Coding in the classroom. What to do and where to start.

[Dos_Box]

I've had a couple of calls/IM's over the past few days asking for advice about how to go about setting up secure and safe coding environments is classrooms. As this is something that many of you here are either planning for, or have already setup, I thought it would be a good time to get a dedicated thread running covering this subject.

We (almost) all know that Computer Science as a subject is to return, and with it coding. Previous threads on this subject show that, at least a couple of years back, there was a great deal of resistance to this in the classroom due to issues arising from the user permissions required and other security related matters. What we need to do, as a community is get the good practice many of you have developed out into a public arena to save the time and hassel of trying to find it out at the last minute. So what we need from you is:

 

 

 

1. Information on what platforms (if any) you have already deployed and how you not only did it, but how you maintained the integrity of your systems.
   
2. Requests for information on platforms that you would like to deploy but need more advice on.
   
3. Any information on new CS courses appearing and their requirments as well as any useful external links you come accross.
   

 

 

This is a serious subject guys and I want to ask that you please do not derail the thread. If it gets big we can organise it better in the future, however I suspect many of you will be needing answers sooner rather than later.

[AngryTechnician]

Something like Small Basic is dead easy to deploy, at least in a vanilla environment, as it has a single MSI and doesn't need admin rights to run either the IDE or the compiled output. Sadly it is not well regarded by some programming teachers as it doesn't have things like strongly typed variables. If you don't have a stick up your butt it works well for introducing programming at KS2/3.

 

In the past I have deployed Visual Basic Express 2007 using App-V and that worked very well. Doing the same with any of the Visual Studio 2010 Express products is significantly more complicated, but Microsoft published some steps here last August. I haven't tried it yet myself.

 

A lot of the problems I see teachers discussing is where there is a network policy of not allowing 'untrusted' .exe files to run from network shares (i.e. students My Documents folders), which scuppers the running of compiled output. Personally I think this is an unnecessary restriction, and in my experience is used as a sticking plaster for poor workstation security, but I'd be interested in hearing if others think there is a place for it.

[Dos_Box]

Last night I was rather kindly pointed (by Turbo-FB) in the direction of a proposed curriculum drawn up by the Computing at Schools Working Group with the support of the BCS, Microsoft and Google. You can read more about Computing - A Curriculum for Schools here: Computing at School :: Computing - A Curriculum for Schools and I've attached the PDF outlining the curriculum proposals to this post, although you can download it from the site as well.

It's certainly a document you'd want to pass around staff who will be involved with the new curriculum as it gives some quite good ideas of what to expect and what needs to be addressed by September.

ComputingCurric.pdf

[glennda]

I've been invited to the ICT Dept meeting tomorrow afternoon to discuss with them ideas of things they could implement into the IT curriculum following Mr Gove's statement a few weeks ago.

 

The current ideas I to get the kids more invovled with making websites (actually looking at the code) - I went into one classroom last year to help work out and issue with some html for the kid to not even know it was written in code!). Along with making some mobile apps for various things. I also would like them to look at more problem solving with the kids - although not overly technical we in IT spent a lot of time doing it in our roles.

 

Any other feedback and ideas greatly appreciated.

[SYNACK]

Physical computing, basic robotics stuff putting computers in a more physical realm. An idea of how ingrained computers are in everything and an understanding of that. I think a more wholistic view of computers would make the topic more realivant and more valuable.

[glennda]

Thanks! Will add it to my list - We do robotics through the D & T department which they use Pic's to program them.

[Netman]

Raspberry Pi

Scratch

[glennda]

Raspberry Pi

Scratch

 

We use scratch!

 

The Raspberry Pi is all well and good but what uses can it have - apart from using alternative OS's.

 

Toby

[TechMonkey]

Brings up an interesting question though, are we as techs and NM's going to be pulled more into the teaching side? I see the possibility where we start being used more and more to support classes if they get more technical or help the IT teachers to plan and set up their lessons, which I have no issue with if it gets it moving along but where do we draw the line and say this is in addition to our job and will we get something for it? Or am i being overly cynical?

