they kicked ass

… and boy did they kick ass!! The Coder Dojo Conference 2013 took place in Drogheda and Slane Castle last weekend and what a whirlwind it was. Friday night in the Brú Bistro in Drogheda was a great kickstarter for the conference.  People shared their experiences and highlights from Coderdojos across the world with MC for the night Stephen Howell keeping it all moving smoothly.  It was great to get a chance to meet people and start the sharing of ideas in such a relaxed environment.

Saturday morning saw the conference move to Slane Castle and I have to say, from the minute I drove into the castle I was blown away! 

Slane Castle

I think I spent most of the day looking up

Above my head!

The juxtaposition of old and new was commented on by many on the day

They say the devil is in the detail and at DojoCon this was so true.  I loved the details like the polystyrene hashtags …

the lanyards which incorporated the conference programme …

and so much more.   Hats off to all in CoderDojo Drogheda and anyone else who was involved in putting together such a great event

Úna Fox was an inspired choice as MC for the day, her relaxed and witty style was perfect.  Rumour has it she has her eye on the Late Late so watch this space!

The conference kicked off with James Whelton, CoderDojo co-founder, followed by entrepreneur, Jerry Kennelly from tweak.com.  It was great to hear James speak about how CoderDojo has developed and the plans for the future.  Jerry gave a thought provoking presentation reminding us of the many strengths us Irish possess, something we seem to have forgotten along the way!

Before lunch Bill Liao, CoderDojo co-founder, was interviewed by Úna.  During the interview Bill spoke about social inclusion and put forward the idea of a handshake rather than a hand out or a hand up.  With a handshake all parties in the transaction benefit which is so much more powerful.

Running throughout the day there were sessions in the Education, Technology and Running a Dojo streams.  In the first session I went to the ‘Girls Initiative’ session with Rebecca Garcia and Karen O’Connell. It’s good to hear about these initiatives to connect with teenage girls, and encourage them into the STEM areas.  Slides on the session can be found here.  In the second session I went to the ‘Just Code’ panel with Catherine Cronin, Jake Enget and Bernard Kirk.

Next up was Mags Amond’s ‘Putting the children first’ session and as always Mags reminded us of the simple things like clarity of message and that there is much to learn in failing.

In the next session I attended David Cuartielles’ session on ‘Hacking Secondary School. The Hardware Way’.  David is a co-founder of the Arduino platform.  We have some Arduino kits in Limerick and my lot are really enjoying working with them so I was interested to hear some more and David didn’t disappoint.  My son would have been delighted with this

… so maybe it’s best he wasn’t there

I sat on a panel with John Looney and Carina Girvan on ‘Re-Inventing Education’ in the final breakout session of the day.  It was an interesting session and one which has really got me thinking so watch this space for a blog post on some of my thoughts.

I really enjoyed the sessions I went to and from what I heard the other sessions were equally enjoyable.

And so we come to the closing keynote and for this I’ll finish as I started.  Kimberley Bryant delivered the closing keynote.  She came … she kicked ass … and boy did she kick ass!!  It’s not easy to take the floor at 6pm after a long and hectic day.  It’s not easy to take the floor after Lord Henry Mountcharles has regaled your audience with tales of his ancestors. It’s not easy to take the floor after Julie Feeney sang ‘Impossibly Beautiful’ in honour of Úna Fox’s birthday.  But that’s exactly what Kimberley did and in her understated, powerful way she blew us all away!  I connected with Kimberley as she spoke about her motivation to  start Black Girls code, she’s a mother who wanted to give her daughter an opportunity to connect with technology in a meaningful way.

My children were the catalyst for my initial interaction with CoderDojo.  We heard Kimberly talk about the ethos of Black Girls Code

This mirrors so much of what is good about CoderDojo.  I’ll leave you with Kimberley’s closing thoughts and hope they provide as much food for thought for you as they did for me.

The Generation Game

Last Friday we went along to ‘The Generation Game’ family fun day in Dell in Limerick.  The event was organised by the Event Management students in LIT in conjunction with the Limerick CoderDojo.  There was lots to see and do on the day as you can see from the photos

Getting started …

Flama Games

Choice of workshops

Busy workshops

Retro Gaming

PacMan cupcakes

Whack a Politician app

Stephen Howell in action

Games Fleadh winners

Not just coding …

Having too much fun

Well done to the Event Management students and Eugene McDonough for organising a great family day.

