Educational Origami

I have been looking around for a simple quality assurance test plan that my students could use for developing multi-page websites. I haven’t found one that really seemed to cover the bases. So I made one up.

This is not a testing process, rather a guide for what should be asked. To put this in context – My students have to create a multipage website including graphics, images and potentially video and animation using Cascading style sheets to render the formatting and layout.

Here is what I came up with.

Here are a couple of useful links that I have come across recently.

1. Educause  - 7 things you should know - http://www.educause.edu/

There are two recent updates in this useful series. The first is collaborative learning spaces and the second infographics tools. We are seeing across education a shift towards learning happening not just in the classroom but beyond. Collaborative learning spaces are useful tools that allow a common point for the learners to link to.

• http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-collaborative-learning-spaces
• http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-infographic-creation-tools

2. The commoncraft show - http://www.commoncraft.com

This is one of my favourite sites and I am happy to pay the annual membership to get access to these resources. You can access this site for free and view the videos by going to http://www.commoncraft.com. There are three things that are worth highlighting on this site at the moment:

• http://www.commoncraft.com/blog  - this blog has a number of very useful tips and posts about constructing your own explanation videos – its good reading
• http://www.commoncraft.com/new-video-credit-card-responsibility-0 This is an appropriate video that would be useful in the social sciences and economics as well as at home. Credit card responcibility
• http://www.commoncraft.com/new-video-email-access-explained-common-craft This is in the tech series and is useful resource

3.  Robotics articles in the news

Robotics has recieved a little bit of press recently and here are some useful articles from my twitter feed (@achurches)

• When are we going to learn to trust robots - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21623892
• Robot warriors: Lethal machines coming of age - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21576376
• BigDog four-legged robot now sports throwing arm http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21630212
• Police use drones to catch criminals - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10868674

The BBC website hosts a series of brilliant gems that are very useful to teachers. While many of us will be familiar with the news page which is accessable via the web or using apps on our phones, there is a whole lot more that’s worth exploring and using. Here are some of my favourites…

1. BBC Future - http://www.bbc.com/future this is a stimulating site that has some interesting and often challenging articles. The site matches well with ITGS and also TOK for the IB’s out there.
2. BBC Science and Nature - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/ and Nature home page – http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/ some great resources here including videos
3. BBC School - http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ this is cool, stretching across the curriculum there are over 7000 resources here.
4. BBC Learning – http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/ this is learning for all ages from the very young to the not so young.
5. BBC bitesize http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ and GCSE bitesize http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/ this is learning resources grouped by year level and subject area. Awesome.

When I am preparing a presentation I often like to take a snap shot of whats happening in the world at the moment to frame the amazing rate of change we are seeing. So here are some of my favourites:

1. CIA Factbook – https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html Say what you like about the CIA this is an interesting site filled with huge amount of information and statistics.

2. Worldometers - http://www.worldometers.info/ This site is actually a little bit scary. With updating totals that tick over a a very fast rate this page will tell you about

• world population
• governments and economics
• society & media
• environment
• food
• water
• energy
• and so much more.

Enjoy the visit, but the numbers are stunning

3. Gap Minder – http://www.gapminder.org/ The website of stats genius Hans Rosling. This is a must visit site and like worldometers, is a little frightening. But watch the videos and dive into the statistics presented in interesting and understandable ways. Just brilliant.

4. World Internet Stats – http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm This site will give you a continent by continent breakdown of connections and more. Again a useful site particularly for those who need a global perspective.

5. Royal Pingdom – http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/01/17/internet-2011-in-numbers/ – this is a great snap shot of 2011, and it examine more than just connection to the internet. have a look at these comments about email

• 3.146 billion – Number of email accounts worldwide.
• 27.6% – Microsoft Outlook was the most popular email client.
• 19% – Percentage of spam emails delivered to corporate email inboxes despite spam filters.
• 112 – Number of emails sent and received per day by the average corporate user.
• 71% – Percentage of worldwide email traffic that was spam (November 2011).
• 360 million – Total number of Hotmail users (largest email service in the world).
• $44.25 – The estimated return on $1 invested in email marketing in 2011.
• 40 – Years since the first email was sent, in 1971.
• 0.39% – Percentage of email that was malicious (November 2011).

6. Youtube statistics – http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics/ Youtube like facebook is an icon of our age. Its not surprizing that its changing how we view our media and how media producers are publishing media. Have a look at the traffic they have

• Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
• YouTube is localized in 43 countries and across 60 languages
• In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or around 140 views for every person on Earth

7. Facebook newsroom http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22 The social network with 900+ million subscribers

• 955 million monthly active users at the end of June 2012.
• Approximately 81% of our monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada.
• 552 million daily active users on average in June 2012.
• 543 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in June 2012.

8. Netcraft webserver survey - http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/08/02/august-2012-web-server-survey.html This site does a monthly survey and presents data on the number of webservers in the world each month. The growth over time is impressive, but last month saw the number of websites decrease by 30 million.

Source: http://badgemonkey.com/images/smile.jpg

Badges? What are badges? I always thought badges were small circular discs that you pinned (carefully) to your shirt or jacket. But we now have digital badges as well.

Educause has just released their latest update which discusses Digital badges - Seven things you should know about badges. This is the link to the PDF file for download.

here is the link to the library of resources from Educause in this series.