[laserblazer]

Our kids love Scratch. What has worked well is getting the more able ones helping the ones who are struggling.

[CyberNerd]

Our Head of ICT just printed me a copy of this which they are planning to use for Teaching next year:

 

Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python

[glennda]

Brings up an interesting question though, are we as techs and NM's going to be pulled more into the teaching side? I see the possibility where we start being used more and more to support classes if they get more technical or help the IT teachers to plan and set up their lessons, which I have no issue with if it gets it moving along but where do we draw the line and say this is in addition to our job and will we get something for it? Or am i being overly cynical?

 

I've been asked to attend the meeting to voice my opinions on where IT teaching should be taken from somebody who works with IT. And also to say technically what things they can manage.

 

One of the other ideas we have looked at is rolling out the Android Emulator for making mobile Apps with students.

[GrumbleDook]

A couple of options for you here ... things related to coding seem the obvious choice but there may be a chance to link things with other departments too.

 

How about working with English on technical writing / documentation?

How about working with Geography on data mining / analysis (population growth, meteorology, etc) so how about setting up a small linux data farm?

How about working with Biology / Chemistry on impact on the medical profession (STEM Ambassadors are brilliant to help with this) to look at developing and designing automated processes (bringing in coding, systems and control, CAD, etc)

 

Computing At Schools have a number of ideas on this so it might be worth seeing if the department are aware of the group and have checked out their resources.

[Jamman960]

We've had our pupils re-building pc's for the last couple of years, I basically break down some of our old but still working pc's and get the pupils to rebuild them piece by piece. We'd previously had them dismantling pc's but many would see it more as a chance to destroy them.

 

We're also looking at using Kodu and MinecraftEDU to some extent, Kodu seems to be good for problem solving.

 

James

[Dos_Box]

We already have a thread running here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/blue-skies/90433-coding-classroom-what-do-where-start.html

Can we try and keep everything in the same place please so information does not get scattered around. I'll merge the threads now.

[glennda]

We already have a thread running here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/blue-skies/90433-coding-classroom-what-do-where-start.html

Can we try and keep everything in the same place please so information does not get scattered around. I'll merge the threads now.

 

Sorry I did a search but didn't look in the blue skies!

[Dos_Box]

I have to admit, it took me 10 mins to figure out the best place to put it, but as this subject is going to be top of the agenda for many geekers' pretty soon I figured it'd be best served here.

[fiza]

We use YoYo Games | Compare GameMaker Versions

Scratch | Home | imagine, program, share

Kodu - Microsoft Research

 

The kids love Kodu as they can create games and then burn them to DVD to play on their XBOX.

[bondbill2k2]

I'm looking at setting up a Wiki for our school full of useful information, to be used as a reference and for study alone with programming tutorials and ideas for users to try themselves. I'll have areas where students can submit their ideas and code or ask others for help solving problems or debugging and a link page which students can contribute to for resources and tutorials. It will also be useful for the ICT staff I'm sure being able to build up a library of easily searchable work, now I just need to brush up on my programming! So far i've just turned the attention of our ICT teachers to codeacademy.com and the w3c pages and validators. Those who have completed their year 11 coursework can have asked to look at the code and get an idea of what bits mean, play with CSS and mess around to see what affects your changes make using live view in DW, all their current work is entirely dreamweaver created and riddled with multiple layers of tables hashed together. When a student or ICT teacher asks me to take a look at their work and solve the problems they have created I 9 times out of 10 go straight to code and they look on puzzled asking 'whats all that?'