Breaking Traditions

The Breaking Traditions Online conference took place on Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd March.  It was an online conference sponsored by Albemarle County Public Schools and the William Glasser Institute – US.  This is the third year of the Breaking Traditions conference.  The aims of the conference are to

1. help create community between the Glasser Quality Schools;
2. share the ideas of Glasser Quality Schools with progressive educators around the globe; and
3. learn from the best practices of educators everywhere.
   

For more background on the conference check out ‘The Story of the Conference’ by the Conference Co-Ordinator Charlotte Wellen.

I love the idea of the conference as it allows people to connect as they can from the comfort of their own homes.  Through Pam Moran I heard of the conference last year and joined some of the sessions.  Pam asked me if I would submit a proposal this year so I agreed and Saturday 23rd March saw me presenting on ‘What can we learn from CoderDojo?’.

The conference kicked off on Friday 22nd March with a keynote presentation from Pam Moran.  What I loved about the keynote presentation was that Pam convened a panel of teachers and students to address the theme of “Emerging Democracy of Voice for Educators and Young People​”.   The ease with which Pam facilitates theses sessions was very evident at the ICT in Education Conference in Thurles last year, and it was lovely to feel that sense of warmth and support come through so clearly at the Breaking Traditions conference this year.   Unfortunately I couldn’t  participate in any of the sessions on the Saturday because of the CoderDojo Divas session in Limerick.  There were many I would have loved to participate in including

• A Creativity Crisis?
  How Do We Make Space
  for the Hackers and the Makers? by Mary Loftus
• Teen Tech Girls Inspiring the Next Generation of Women in Tech by Kim Wilkens
• Building on Solid Foundations of the Past in Meeting the Needs of Young People in the Future by Caitriona Cullen
• Break the Walls Down by Michael Thornton

These are just some of the many sessions that caught my eye on the rich conference programme.

I decided to try out using Prezi Online for my session as I was concerned that playing the interviews remotely would not work well.  It went really well and is definitely worth looking into if you are presenting remotely.  For the content I went with what Eugene McDonough and I used at the ESAI Conference.    Letting the children and one of the Mum’s from the Dojo tell their story seemed like the best way to go.  Hearing the children talk about

• learning from each other or by figuring it out for themselves;
• not being forced to learn;
• animating their favourite books and
• learning by working through complicated things

was so much more powerful than anything I could possibly say.

There were a couple of points in the Mum’s interview that really struck a chord with me and others on the night including the beauty of children using their creativity and learning to make things; 

• how children work with others regardless of age; the sense of community within Coderdojo and the fact that it’s valued that the child knows something which may not always be the case in school.

My Prezi from the session can be found here and a Storify of the session created by Catherine Cronin can be found here.

Coder Dojo Divas

Last Saturday saw the first Coder Dojo Divas event in the Limerick Coder Dojo.  This event was aimed specifically at girls between 12 and 17 to encourage more girls to get involved.  We’ve noticed in Limerick over the past while that, although we have a healthy balance between girls and boys in the younger age group, we have very few older girls involved.  There has been much talk about encouraging girls to get involved in technology, both inside and outside the CoderDojo community.  Rebecca Garcia from the New York Coder Dojo, convened the first Google+ hangout on this topic on the 4th March, the transcript of which can be found here.

To the best of my knowledge, the Limerick Divas event is only the 3rd such type of event in the CoderDojo community.  The New York and Waterford Coder Dojos have already run sessions targeting teenage girls.  It’s great to see female Coder Dojo mentors like Rebecca Garcia, Jennifer Keane and Karen O’Connell taking the lead on such initiatives.  Karen did a fantastic job of getting the ball rolling in the Limerick Dojo.  Her efforts over the past few weeks saw more than 15 girls turn up for the first Divas event.  A few of the girls had been to the Dojo previously but there were many new faces which was great to see.  I loved how Karen gave a context to girls in technology by referring to the programmers of the world’s first all electronic computer who were female. For more information on these female programmers check out eniacprogrammers.org.

Eniac Programmers

Karen then led us in a great session based on App Inventor.  After a bit of time spent getting the set up sorted the girls worked on a crystal ball app.  It was great to see them working alone and together as they worked out technical issues and got their first app working both on an emulator and an Android device.   As groups they also signed up for the Technovation challenge.

I really enjoyed the session on Saturday and look forward to future Divas events in Limerick.