My students and I are investigating Digital media as part of the ITGS course, specifically we are examining the issues, impacts and changes that exist in IT and the home. What effect and impact does IT have on the arts, leisure, entertainment and the home.

My students are in their mid teens and for many of them they have seen very few different music medias  – so I went looking for an infographic that showed the different media over time I found a very good one thats worth sharing.

See the original article by David Wallace – http://www.davidwallace.com/2010/10/evolution-music-playing-formats/

But I guess this is more than computers and computing, its actually all about ICT – information and communications technologies.

Many of us may have seen the recent release from Google about a project they are working on called Project Glass. http://g.co/projectglass and perhaps you have looked up the video on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4 Aside from the privacy and security issues that the boys on Facebook (yes Andrew and David) mentioned, and these are real concerns too. This is a great project and it heralds what we can expect to see in the future.

But this is not alone and its also worth looking at this offering from Corning the glass company – A day made of Glass - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38

The potential here is amazing and again we will be increasingly challenged by issues of privacy, security and anonymity. We are heading towards an incredibly information pervasive society, where connection is ubiquitous and constant. While in some ways I find this exciting, I also find it challenging. are we going to get to a point where there is no OFF switch. We already know that the OFF switch on most of our devices does not actually mean OFF it means standby, it means don’t display, it means hide and process in the background.

The BBC has on their website a number of very interesting articles in a column called Future. These are some that also relate to the future of ICT:

• Voice Control - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120323-future-interaction-voice-control
• Touch screens - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120316-future-interaction-touch-screens
• Gesture control - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120221-future-of-interaction-gesture
• Brain Control - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120229-future-interaction-brain-control
• BBC Future - http://www.bbc.com/future

Project management is a topic that I teach in many of my classes. Whether its working as a member of a team or as an individual managing the project is a critical skill that the students need to develop.

If the students are working as an individual, I get them to use the waterfall or cascade method of project management. This is the classical cycle of:

1. Define the problem
2. Design a solution
3. Develop the solution
4. Debrief

When the students are working in groups a better approach is the agile project management method, where the tasks are clearly defined and of short duration, where there is regular feedback and updates. Explaining agile projects and the process to the students can be a little complex, but I have discovered a very good video resource that I use with them. When you look at the video you can also see how the core concepts of the Sprint – Defining the tasks and assigning the roles, the Daily stand up with its three core questions:

• What did you do yesterday
• What will you do today
• What are the obstacles or impediments preventing you progressing,

and the project review can fit very nicely into every day project based learning. We know from John Hattie’s Meta-research in Visible Learning that feedback has a huge impact on on the learning of our students.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJflDE6OaSc – Agile, an Introduction.

This is a BBC clip about the hole in the wall experiment – This is about a computer made available to the young people in Gurjola. Professor Sugata Mitra of Newcastle University is setting up a ‘hole in the wall’ experiment to explore the impact of access to computers on learning.

Watch the video – its quite amazing. I love the fact that the computer is in English and the students are still able to navigate and use the computer. - http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldclass/17461332.

I suspect that we take for granted the access to such technologies. The young lady who is the center of the article has been teaching her father to read and write. Education is the key, its opens opportunities and more.

This is a useful article for ITGS education.

I have just read a very interesting article from the BBC called “Ready for the robot revolution?”
The article itself is very interesting and a great starting point for discussion in class but two aspects were worth discussion.
The first involves Azimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics – this is a standard and one I make use of in class
Isaac Asimov, outlined ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ in a novel featuring human-like robots. The rules were designed to protect people from harm.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

It is idealistic and interesting and has been the cause of many heated discussions in class.

However, the article also present this ethical code as well
“The UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, together with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has drafted a set of ethical principles for robot design – which can be summarised as follows:

1. Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans.
2. Humans, not robots, are responsible agents. Robots are tools designed to achieve human goals.
3. Robots should be designed in ways that assure their safety and security.
4. Robots are artefacts; they should not be designed to exploit vulnerable users by evoking an emotional response or dependency. It should always be possible to tell a robot from a human.
5. It should always be possible to find out who is legally responsible for a robot.”
source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15146053

Here is the website – http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ourportfolio/themes/engineering/activities/Pages/principlesofrobotics.aspx

The second aspect of interest for me is the potential conflicts we see. Robots have long been used in manufactoring. While initially this caused much concern, who now hears about this? Are we going to see the same concerns expressed for domestic and commercial robots and will this to fade?

Around the outside of my classroom are whiteboards that the students use for their work. There are four of them and I seldom write on them but the students make quit extencive use of these.

The students today were looking at the London Riots and examining the social and ethical issues (for IB ITGS Teachers  – paper 2). They were starting to analyse the underlying ICT’s (information and communication technologies) particularly twitter, social media and short messaging services.

I set them a 10 minute task to report back to the class on the technical elements of the three diffrerent tools (Twitter, Social media & texting) as it related to the london riots. The students quickly scratched out their area of investigation and presented it back to the class with explanations.

Since the information was vital for all of the students, they grabbed their cellphones and took pictures of the whiteboards and then emailed these to the other students. In the space of 1 minute every student had a copy of all three technical breakdowns as they related to their current topic of discussion.

Technology is a wonderful thing. The students are now incorperating these notes into their own work.