baggiepr's posterous

Exciting times in IT curriculum development let's not waste it!

Whilst I am not the greatest fan of the current education minister I
can't help but commend his decision to remove ICT from the National
Curriculum to allow all interested bodies to develop a new more
challenging curriculum that reflects the needs of industry and further
education.

His reported reasons for doing this were because far to many pupils
found the subject boring. Let's be clear I follow on twitter an
innovative group of IT managers from all key stages who I suspect have
never allowed IT to become boring but my experience from talking to
most teenagers in my local secondary schools is that they often found
the subject irrelevant and boring at KS3. Pupils would often come back
to me at Junior school and tell me they had done nothing new for the
first two years. As an ICT AST I often visited junior schools where
their curriculum was also woefully inadequate, the difference lay in
the fact that unfettered by an outdated exam syllabus I could help
them adapt their program's of study to incorporate new technology,
challenge and excitement.

We have at this moment an wonderful opportunity to redesign the
curriculum. As good IT managers we have always responded to change.
Let's keep and improve the best of digital literacy skills that allow
our pupils to function as good digital citizens. Let's work with
business to ensure skills and understanding relevant to existing in a
modern work place. Let's respond to the challenge to explain and
discover how IT works by developing clear strands of computer science
across the key stages.

This process will be a bit messy and I imagine that some head teachers
will think that IT no longer matters. I was heartened to hear the lead
ICT inspector for OFSTED saying that schools would still have to
provide a full ICT curriculum which is at least as good as the old
programs of study or they would find themselves facing needs to
improve.

We can either moan about why the government haven't provided us a
curriculum or we can take destiny in our hands, team up with
interested business leaders, programmers and computer scientists and
build a world class curriculum. We won't get everything right straight
away and we might need to challenge some of our own long held views if
they conflict with providing excellence but I hope the end result will
be a more relevant, exciting and challenging curriculum.

With this in mind I have been working with Dr Les Carr of Southampton
Universities Computer Science department to design a strand of
Computing Science to teach to KS2 (7-11) pupils. I have persuaded a
number of local schools to allow me to teach this next year. I will be
publishing all our new planning at http://code-it.co.uk/ . I know that
the IT curriculum will be improved at those schools and hope that some
of our experiences will benefit the wider debate. I welcome
collaboration and debate.

Phil Bagge

Digital Literacy & Computer Science

My current thinking about IT
KS1 Mainly Digital Literacy
KS2 75% Digital Literacy 25% Computer Science
KS3 50% Digital Literacy 50% Computer Science

By digital literacy I mean common technology skills and understanding
that pupils will need personally and in the future work environment.
This needs to reflect both the needs of the business environment and
pupils own existence as digital citizens. When I talk about computer
science I define this as understanding how technology works. It will
include an important programming strand but is a lot wider than just
this. My friend @lescarr compares the relationship between programming
and computer science to telescopes and astronomy. Most astronomers
will use a telescope but astronomy is a much wider discipline than
telescope studies.

Ipad apps so far

How to setup a Posterous Blog

Scratch empty car programme

#RethinkingICT Towards a more challenging curriculum

My thoughts on the way forward for ICT education in response to Chris Leach’s Rethinking ICT #ICT500 idea
 
I have long thought that KS2 pupils can achieve much more than we allow them to in computing. In KS2 this is mainly down to the tyranny of Maths and Literacy in our curriculum. Many class teachers are capable of teaching elements of Computer Science but don't have the time or energy after Literacy and Maths.

With this in mind I have approached my head and chair of governors to teach a stand of Computer Science to all year groups. Class teachers will teach strands of digital literacy throughout the key stage and I will teach the Computer Science. With this in mind I am brushing up my scratch programming and have bought Lego Wedo and pico boards to supplement keyboard and mouse inputs in scratch. It has surprised me just how much I have enjoyed learning the basics of Python and how much pleasure I have taken in writing very basic programmes.

Just as interesting has been working on understanding concepts in programming so that pupils can take concepts from one language to another and into the wider curriculum. In year 3 today we were writing simple procedures to create screen letters using logo, something I have done many times in Year 5. What was different was talking through and drawing out our ideas before hand and using these plans to help us debug problems with our basic codes. All ideas gained through learning Python. The kids loved it and two of my SEN boys achieved as highly as my best pupils. I caught a child in the playground at break time pacing out his name using logo commands. Next step debugging our sentences.

I am collaborating with a good friend from Soton Uni computer science department to make sure there is breadth to our new curriculum and we are looking at ways to teach how the internet works and how sound and images are digitised.

Life is hectic but it is fun and innovative.

Confessions of a pro European worried by Europes lack of democratic principle

Over the last ten years I have been consistently pro European. Supporting the idea of a strong Britain firmly in the centre of a united, increasingly federalist, democratic Europe. I have endured the mild hostility of many of my British friends over this stance. I am horrified however that Europe has condoned/forced Greece and Italy into abandoning their democracies in an attempt to remain in the Euro. The currency it seems is more important than the right of the people to determine their fate.  Now we have a summit just passed where the people's of Europe will almost universally not be consulted over fiscal union, arguably the biggest most wide reaching change ever. I want a strong federal European superstate but not one born out of an attempt to keep the grey faces of the market happy. I don't want fiscal union created through sacrificing our cherished democratic principles.  In human relations hasty decisions made to placate rarely last, they just don't really satisfy anyone. Over the last year we have seen France and Germany struggle to appease the money markets. Their incrementalism and lack of a grander vision has seen this crisis prolong, extend and worsen. We need a European superstate designed for the citizens, by the citizens and in the interests of the citizens not the markets. Where is the vision and pride that we can buy into? I am sure that fiscal union would be a natural part of this. 

Thoughts on HSS Part 4

Thoughts on HSS Part 3

Thoughts on HSS Part 2