Turning the Supertanker

I have just been reading through my latest copy of New Scientist and I came across the following article. (Unfortunately you will only be able to read the start of the article unless you subscribe.) New Scientist 2 August, 2008 No2667 pp26-27 if you want to get to your local library to read it.

The article is about Scratch and how popular it has become in Europe and the US, 300 000 downloads since its launch in May 2007.  The program was showcased at Ulearn07, unfortunately I did not attend that session, but one of the teachers on the Supertanker raved about it and had it installed in her class.  Unfortunately that teacher has left now, but the article has spurred me on to look at it further.

One of the great things about Scratch, according to the article, is its modular approach rather like Lego bricks.  I have been thinking about that today and that approach is why I think other programmes such as Lego Mindsotrms and Mark Overmars’ Gamemaker are also so successful.  Students do not have to get their hands dirty with programming and coding  in order to get a result.  For me my perennial favorite is that other MIT stable horse from the 80’s Logo.  Logo is not as popular as the others these days it seems because of the coding element, although I still love it.

Gamemaker and Scratch are both free and that makes them a valuable resource for collaborative projects.  The New Scientist article highlights the trading in blocks of Scratch code that students from different locations enter into as part of their own collaborative projects.  John Rowe the headteacher of St Mary’s School in the UK who has been using Scratch heavily commented on the benefits of Scratch collaboration this way.

“Having an audience for their output is really important because it provides context and engagement.  Once you have got that half of your job as a teacher is done.”

Isn’t that the case for anything that we do in the class?  Programmes like those mentioned above should be widely used in the general class environment, I believe, and should not be seen by teachers and students alike as the preserve of geeky boys.  The quality and depth of thinking and problem solving that I see each week in my robotics class is argument enough as far as I am concerned to make Scratch, Gamemaker and Lego Mindstorms core elements of every classroom curriculum.

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The following are the three core focus questions from the Sustained Maungarei Kaitiakitanga cluster, of which the Supertanker is the lead school and I am one of the facilitators of.

Three Key Cluster Questions:

If we are “To give the leaders of tomorrow the knowledge they need to operate in a world rapidly running out of resources and facing the challenges of climate change.” MoE SOI 2007 what learning experiences should we include?

What are the conditions of value in teaching and learning that will support these learning experiences?

How might ICTs enhance or betray these conditions of value?

The second and third ones are the ones that have been rolling around in my head for the last couple of days with regard to using You Tube tutorials as a teaching and learning resource in the classroom.

Over the last few weeks I have been really surprised at the feedback that my own video tutorials posted to You Tube have been getting. This feedback has had the effect of making me re-consider the skill levels that exist out there in cyberspace. You Tube seems to come with such a ‘youf’ tag to it that I assumed that my little videos would not excite any comment from the wider You Tube community. Yet You Tube users, who by my own default perceptions I have assumed to be a savvy bunch of IT users have really liked my tutorials on Excel and Publisher. And this is what got me thinking, after all how many of my intended target audience for the videos I embed into our cluster wiki have heard of or even use You Tube?

These apps, MS Office suite et al, that have been around since Adam was a boy and I have considered it a given that all computer users have a basic proficiency in using them. After all word processing, Spread sheets and desktop publishing in varying guises have been around since before Windows 95 and the general public’s knowledge of and mass access to, the Internet. I therefore have assumed that everyone knows how to use these applicatons, including the You Tubers, because we have all used them for years, long before the advent of the mashable world of web 2.0… Clearly not.

I cut my teeth on these apps with Aston Tate’s MultiMate back in the mid 80’s. I was, I recall, trying to create a searchable database for my huge library of photographic images so that I could set up a photolibrary, the software was not up to it and my programmer friends could not see the possibility and now we have flickr… The roll of the dice eh? I could make an excellent database for recipies I recall, of no use to anyone considering the size of the machine the database was stored on and where the machine was located! I digress.