 

Having given my 16 year old brother a HTML and CSS book he read the first few chapters then started messing around, downloaded a template from themeforest.com and tweaked it to make his own site, a good way to begin learning I think adjusting code, he has asked for help a couple of times and I have pointed him towards solutions but let him work them out himself and while getting annoyed at times he has always managed to work it out, its also worth noting he is dyslexic and often struggles with his reading, spelling and staying on task but has really enjoyed the learning curve and likes to show up his teacher at times with the code way to do things.....the horrible thing is while his current ICT teacher encourages he trys new things and learns this way his previous teacher tells him not to touch code and he will loose marks because of it. He is also getting into the habbit of testing multiple browsers for comparability, something he never did when using dreamweaver, if it ticked the IE box all was fine. This shows students are willing to learn this way, I have had students here ask me how do they make changes and having showen them how to edit the css they preferred that way!

 

His website btw: http://www.joewphotography.co.uk/

 

I think java will be the best beginning point for teaching fundamentals of programming then progress to OO java before introducing other more advanced concepts, I think reviving some of my university work and programming fundamentals workbooks could help here!

Use of access should still be taught to understand databases structure and concepts. Scenarios for them to build in access then document and convert to SQL would be a good way of breaking the boundrys between their current Office GUI and the powerful underlying tech for database systems. Merging different units together would be grand too, begin websites incorporating SQl databases and java applets for late years e.g. a visual booking system for cinema seats.

 

However our ICT department have not mentioned anything to me other then they are worried they wont be able to teach depending on the curriculum requires.

 

PS: sorry for that hijack!

Edited February 27, 2012 by bondbill2k2

[PiqueABoo]

Where to start? As some from the umm.. "dark side" (Computer Engineering) I think I'm missing DOS & serial ports. Reason: You could get a minute amount of x86 assembly to send data out of a serial port and if the other end of that is something shiny that does pixels then you've covered a lot of fundamental territory at a nearly direct level, which might be a good thing to do *before* diving into the relatively abstract-from-computer high-level stuff. I'm not a teacher though so that might be *very bad*, but I do think some stuff needs to be learnt before you throw high-level programming at folk.

 

On "graphical": Sprogette played with Scratch a lot until I gave her Kodu which was from her perspective, a lot more fun because of the 3D etc. The problem with that is Scratch is clearly closer to real programming languages than Kodu.

[CAM]

Interesting article on The Register regarding skills needed today:

 

Reading this? You're probably planning to skill up on mobile in 2012 ? The Register

 

With the mobile market exanding rapidly, perhaps that is worth a look at to give the kids relevant skills? They mention Javascript, .NET, C# and HTML5 in the article as possible disciplines to look at.

[JonWPS]

We truly are entering a world of pain with all this. For a start, who the hell is going to be teaching this new curriculum?

[teejay]

We truly are entering a world of pain with all this. For a start, who the hell is going to be teaching this new curriculum?

 

The short answer - teachers.

 

The long answer -

You don't need to be a programming expert to teach programming, you need to get the kids enthused about the idea and then back off and give them space to experiment and learn.

My teacher for A Level Computer science back in the late 80's was a Physics teacher, had no knowledge of programming and basically taught himself alongside us as it was his first year of teaching it and had been given no formal or academic training on programming. What he had in abundance was enthusiasm to get us to experiment and learn, he also encouraged us to teach each other and show off new ideas and techniques. Out of a class of 12, 9 of us got A's and that was in an era when getting an A at A level was extremely difficult.

[sister_annex]

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this: http://www.codecademy.com

 

I've not used it personally but I here good things about it to the point where I may take a look to see if it benefits the work I do.

[2097]

The short answer - teachers.

 

The long answer -

You don't need to be a programming expert to teach programming, you need to get the kids enthused about the idea and then back off and give them space to experiment and learn.

My teacher for A Level Computer science back in the late 80's was a Physics teacher, had no knowledge of programming and basically taught himself alongside us as it was his first year of teaching it and had been given no formal or academic training on programming. What he had in abundance was enthusiasm to get us to experiment and learn, he also encouraged us to teach each other and show off new ideas and techniques. Out of a class of 12, 9 of us got A's and that was in an era when getting an A at A level was extremely difficult.

 

How does some one give a mark on a Subject they know nothing about ? for e.g. i could steal some very good source code and call it my own and without no knowledge of programming or code they will have no idea if its to advance for me or not .