Sharing here as well as on Twitter and LinkedIn because, well, these things take a lot of time and effort!
There are thirty questions in total on Christmas movies, music, literature and traditions. I’ve linked a YouTube video to each question to make it more entertaining.
Please feel free to share with your teacher friends as a Christmas activity.
I’m currently making my Kahoot Christmas quiz and wanted to embed short sections of YouTube videos into the questions to make the quiz more entertaining.
If you find a clip or trailer but want to only show a small section this is what you have to do:
The video URL shown above is:
2. Delete the characters “/watch?v=” and replace with “embed/”. The video URL should now look like this:
3. At the end of the URL add “?start=XX&end=YY” where XX is the number of seconds into the clip you want to start playing and YY is the number of seconds into the clip where you want to stop the video playing.
The video URL should now look like this (numbers added for example):
None of us are digital natives.
Today’s focus is not specifically about coding or problem solving but about the importance of building confidence in technology use to take an individual beyond the shallow level of experience and expertise that many students, parents and teachers now have.
Assertion #1: While smartphones and tablets have offered greater access to digital services the support and training required to use these services effectively has not been consistent. As a result confidence is low.
In late 2017 a European Commission conference in Brussels revealed that 37% of the workforce had no basic digital skills and that many companies lacked the skills to harness digital technologies effectively. Initiatives such as ALL DIGITAL attempt to build citizens’ digital skills in order to help them find work, access online services, etc. I’m personally really interested in their work with older adults who find that as more councils, banks and agencies move from traditional services to digital they are being marginalised.
Related initiatives in the UK include the fantastic Duke of York Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award (idea.org.uk) which provides self-learning modules to aid students and young adults in improving their knowledge of computer systems and processes as well as their digital skills.
Assertion #2: The teaching of Computer Science at certificate level in schools, colleges and universities can potentially prepare learners to create their ideas digitally but it does not fully prepare them to interact with a digital world.
I’ve had the privilege to experience teaching in different education systems over the past three or four years in state, independent and international schools. In each system the concepts that are categorised as “Computer Science” differ. One system teaches boolean algebra and logic gates, the other focuses on how a website is designed and coded. One system relies upon the student learning the intricate process of tracing an assembly language program, the other challenges the students to understand what a web graph is and how to construct a search engine.
You could argue that none of these concepts would help someone set up a regular payment with their bank or transfer their phone contacts to the cloud. However there is a misconception that those who study computer science are instantly fully computer literate. What these students will have (hopefully) is a reduced fear of failure when using technology and an interest in exploring new digital applications without the need for as much support. Just as a student with National 5 English will not (always) immediately publish their first novel but will instead have an increased ability to access a variety of media confidently.
There is a clear need for digital literacy to be a core component of education alongside traditional literacy and numeracy and for this to be provided as a separate subject to Computer Science at the age and stage when these life skills are going to be useful – and this call isn’t new. Schools which make use of Chromebooks, iPad or other devices cannot assume that students will absorb digital competency by osmosis just as businesses cannot assume that they will have the skills they need when entering the workforce. No one is a digital native. We all need a network of support, time and straight-talking guidance as to why a particular digital skill is worth learning in order to improve.
With thanks to Mark Hay and Jean Forsyth for timely conversations.
I bought some controllable LED strips about a year ago for a Hackable Classroom project that never really got going. My son and I found them last week and I decided to use one of them to upgrade the lighting in his room, giving him the chance to create his own sequences and effects in code.
The problem: create a lighting system that allows the user to change the colour of the LEDs or cycle pre-programmed sequences.
This seems quite daunting. My son has definitely never created a lighting system before. However we chatted about it and, after a little research, decided that it was really made up of three separate problems:
Sub-problem 1: wire the LED strip to a microcontroller
Sub-problem 2: create a program to somehow set the colour of the LEDs
Sub-problem 3: create a program to display a pre-programmed sequence on the LEDs
By splitting the problem down into smaller steps it now appears much more achievable.
Turns out when you define more specific goals it can be much easier and quicker to solve the overall problem. We built the lighting system in an hour and my son coded the light show online before transferring it onto a Microbit.
This is an example of problem decomposition and how it can be used by computer scientists to overcome issues which may, at first, appear too difficult. Like building a robot that can do a backflip:
Try this:
Problem: create a computer quiz
Creating a computer-based quiz may seem daunting at first. Break down the problem into smaller sub-problems though and you’ll definitely be able to do it!
Sub-problem 1: create five suitable questions and multiple choice answers
Sub-problem 2: research and select an appropriate quiz creation service (e.g. Kahoot, Quizlet, Socrative) or create your own in Python
Sub-problem 3: find people to test your quiz and let you know if they enjoyed it
It has been noticeably colder here in the past few days and this has got me thinking about snow and, more specifically, looking for signs that it is on the way. These signs have been observed and my personal heuristic refined over time. We all do this in one way or another. We try to identify patterns that lead up to or predict another event.
Here is another example: Every day at school you most likely follow the same sequence of classes and breaks that you followed the previous week. And the week before.
Eventually it becomes so repetitive that you might not even have to think about the equipment you need to bring for each class. It becomes so ingrained in your memory that packing your bag or emptying your locker can be done on auto-pilot. Well, most of the time.
Computers can be programmed to identify when the same sequence of events happen and predict either what comes next or what should happen in response.
A computer programmer is essential to train the system to see patterns and predict or react to them appropriately. These systems build up models of the information they are programmed to analyse which, over time, can increase the accuracy of the predictions.
Some of the more complex pattern recognition systems are used to suggest follow up items you might buy from Amazon, predict the grades you will get in the Senior Phase, suggest a new playlist for you to enjoy on Spotify or tell you if snow is on the way.
