What Happened To The Arts? Is Code The New Creativity?

There is a helluva hullabaloo brewing around who codes, who doesn't code and who should be coding. My little boy is six months old and I'm seriously worried that if he isn't coding by the age of one then I'm failing as a father. His mother is a digital creative, an artist, a designer. So much for her influence then in these STEM-tastic times.

Creative Coders

Seriously though what happened to the Arts? It seems that STEM is taking over what with the Maker Faire being hosted at the White House this time around it strikes me that the Arts (and anything related to it including it's denizens who reside within this field) must and will take firm backseat for a long time to come. While the UK follows the suit of the US in puppy-dog fashion, the 'Anti-Oik' and general antagonist Gove has been pushing STEM in the UK in the guise of coding. 

I was talking to my secondary counter parts yesterday in a very impromtu drop-in and ended up talking about coding in Year 9, Raspberry Pi and how the Computer Science GCSE/ A Level is a far cry from the ICT GCSE/ A Level. In a nutshell: ICT = MS Office. As we are all too familiar with. However, this is legacy and nothing in comparison to what's coming. We talked that in Year 9 it's compulsory for the students to have experience of a wrtten language that isn't HTML (HTML doesn't count - I'd heard this but never in conversation with a teacher of KS3/4/5). The example I saw was Karel - an introductory language that can get quite complex as CodeHS demonstrates. I am really pleased to see this as it's been a long time since my programming persuasion has been in line with KS3 and 4. However much I like Python, Ruby and Scratch (Small talk/ Squeak) before it. I think we're missing a trick here though. There should be a general lineage form KS1 too and this is where the fireworks can start. We all have our favourites.

Now, I'm all for technological advances and it interests me in many ways although as an old saying goes "anything excess in life is poison." So what happened to the balance? Is creativity taking a very niche route and bound to the confines of code? Or is Coding the new creativity? Is the App Store the Pop Idol for coders with the many also-rans trying to compete with the likes of Zynga for the next Chocolate Rain? With every student who makes it near the top there are thousands who are at a mere karaoke standard trying to vie with everyone else and dropping their prices to 99c. 

I feel there is an imbalance somewhere here that I can't quite put my finger on. Although, this coding leyline is exclusive unless you're inclined to digitally represent your creativity and eschew good ol' standard mediums. I think I may need to adjust my teaching style to bend the other way and only teach coding where there is an artistic flavour to hand .

The teaching of coding, I think, needs a tiny dousing of Leonardo Da Vinci and a little less Lenin; I'm going to strive to keep the true artistic balance in our future schemes.

IPC ICT How Big is the Internet? (International Primary Curriculum)

From my old blog on Wordpress....

How Big is the Internet?

This article has raised some questions I would like to bring to ICT lessons in Augustwhen we start back at school. The amount of users globally and the percentages. I think it would make a nice one lesson intro to the price of progress (an IPC topic for year 6) on a global scale. What implications does this have? The children could then brainstorm the after effects of the impact this has on the local and wider international environments with an ecological angle as well as the socio-economic (not that we’d use this language!).

If your local area has access to computers and the internet (here in Vietnam it’s booming with an estimated 5 million in the southern area [HCMC]) then what does this mean? There are other factors to take into account; in Asia there is a darker side to internet use. The Gold farming from sites like WOW and the Linden doallars being transferred as real life dollars for characters and popular virtual niceties. But that’s another story.

In addition, I would hasten to add the impact of Internet cafes here in HCMC as a local factor to price of  progress that affects the social aspect of children. Many of the Internet cafes house children of the same age as those in my studentship who are studying this topic late into the night. What further implications does this have? Is there a gender issue attached? Is there a knock-on effect to the content they view? Is there a difference to the content they view/ interact with and the content they view – some may say no. It could also be a good grounding for my international students who are slightly detached from their surroundings due to their family’s wealth. It is startling sometimes as to how they are oblivious to the world outside of school. The more I think about this the more I want to kick this off in the new term.

Horizon Report, moshi monsters, Tutpup and Fantastic Contraption game

Beginning today I will create a series of posts relating to several topics covered at the Taipei European School's Primary ICT conference. The first covering these topics: Horizon Report, moshi monsters, Tutpup and the Fantastic Contraption game. Then, in subsequent weeks we'll look into the areas in the table below a little more closely:

To begin we'll look at the Horizon Report. What is it? It's a document put together by the New Media Consortium and what they do is look at emerging technologies across the the schooling age ranges. The report does have a strong focus on Higher Ed. but what is quite relevent for the primary school is how these ideas can integrate quite readily into mainstream classes: mobile devices as an example.The full document is below from Scribd.com with this snippet

In each edition of the Horizon Report, six emerging technologies or practices are described that are likely to enter mainstream use on campuses within three adoption horizons spread over the next one to five years. Each report also presents critical trends and challenges that will affect teaching and learning over the same time frame. In the seven years that the Horizon Project has been underway, more than 400 leaders in the fields of business, industry, technology, and education have contributed to this long-running primary research effort.

