Do my students need me or can they just teach themselves?

The role of self-paced learning in my classroom

As I begin to write this, I’m already asking myself “why am I going public with this particular topic”? The only reason I can think of is that I’ve already derived some benefit previously by blogging about the things that I mull over. I’ve had useful feedback from teachers and  professionals whose opinions I value and it’s all gone into the soup of ideas and opinions that I’m continually formulating as I struggle along with the teaching of digital technologies and my role as my school’s e-learning leader.

My school has a PLD inquiry cycle in place and this year’s inquiry is to hinge on the concept of “empowering our students”. My take on it has been to investigate self-teach (self-guided, self-paced) learning for my students. My aim is to “empower my students to take charge of how and when they learn and, to some extent, to be able to negotiate what they choose to learn”. All very worthy, but in essence it came down to simply being able to offer my Year 11 students the opportunity to opt in to learning programming and computer science, if they so wished. This was on the understanding that, if they chose to do so, they must accept that most of their learning would be self-directed.

My main inquiry focus was to be able to draw conclusions on the effectiveness of self-paced learning (hoping to mitigate any pitfalls) and I trawled through a few scholarly articles with this aim in mind. Of course, school life being what it is, I soon became more consumed with completing the self-teach course ahead of the students than I did with the whole pedagogy thing because the time for them to get stuck in was approaching at light speed.

There ensued a terrifying time of learning basic Python just a squeak ahead of my small class of highly motivated and very intelligent students. I had tried to minimise risk by choosing a method that provided assessment tasks and assistance with the creating of the plan for the program too and maybe I just expected a wee bit too much. Anyhow, I was surprised to find that, after completing the course, the students were still quite a way from being able to complete the assessment task. I still needed to spend a considerable amount of time unpacking things for them. I set all sorts of mini tasks to get them using what they’d learnt in a range of different situations. I had to research articles online to make sure I had definitely reached the right understanding before helping clarify things for them.

Now, I have some pretty smart cookies in my class. I’d be reasonably confident that most of their stars will rise on a steeper trajectory than mine as they go out into the world. There was absolutely no reason at all for me to go to all the effort of scaffolding their knowledge and building them up for the assessment - they should be able to do that for themselves … right? Well that’s where things get a little confused for me. I know the kids could prepare themselves for the assessment - given enough time. But should they? What is my role in this new world? There’s been a fair bit of discussion on NZACDITT about offering a range of standards and allowing the students to select. The more we offer, the more we move away from our comfort area in terms of content we are familiar with. Looking at the range of standards available in digital technologies, should I be able to offer the students assessments from the electronics standards despite knowing absolutely nothing about this particular strand?

Finally, my students sat the assessment (two tasks - two standards). To be able to grade their work I had to have a thorough understanding of what was expected of them. Whenever we discuss offering a huge range of options for kids in technology we definitely need to consider (delivery method of teaching aside) whether we have what it takes to be manage the assessment from start to finish. I have learnt so much and yet know so little. Taking Level 2 on board will be another step up again, and one that scares the Bejeesus out of me.

We also ran out of time to do the learning and write the report for the computer science external. Which has thrown out all my plans for Level 2 next year and made me seriously reconsider what I’ll do at Level 1 next year.

So after all that, why am I blogging about this? Because if anybody actually reads this, I would love some input as to how much we should or shouldn’t be doing for our students. Do we spoon feed them too much? What are they actually learning? By doing all the little extras like finding practice tasks and helping them break down the self-teach into chunks that I know suits the way they work better, am I scaffolding their learning and allowing them to focus on the important stuff. Or am I taking away opportunities for them to be truly learning. And if I step back completely, what role do I have at all? Am I missing something vital here that everybody else just gets?

[Sigh]

The Real Reason Girls Don't Like to Code

Phew - Christmas/New Year ... gone!

I was going to write this post at the end of the last year when there was a bit of a thread going among some of my Digital Technologies contemporaries on Twitter. However, life got the better of me and I ended up focusing on end of year stuff (school, family, elderly parents, resthomes - aaaaarggghh). Now I'm working in reverse and looking at the Christmas tree that is still begging to be removed but deciding instead that if I don't write this now I never will.