ESAI conference

About 2 months ago Aisling Leavy, a mentor at CoderDojo Limerick, asked me if I’d be interested in submitting a proposal for a symposium at the Educational Studies Association of Ireland Conference with her and some others.   The theme of the symposium was “Teaching children to code”.  Aisling lectures in Mary Immaculate College, a college which offers a wide range of programmes in Education and the Liberal Arts.  She has been involved in a Project where some of her pre service teachers were teaching Scratch to children in a number of local primary schools.  Aisling’s plan was that she would present with her colleague Rory McGann, who was also involved in the project,  Clare McInerney from Lero, the Irish software engineering research centre, would present on their initiatives to get children coding and Eugene McDonough and I would present on our experiences as mentors in the Limerick CoderDojo.  Before I gave myself a chance to think about it I decided to agree.

Eugene and I chatted about how we might structure our presentation and we decided that letting the children tell their owm story was the best way forward so that’s what we did.  We did some interviews with the ninja’s and with one of the mum’s and built our presentation around that.  I really enjoyed presenting with Aisling, Rory, Clare and Eugene.  It was heartening to see so many crossovers in our presentations, which was unplanned, but suggests the beginnings of a synchronicity around coding in Irish education.  We all told of the joy that children find in coding.  My favourite quote from the session was from Rory and Aisling’s presentation where one of the children in their project said something like “the teacher could have been asleep at the top of the class and we wouldn’t have noticed”.

I had never presented in a symposium before but I really liked it.  A symposium is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject”.  As a presenter I liked the fact that there was safety in numbers  As a result of this positive experience I’m thinking of convening some symposia at the ICT in Education conference this year.  I think it might encourage some teachers who might be hesitant to share what they do in their classrooms.

As well as our session, I also attended a number of other sessions at the conference.  I really enjoyed the format.  The sessions were generally one and a half hours in duration with a number of themed parallel sessions in each.  Within each session there were 3 or 4 presentations.  The two sessions that I attended on Friday were both very thought provoking.  The ‘Initial Teacher Education’ session examined topics such as the ‘Entry requirements for Initial Teacher Education’ and the challenges for Initial Teacher Education as we adjust to Project Maths.  As a Maths educator I was particularly interested in the session on Project Maths.  Hearing Miriam Liston and Olivia Fitzmaurice, talking about the difficulties that their pre service teachers had, with explaining the foundation knowledge that they would ultimately be teaching, outlined the significant chasm that exists between understanding advanced Maths concepts and being able to teach Maths.  The University of Limerick have introduced a ‘Mathematical thinking’ module which allows their pre service student teachers to focus on key concepts such as logs and indices, fractions, integers, equations and inequalities, formulae, trigonometry and statistics.  One of the students comments “It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just that we’ve never been asked to think before” is very telling in my opinion.  You can read my thoughts on this tension between mathematical ability and the ability to teach Maths in my previous post on this topic.

I also attended the ‘Science and Mathematics Education’ session.  There was a couple of common threads running through many of the presentations – the ideas of communities of practice and inquiry based learning.  These threads were woven through Joanne, Aoibhinn and Maeve’s presentations. With the focus changing at second level to a more application and real world context for subjects like Maths and Science there will be an increased reliance on teachers both within one’s own school and also in the broader educational community.

I also found Úna’s presentation on increasing the percentage of students achieving at the highest levels of Maths very interesting.  Her PhD research involves looking at the correlation between standard test results at Primary School and the progress of those students in their future studies in Maths as they continued through secondary school.  She has found a consistency between the achievement of students at Junior Cert with reference to their Primary school standard test results but this does not carry through to Leaving Cert.  I’m looking forward to hearing more from the ongoing research from those who presented at theses sessions.

ICT in Education Conference 2013

As many of you know, the 9th ICT in Education conference will take place in Thurles on Saturday May 11th this year.  As in previous years, the conference will be preceded by a CESI Meet on the previous night, Friday 10th May.  This conference is for educators across all levels to meet and share.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Student Voices” and the keynote speakers will be Grainne Conole and Catherine Cronin. We’re very excited about the theme for this year’s conference, as too often, the student voice is lost in the melee, as the many stakeholders in our education system clamour to have their voices heard. Having said that, it’s heartening to see teachers sharing what works in their classrooms, on social media and elsewhere, as they strive to provide their students with a platform from which their voice can be heard.

On the #edchatie hashtag every week there are many examples of teachers providing such a platform through

• blogging
• google hangouts with other classes in Ireland and further afield
• social media in classrooms
• gamification of education
• art projects
• audio projects

These are just some of the examples I’ve seen but there are so many more.  If you’re a teacher who is willing to share what you’re doing in your classroom please consider submitting a proposal to present at the conference.  More details on the conference and the call for proposals can be found at www.lit.ie/ictedu.