And...

The six technologies featured in each Horizon Report are placed along three adoption horizons that indicate likely time frames for their entrance into mainstream use for teaching, learning, or creative inquiry. The near-term horizon assumes the likelihood of entry into the mainstream for institutions within the next twelve months; the mid-term horizon, within two to three years; and the far-term, within four to five years

The key area I and many other primary school ICT teachers are interested in are the e-book/ readers and the hand-held devices such as the Nintendo DS, iPod touch, PSP, kindle/Sony et al e-Readers, GPS devices, cell phones and, now, to some degree tablets. The Tablets are more of an interest into the social side of ICT.

The Horizon Report Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary 
2. Key Trends  
3. Critical Challenges 
4. Technologies to Watch
5. The Horizon Project 
6. One Year or Less: Mobile Computin
7. One Year or Less: Open Content 
8. Two to Three Years: Electronic Books 
9. Two to Three Years: Simple Augmented Reality 
10. Four to Five Years: Gesture-Based Computing 
11. Four to Five Years: Visual Data Analysis 
12. Methodology 
13. 2010 Horizon Project dvisory Board 

2010 Horizon Report 2010 Horizon Report

The Fantastic Contraption

This is a logic style game that can be played either as a whole class (Year 4/5 up) or individually as a problem solving activity. The aim of the game is make machines in ever increasing difficulty by using the tools provided. It's similar to the magic pen game (link opens directly to full screen game) that provides lots of discussion points for Science and D+T. A worthy IWB whole-class plenary/ introduction/ D+T storyboard method of construction. 

Fantastic Contraption game

TutPup

TutPup is a website that provides a perpetual challenge to

players who have signed up for this. The great thing about this site is that teachers have the option to make class sets and codes for the students. This means that they only play against their friends and not random people from around the world. 

Alternatively, this could be a year group idea and play across the maths sets.

If you have lessons that go on longer than an hour it could provide the much needed 'brain break' to divert and channel attention to another strand of maths while maintaining the challenges of the lesson.

Moshi Monsters

Moshi Monsters is a game for Children, it’s sort of like those virtual pets that you used to have, only on the internet and they can actually do things. Moshi Monsters live in a virtual world that exists on your computer, there are lots of different monsters and children can choose one that they want to adopt. This monster then becomes their pet. All of the monsters live in Monstro city; here children can build a home for their pet. Users can also play games with one another, meet other people and show their pet to people. It’s like a tamogotchi only with social networking and doesn’t just beep at you all the time. Moshi Monsters has been created with the intention of being a fun and safe environment for children to play in. Not only that but it’s also an educational game that’s great fun for any age child. A child who visits the site can adopt a monster; they can give it a cute name and even design the colors of the monster. Every monster is different and has a different personality, the more you play with the monster, the more the personality will develop. Competing and solving puzzles means that you win money, the currency of the game is Rox. You can then use Rox to buy things from the virtual shop. There are various social networking features including blogs, and pin boards.

Things to do:

Adopt your very own monster

Name your monster and take care of it

Social networking functions including blogs and pin boards

Play games and earn Rox (virtual money)

Next Week:

Future Lab Quarterly. Articles to look out for. Wireless in Schools. Mathletics http://www.mathletics.co.uk/ Maths moves you: www.mathmovesu.com/  - a game like situation for maths 2diyarchive www.2diyarchive.co.uk/ excellent resources for 2DIY a package we will buy for August.

Which mobile devices do you use or would like to use in School? Voice Thread: www.voicethread.com - very good voice and image collaboration site. Primary Pad - http://primarypad.com/ realtime collaborative writing Pirate Pad - http://piratepad.net/ Etherpad - http://etherpad.com/ realtime collaborative writing

Ever thought of using Guitar Hero for Literacy? Myst for Story telling? Prezi - http://prezi.com/ replaces powerpoint, timelines Edu Glogster http://edu.glogster.com/ -Interactive posters, kids in the class can comment on friend's poster (you need a good internet connection) An example of using Edu.glogster !  http://bertjacha.edu.glogster.com/school-council/ Dipity - www.dipity.com – interactive timelines for Literacy and IPC,

What applications could you use on your class machines? Pretty things and Busy things for EYFS Cool Tools For School - http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/ Free Tools http://web2educationuk.wetpaint.com/ - reviewed by the author