Try this
Snow accumulation GFS Model for United Kingdom
2. Try to complete the FreeCodeCamp challenge and make your own weather forecasting app
The next seven days heralds CS in Education week around the world. I wanted to continue to promote Computer Science within my school by sharing a resource and short video every day with the school community.
Code.org has a lot of great videos to inspire future computer scientists. I selected Computer Science is Changing Everything to show that these are skills which pervade almost every job and allow companies and individuals to improve using data analysis, robotics, predictions or simulations.
To begin the week I decided to focus on some unplugged computer science. Everyone will have at some point in their lives given directions to another person. If written down and repeatedly followed this is essentially an algorithm: a recipe to solve a particular problem.
For the challenge task I was inspired by The Tour Guide activity by Queen Mary University of London. I decided to alter their task to give it some local relevance and fit it to a single page.
The document above can also be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VgdMkBy21pqJdAmfKYOLQUycOxH53jPZu6o4QyV3xfY/edit?usp=sharing
Are you a CS educator? What are you doing in your school / college / university / local area to give others a chance to learn more about the field of computer science? Please share your ideas in the comments section!
One of my electives – 2D Games Design and Development – utilises an online game engine called Flowlab.io. It has been great to see my students learn the mechanics of 2D games design (typically platform games but we have attempted 2.5D RPG style games and a side scrolling shooter) without having to worry too much about the game art. In term 2 I wanted to focus on media elements in games design: primarily sound and sprites.
We used Piskel (www.piskelapp.com) to create individual 8 bit sprites and animations, exporting them as sprite sheets to use in Flowlab. However I was inspired by the following video which gave the students a better insight into computer game art in the 80s,90s and early 00s:
The following lesson I set up a green screen and asked students to record videos of each other walking across the green screen from left to right and the other way. After downloading these videos to the school network the students utilise the chroma key effect in Serif MoviePlus X6 (yes it’s old but it worked brilliantly) before cropping the rest of the classroom out of the video.
I knew that Piskel allowed for easy import of animated GIFs so used the online converter EZ GIF (www.ezgif.com) to transform the student video clips into GIFs. Once they were saved in this format I returned to Piskel and imported the GIF as a sprite sheet.
The final stage was to edit each frame so that the student was in the centre of the animation rather than walking across it. The effect, when complete, is similar to watching someone on a treadmill. Any frames which were blank or were of the student entering or leaving the shot were deleted. Then the edited sprite sheet was exported as a ZIP file.
Importing the individual frames into an animation in Flowlab was easy and, once basic behaviour was added to play the animation, the project was complete.
It gave my students a great insight into the work required to digitise actors in a real games company while remaining attainable within classroom and technological boundaries. I was really impressed by the finished sprites and hope that some of the students include this method of motion capture in their final prototypes.
If it was good enough for Mortal Kombat, it’s good enough for us!
Following on from my previous post on Google Sites, Docs and ESL I’ve been concentrating on the most efficient method of allowing all students best access to the video materials I use in the classroom, given that YouTube is filtered for students in my local authority.
My S1 students are currently working on a computer art focussed topic where their individual progress is best supported through the use of videos. I initially added hard-coded English subtitles so that students could access the material without headphones but would wanted to allow additional subtitles for ESL students without the need for uploading multiple language copies of the same video.
Luckily Glow Video allows the person uploading the video to add subtitles in VTT format through the “manage” menu option. I just needed to find a way to create these subtitles.
After a bit of Internet searching and trial and error with a few websites I found one I was happy to spend some time with.
www.closedcaptioncreator.com is a free website that works a little like iMovie but instead of video clips the user can arrange subtitles. What I like about this site is that it pro-actively suggests problems with the subtitle before you preview it and allows quick and easy splits to cut down on the amount of text on the screen. It also gives you an idea of the words per minute speed for each subtitle – useful for ensuring that you allow an appropriate amount of time for reading.
Potential solution found. I now need to create the text for the subtitles.
The preparation process itself was time-consuming. First I had to transcribe the contents of my video. I used a Google Doc for this as I think it will be very useful to have this file for reference in the future.
I then used Google Translate to convert sections of the transcription into another language. Again I’ve stored this translation in the Google Doc.
Then I uploaded my video to Closed Caption Creator (direct reference to the Glow video link did not work) and copied the translated text sentence by sentence into the website. As I worked it suggested when I should split the line and I was able to manually adjust the start and end time of each subtitle using the timeline.
Once I was happy with the subtitle I saved the project (for future translation into other languages) and exported it as a VTT. Adding it to the Glow video was very easy and was accessible to all viewers instantly.
Feedback was positive from my ESL students and I intend to gather more information through class surveys after the October break. That said, it was much more time consuming a task than translating a web page or document but to ensure all students in your class are included and can work to the best of their ability the time spent has been very worthwhile. The VTT file was also easy to add to my YouTube channel to keep consistency between platforms.
Perhaps. I may have chosen to rely on YouTube’s automatic translation had this been an option however it really doesn’t understand my Scottish burr so success may have been limited. Manual translation services could also have been used but these are costly.
If you have any other suggestions I’d love to hear from you! Contact me on @hackablec or via the comments section!
The next step in my plan is to investigate how videos can be used more effectively to enhance literacy. I hope to share my thoughts on this with you soon.
I tweeted a quick piece of advice earlier today:
https://twitter.com/familysimpson/status/1046311352942383104
I’ve embedded the image below in case you cannot access it.
This method also works with Google Classroom but is slightly different when translating Google Docs to their home language.
The students should load the document, then select Translate Document from the Tools menu.
I hope this helps!
via IFTTT
Hackable Classroom 