Why Maths Matters

On Friday 8th of March I attended the ‘Why Maths Matters‘ conference in University of Limerick.  The day was about ‘taking stock, examining practice and developing policy’. At the start of the conference Sean Sherlock TD reminded us of the Thomas Davis quote “educate that you may be free”.  There were a few threads which were begun by Sean and picked up by many speakers throughout the day.  My take away messages from the conference were the importance of having a population who recognise the importance of Maths in the world around them and the need for a coordinated conversation about Maths.

Professor Bill Barton from Auckland University spoke at length about the ‘Maths problem’.  The main thrust of his presentation was that there is no easy fix to the problem but that an emphasis on problem solving, abstraction, generalisation and logical reasoning is a step in the right direction.  He also spoke about the importance of students confidence around Maths and suggested that at certain times this might be more important than Maths competence.  Bill emphasised how it is ‘no longer acceptable for people to say I can’t do Maths’ and the  importance of ‘a population who understands the power and recognises the opportunities provided by mathematical analysis’.  As a mathematician and educator I also see these two areas as of critical importance.  The social acceptability that people are ‘not good’ at Maths, and the disconnection that people feel from the Maths they learn and the Maths they use in the world around them, prompted me to write a blog post over a year ago, one of my most popular posts and the post that prompted the most discussion.

During the day we heard from many speakers about the importance of starting early to engage students in Mathematical thinking, the gender divide in Irish education, the importance of empowering teachers,  recent developments in Maths Education in Ireland and the Mallow community initiative to research and pilot initiatives and developments in the teaching of mathematics and science.

Bill Lynch from the NCCA spoke about the rollout of the new Project Maths sylabus.  The early indications are good notwithstanding some issues that need to be ironed out.  Evidence from the pilot schools suggests an increase in student engagement with Maths and a changing role for the teacher in the classroom.  Challenges include the time needed to cover the syllabus and difficulties around solving unfamiliar problems.  There has been a lot of discussion around the introduction of Project Maths over the past few years.  As with any significant change like this there will be issues but I personally think that it is a step in the right direction.  I know that’s easy for me to say because I’m not dealing directly with the impact of the curriculum but I think that with some adjustment Project Maths can deliver what was intended.

The conference concluded with a very entertaining and engaging presentation by Elizabeth Oldham from Trinity followed by a panel discussion.  Elizabeth took us through curricula changes over the past 50 years both in Ireland and elsewhere.  She distinguished between the intended, implemented and attained curricula and urged caution when comparing the intentions of one curriculum with the implementation of a previous one.  Again the issue of lack of sufficient time to cover the syllabus came up in relation to Project Maths.  On a related topic Elizabeth drew our attention to the fact that as a nation our recommended minimum time for Maths in schools is less than most other European countries.  As with all things we must live with the consequences of our actions in this regard.

Both Bill Barton and Elizabeth Oldham spoke about cross national studies like PISA and TIMSS.  I’ll leave you with Elizabeth’s views ‘these studies not only compare the incomparable, they rationalise the irrational!’.

Social Media in Education

Last week I delivered a couple of ‘Social Media in Education’ workshops as part of a Staff Development Day in LIT.  Bernie Goldbach and I were scheduled to give the sessions. Unfortunately Bernie couldn’t make it on the day, but in his inimitable style he didn’t let that small detail stop him, and despite not being there still managed to steal the limelight

One of the problems with delivering a workshop such as this, is that it can be hard to know where to even start because there are so many applications and so little time.   Bernie and I spent some time working on what we should cover and agreed that we should each talk about what social media we use, how we use it and that we could then give a practical session on applications such as Twitter or Google+.

When I was preparing my presentation I kept coming back to a picture that Catherine Cronin uploaded to the 1 pic a day group in Flickr.

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/catherinecronin/8444998755/sizes/m/in/photostream/

 This for me is what makes social media so powerful – it facilitates an ongoing conversation among people with shared values.  This shared values theme came through very strongly in the Social Learning Workshops that Nick Jackson and Abhay Adhikari delivered here in LIT in September.  It was something that really resonated with me at the time, and so helped to shape how my presentation and delivery of the workshop evolved.

On the day Bernie showcased social media in all it’s glory, by producing a Slideshare with audio, which allowed him to present at the workshop albeit in spirit only.  He conveyed the power and the potential of Social Media in such an eloquent way, and made my job of facilitating the workshop so easy so thanks Bernie   I really enjoyed facilitating the workshops and hope that the conversations begun on the day will continue …

A link to the Prezi that I used as a conversation starter can be found here and Bernie’s slideshare can be found here.