The Real Reason Girls Don't Like to Code is the same as the real reason why girls "don't like to ride dirt bikes" or "don't like to crochet" or "don't like to eat spinach" or ... need I go on? (Please don't think I mean that all girls don't like to ride dirt bikes - I happen to have a motocross-riding girl living in my house!) My considered opinion is not ground breaking news is it? As I mentioned in my previous post - it's just not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I surveyed my Year 10 girls at the end of last year and found the results pretty interesting - enough so that I thought I'd share them here (which I will do shortly). And after it all I decided is that the best we can do here at school is ensure two things:

1. That we give them enough exposure to the possibilities (that we can be absolutely certain that we haven't somehow passed over someone for whom coding would have been the perfect match)
2. That, in giving them exposure to the possibilities, we do our utmost to generate interest and try to make it relevant.

In surveying the girls I kept it pretty simple, asking them if they enjoyed the programming section of the course and, if not, why not.

Here is the graph of responses (where 1 is didn't enjoy the course and 5 is loved it)

You can see that the majority of the girls didn't particularly enjoy programming. Of those who didn't enjoy it, the most often cited reason was that it was "too hard" or "too boring" (both of which are food for thought in regard to how the content was delivered and what they were doing).

The most telling thing was the response to the following question:

Having seen the ICT Connect presentations and participated in this module, how likely are you to investigate further the idea of working in the IT (Information Technology) industry?

Here is a dump of the answers from those who said they were unlikely to investigate the idea of working in IT any further:

Because I already know what I want to do for a career.

I am not interested in the ICT industry and would prefer other things

Because i find the whole digital technology world very boring and it can be difficult at times

Because it's not what i am into and if i were to be in the IT industry i would want to be doing something that doesn't involve computers and was more like managing stuff.

i don't want to sit in font of a computer all day and its not very fun. and you have to be smart and have the patiene to deal with computers. And it confuses me a lot and its boring and hard

Because I love being innovative, creative and being part of something that could expand and positively impact the whole world. Most of my life I've wanted to be a graphic designer. However I feel these people didn't make me WANT to do IT. Their lives didn't seem overly exciting, but then I suppose none of them were graphic designers. The first speakers showed some figures of then pay we could potentially expect. I have adult friends in the IT industry who have been their for a long time and don't make half that. FALSE - unless you invent facebook or trademe then I guess that is a different story. I don't feel like NZ is the place for that. Maybe if you lived in America.

Because I'm not really into computing and that's not something I would like to do when l'm older as i find it boring.

It is quite boring and a long process

Because im more interested in other things over ICT

because i just feel like its very stressful and boring i also found it really hard and confusing

So there you have it ... in a nutshell - why girls don't like to code. But before you go getting all depressed (like I did), here are the comments from some of the girls who enjoyed the programming part of the module (note one or two kind of got confused about where programming started and finished!):

I enjoyed it because it was something new that I hadn't done before and I found quite cool how I created a website. Although sometimes I didn't know what I was doing.

It was an extremely interesting topic as you could have fun and really personalize the things you do during the module. The topic included things that i found useful and I found that I learnt a lot of new knowledge.

I thought it was cool finding out how websites and animation is made, and it was really satisfying every time I put something new on a website or made an animation.

I loved the challenge that the programming section of the module gave me and I have a really big interest in IT and computing. I learnt many new things that I found useful.

Lastly, I should say that we mostly did programming with Scratch (with a bit of CodeAvengers, CodeCombat and Lightbot thrown in here and there for reasons I won't go into here) and that they really enjoyed using the interface and only flagged once they had to think about how they were going to get it to produce the goods! Also, despite all the negativity, here's the funny bit ... have a look at this:

And also - just out of interest's sake, because we tried a few different approaches, here's the response:

So, despite not enjoying programming, they think it should be included in the Year 11 course (which it hasn't been up until now but which I think HAS to happen this year). Also, despite not enjoying programming they would like to know how to write an app for their phone (the relevance thing!).

Which brings me to the end of this rant. I'm not sure what I'm really trying to say - I just thought some of you might find it a little bit interesting. It's also good to note that this last module was the most "difficult" class out of three modules and I think there was a bit more interested generated among the students in the first two modules. Happy New Year [sigh]

Teaching Girls to Program

I feel a contentious post coming on ...