So it seems that the You Tube community have a use for my videos. I produced them with teachers in mind, but could a video tutorial or a resource video of ideas stored on You Tube or Teacher Tube enhance the conditions of learning in the classroom? After my personal use of the Blender tutorials, my initial reaction is yes. (Providing of course that schools permit access to this valuable resource and Keep Tube is a great way to manage access if they don’t but heavy on teacher time to download and store for easy access by students.)

Whilst I was on my Blender training rampage, I watched several videos over and over again to get the key strokes and the buttons being pressed just right, it was repeatable and that has always been my intention with the training resources that I have created for a number of years, a repeatable teaching moment indepedent of the teacher. A lesson is a once off. But if you record it in someway and providing the lesson is relevant and well paced then it can be re-visited many times over to re-enforce points or to support learning of a new concept, especially with regard to the acquisition of IT skills. So a recorded lesson with voice and action clearly visible to students, that can be paused, re-wound and re-played in class and without the need for teacher input, would enable the teacher to work with other students, whilst at the same time knowing that the students on the computers had the relevant support right there for them too.

Once a student has learnt the IT skills that support the true learning intention of the teacher, then the IT becomes transparent and a tool that facilitates learning and not act as a potential impediment. This for me is the Holy Grail of using IT in teaching, liberation for student and teacher alike and fostering independent learning. I believe that training videos in the 10 minute format of You Tube will be one of the ways that we can enable this to happen.

In term two I am taking a G+T class for robotics I will be applying the You Tube learning principle in these lessons. For those of you who are intereseted the students will have to build a robot, they can copy the examples from the Lego booklet if they wish (I would prefer that as it gets the building out of the way really quickly.) The real challenge, the real learning, the problem solving is for them to program their robot to draw an image using three colours… You Tube might just come in very handy for them. One thing is for sure I will video their results and post them to You Tube. Watch this space.

I have long advocated that every class should have a Lego robotics kit in it, be it the RCX blocks or the new NXT. I have used these robotics tools in my classes in England to great success and again last year in my G+T classes here in New Zealand. Some of the problems my students have solved have included designing a program to enable a robotic vehicle to negotiate a supermarket car park, get pairs of robots to dance in time with each other and the music they are grooving to, solve environmental issues such as collecting rubbish and sorting and opening and closing doors on command.

The ‘programmable bricks’ seem to me to be the perfect inquiry learning tool; students can postulate a question, research some potential outcomes, develop a theory, test the theory, evaluate the results, refine the initial theory, re-feed their evaluation into the cycle until a satisfactory answer falls out. And all this without an exercise book not only that the students are highly motivated to solve the problem of their own design.

Gary S. Stager has done some wonderful stuff with disaffected students, students at risk and youth offenders with this educational tool. His students have produced some truly amazing machines; the ones that come to mind are the fax machine and the log sorter. His site provides some excellent starter points, however, your students will find this tool so motivational you will not find it difficult to come up with ideas. On the contrary, often it is necessary to reign in the enthusiasm!

I think that not only is this tool a perfect inquiry tool that is an essential tool for every classroom, it also has the potential to create community links. Later this year I will be working with my students and the robotics kits again and this time they will be making a simple robot, no skills there, they can even follow the manual to do this. The variation will be that this time I will want them to create a program that will draw a sketch using three colours using board markers, what they draw and how they solve this is entirely up to them. I am intending to make this a collaborative project with other schools. Helen in Plymouth wants in and has just purchased her first NXT kit. Anyone else interested? We can mail our programmes to each other for evaluation and enhancement, we could even split the colour elements of the programmes up, now that really would be collaboration to ensure success! Of course we will be filming the robots creating the final art work and posting it to You Tube… Watch this space.

As you watch this video try to imagine if this had happened in your class, you can almost hear the questioning the probing of ideas, the set backs, the triumphs and most importantly the immense satisfaction of ownership on behalf of the students. Check out the video…