Why Learning to Code Doesn’t Suck Anymore

Coding has always been notoriously difficult to learn and to understand. For the longest time, coding looked something like this.

Now that’s just some gibberish code created using http://hackertyper.net/ (try it out, great practical joke) but most of us wouldn’t know whether it was or wasn’t.

The reason that learning coding has been so difficult for so long is that you were actually trying to learn two things simultaneously.

• The Logic of Coding
• The Syntax of Coding

I’m actually mildly amazed that anybody ever managed to learn the Logic of coding while also navigating the unforgiving Syntax of Coding.

• Should it be {curly brackets}, (round brackets) or [square brackets]?
• Should I use a semicolon ; or a colon : ?
• Is it a forward slash / or a backslash \ ?

A REVOLUTION
Fortunately, we can now decouple the logic from the syntax and start learning coding in a far more organic way. There are other program that do this but Scratch is the most popular and it’s what I use.

Take a look at this “coding” that I’m doing.

So what we end up with is code, or put simply, instructions, that look like this.

 

So when the green flag gets clicked, Something will point in direction -90, wait 1 second, move 30 steps, wait 1 more second, then point in direction 90.

I still don’t know what that looks like, but it’s easy to read. Lets run our program and see how it looks.

• So the green flag gets click,
• then the cat points left (that must be what -90 means)
• Then he waits 1 second
• Then he moves over a bit (doesn’t seem very far, but it must be “30 steps”)
• Then he waits again
• Then he points right (that must be 90)

This is what learning to code is today. No brackets or backslashes or horrible error messages.

Immediate Feedback
Here I’m learning only the LOGIC of code and getting instant feedback on whether my logic is correct. Either it works the way I intended or it doesn’t. This is high quality feedback, the kind that real learning depends upon.

But why teach coding?
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Computers are breathtakingly stupid.

A computer will only do exactly what you tell it to do. Nothing more and nothing less. Breaking a problem into a series of steps that a computer can understand and execute requires clarity of thought and communication.

An algorithm written by a human to instruct a computer to  do something beyond human capabilities is a thing of beauty.

A coin flipping algorithm allows this cat to flip 6 coins 100s of times in a few seconds and plot their relative frequencies on this polygon.

 

 

 

 

What we’re looking at here is an iterative program allowing 100s of hexagons of increasing size and changing colour to be drawn in moments. It is art from the mind of a human but only made possible by the power of a machine.

 

A classic story being acted out with the help of a few sprites and a few lines of computer code.

 

 

 

 

In Summary
Coding is not what you remember it to be. It doesn’t suck anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Juggling Hammers – How to Use Tech Tools

If you gave a man a hammer with no further instructions, would he figure out its primary purpose was hitting things? Hammers are for hammering in nails right? But maybe he’d see that nice little hook on the back and use it as a backscratcher. Or maybe he’d get his hands on two more and juggle them like this guy.

On Monday as part of my technology coach job I ran our science department through a great website called ThingLink. ThingLink allows you to take images and add “tags” anywhere on the image. These tags can be hyperlinks, youtube clips, google docs or slides and a whole host of other web content.

Click this link to see a ThingLink of my dog Dexter.

“What will staff do with this new tool?” Thinglink can be used by teachers to create interactive images. Or maybe having students create interactive images would be better. Thinglink also allows multiple people to tag the one image, perhaps a whole class would do one image. Or you can embed thinglinks inside thinglinks, a kind of russian doll thing as a whole class project.

Of course those are only the uses I can currently think of. But maybe there’s a hammer juggler in my school who will come up with a totally different idea.

Another interesting tool I’ve been looking at is Draftback. Draftback is a chrome extension that allows you to play back the creation of a google doc character by character. I’m writing this blog post a little apprehensively as I have a plan to post the draftback playback when I’m done.

I see huge potential for using draftback as a learning tool in classrooms. How? I’m not sure? Wouldn’t it be amazing to see the playback of a famous authors writing process? Perhaps they could narrate over the top and try to remember why it was they were deleting and rearranging things.

Or maybe students could narrate their own Draftbacks. What insights could we gain into their learning then?

I’m honestly not sure about how draftback could be used but I can’t wait to meet the teacher who uses it really well.

What do you think? How would you use this great tool? Watch me write this blog post below.

How I use a BackChannel in my classroom

Since I started flipping my classroom, I very rarely find myself speaking at the front of the class.

Occasionally though I do still find myself doing the old “chalk and talk”. It has value and an immediacy that sometimes I miss when I flip my classroom.

But how can we use technology to add value? Watch the video as I explain “The BackChannel”.

There is a certain level of movie magic in this, you’ll want to check it out since I rarely do this kind of editing in post production (and it shows!)

Anybody else using a backchannel in their classroom? Would love to hear about it.

 

Google Ngram Viewer

Occasionally you come across a resource that is just incredible. Something unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Google’s Ngram Viewer  is a website that I can just get absolutely lost in.

Over 20 Million books have been digitised and can then be searched by word frequency from 1800 all the way up to 2008.

I give a very quick video rundown on just some of the features of Google Ngram Viewer here.

I’m really excited about the potential for this in education. But I’m also at a bit of a loss as to how I can get students engaging with it in a rich task. Please turn your mind towards it and comment below on how we can use this in the classroom.

Here’s one more graph I thought was interesting.

 

Why Edtech isn’t a Thermomix

This is really a post of advice to all those “edupreneurs” out there.

Don’t make a Thermomix.

Above is a kitchen appliance that a lot of people think is particularly clever: The Thermomix.

According to this website, the Thermomix can: cook, stew, boil, simmer, chop, mince, steam, blend, mill, grind, crush, knead, whisk, grate, emulsify, puree, weigh, control heat, clean itself.

Sounds amazing right? One tool can do SO MANY THINGS!

So  you can probably imagine that professional chefs all over the world are using their Thermomix in their 5-star restaurants to whip up all sorts of things.

No. No they don’t.

Why? Because while it might do all those things, it’s not GREAT at doing any of them.

If you want to cook, stew or boil, use a pot. If you want to chop, use a knife. If you want to knead some dough, USE YOUR HANDS!

But now onto education.

There’s a growing pressure I think for all educational apps to have LOTS of bells and whistles. Mark your roll, manage your class, give assignments, formative assessment, email your class, create presentations, create video, collect data, OH SO MUCH DATA!

It seems that every app wants to be your Thermomix.

Next time you’re at an education convention and the guy from XYZTechEd Co. corners you, ask them what their tool does. If they can’t answer it in one sentence, you definitely don’t want it.

So, enough of what not to do. Which EdTech companies do a particularly good job of avoiding the problem of “feature creep”?

GoogleDrive – Store and Share anything with anyone easily on the web.
PlayPosit  – (formerly educanon) – Make videos into interactive lessons
VersoApp – Allow anonymous online collaboration
Screencastomatic – Capture webcam and computer screen videos
PearDeck – Making powerpoint presentations interactive
Scratch 2.0 – Drag and Drop computer coding for all ages

So what do you think? If I missed an app that you love, tell me about it. App makers, if I missed yours and you want to give me your one sentence, give me a yell.