The other day I was reading my NZACDITT emails and was offered a link to this page:

http://www.3news.co.nz/Lecturer-looking-to-push-girls-into-IT/tabid/412/articleID/351145/Default.aspx

The article got me thinking (once again) about the advice I should give my students with regard to the path they should take upon leaving school. Last year I had a small class of seven students taking digital technologies. They were a lovely bunch of girls and most loved the subject and put in a lot of effort. I do not teach programming because it's not supported by senior management in my school at present (this could be the subject of a different post). Instead the girls do digital media and digital information, learning HTML, CSS and PHP. I figure the PHP is a good intro to some of the basics of programming - they need to use loops, conditions, variables, arrays, etc and they need to develop algorithms to produce outcomes. Out of my seven students who left last year, four went on to do computer science at university. I considered this quite a coup.

I have kept in touch with three of the girls and one of them came to visit on the last day of Term 2. She told me she'd dropped computer science. This is a girl who did Level 3 calculus and physics, handled PHP comfortably, created beautiful and functional websites, set herself high standards, had a passion for pushing to see just what she could achieve with code, and generally looked to have a bright future somewhere in the IT industry. I believe she still does have a bright future in the IT industry. She is continuing with Information Systems at university but in her words "Computer science is boring. All you do is write code".

So here's where the contentious bit comes in ...

There is still going to be a limit on the girls we can attract into IT via the programming route. It's just not everyone's cup of tea. And it should not be the deciding factor in defining who should be getting the jobs. I totally believe that learning to code is an incredibly useful way of exercising the mind and that it wouldn't hurt us to include it in the curriculum for everyone at some stage because it will open doors for kids who never knew they had it in them. And among those kids will be the code-cutters of the future. But it should not be the only entree to the world of IT.

I, for one, want to know what pathways I should be recommending for my students. Sure, some of them will thrive on computer science and will end up filling those much needed positions out there in the real world. But there are so many other roles that my girls could be aiming for - project managers, database administrators, testers, business analysts, systems engineers, marketers ... the list is endless (and I'm deliberately ignoring the creative/design side of things here). What are the pathways into these careers - surely not through doing a computer science degree?

Of all people I should be in as good a position as any to talk about pathways into IT. I'm an ex systems engineer (albeit only for a short time before I had kids) who got my break joining IBM with my earth science degree back in the early '80s. I did all my training in-house (including a bit of Cobol programming) and discovered my love for things techy by hanging out with the SEs when I was an administrator. My partner is a senior project manager who started as a bank clerk and moved across into IT. Neither of us has a computer science degree, and neither of us will ever get one, but we both had/have successful careers in IT. I fully understand that times have changed but there are still vast tracts of IT (all appearing in the ICT Connect Roadshow presentations) that are not going to be accessed with a computer science degree.

I'm a bit out of touch with the real world now, so what I want to know is "what should I be recommending my students do upon leaving school?" Obviously some of them will thrive on CS at university - but I don't want the IT world to miss out on the skills and passion of those for whom cutting code is just not their bag.

Yikes - this is just too long - sorry. If anyone does read it I'll be amazed. I've been thinking of tweeting the link because I really would love some comments and advice. Oh well - here goes ...

Friday - first post

Friday afternoon at school

This is what I SHOULD be doing - what a mess!

Aah, it's Friday afternoon and quiet around here. I love Friday afternoons. Usually I love them because I go to the pub with "The Committee" (if you read ever read this blog you'll know who you are). I'm loving this particular Friday afternoon because nobody is around to ask me to do things. It's eerily still, even though just across the quad the hall is full of students playing badminton (my daughter included).

I decided to set up this whole blog thing as I'm my school's e-learning leader and I have this horrible fear of losing touch with the way the world works, being reluctant to put myself out there. Doing this is a scary thing for me because it makes me feel very exposed. Usually I don't post things because I worry about being judged or I think I don't have anything new to say. But just recently I've had a bit of a desire to "tweet" something and run out of characters to say it in. Hence the blog. If I ever do have something that I think others might want to read I'll put it here.

In fact, I'll put stuff here anyway ... just cos. Usually it will be about teaching and learning. Occasionally it might be just stuff. Bear with me - this is all new and I'm feeling queasy at the very thought of clicking "Publish"!