Ephelyon

Would've been handy for @ZeroHour with his throat by the end of the week!

Alex, are you representing the supplier 4Gon? @Gloriana, I think we can have some interesting chats and ideas-bouncing as security is one of my specialisms too

Had a lovely meal and heart-to-heart with @witch, @elsiegee40 and @bossman last night Much wise counsel from all three!

I'll be there Friday and Saturday

@tmcd35, would what you've read on the new curriculum (linky?) seem to support that?

With the list you've given there, I guess it depends whether you want to open with web apps or not. I can see that going either way.

See, this is good, because while you've got this: "Sense – a completely new approach to computing deserves to be taught in a completely new manner. Almost from the very beginning, you’ll be running, designing and writing computer programs. You will be using the specially designed language – Sense – so called because it can be used to sense the world. Unlike other computer languages you may have seen or used, Sense doesn’t rely on cryptic text commands; instead you assemble Sense programs using graphical blocks. Creating a Sense program can be as simple as clicking two blocks together and pressing the Run button! You’ll begin your work in Sense by following the first of many guided activities accompanied by text and video instructions. Soon you’ll be modifying existing programs and writing completely new ones of your own." ... you've also got this: "My digital life isn’t just about reading. It’s about doing things and learning as you do them. Just some of the things you will do are: •use a wide range of online services to create and share documents, spreadsheets and web pages •create and combine images with a soundtrack to produce short audiovisual presentations •learn how the technologies underpinning these activities work as you use them •experience the benefits and limitations of a digital lifestyle and what the future might hold •see how the internet makes your physical location less relevant in performing many tasks •understand the significance of an increasing number of devices that know and respond to your location. During the course of learning about these things you will address topics as diverse as: •the ownership of data •how the World Wide Web works •the privacy and security of personal data •online identity in virtual worlds •how online businesses survive (or not) •and many more aspects of living in the digital world of today." Nice and balanced - unlike the potential skewing we're seeing reported on the topic at hand...

On a different note, considering this is a debate I've had over on TES as well, what do we think about languages? The general feeling over there from the teachers seemed to be that Python ought to be sufficient to satisfy the demands of the new curriculum, which I'd agree with. Anyone else? Should we need things like C++ for example?

... which is: (a) what will be remembered; (b) what media coverage will focus on; © what people who actually do know the distinction will hear, but without any context. What's in the headlines is extremely important as that's the "image" of what's going on. It's also what people who don't know the context of it will pick up on. So there will be a disparity between what policy-makers believe is going on and what is actually going on, with the added problem that what is actually going on could be anybody's guess between different places.

I agree with everything you say there, except for the fact that some will have a natural inclination towards those problem-solving skills whereas others can (and will) learn it. But the point that I think @tmcd35 and I are making is that we're very much in danger of it becoming the be all and end all because it's not being taught in context, instead being very much presented as the totality of it. We here may all know that's not the case, but the people it's being presented to don't and that's the point.

Right, except I apply the same logical thinking about problem-solving skills in both Systems Administration and End-User Support (as professional disciplines... hehehe!) without having ever studied "coding". I also know plenty of programmers who still require support with e.g. Registry editing and etc because it's outside their skillset. Applying such a broad definition to the term "coding", especially in the context of the new curriculum, will inevitably lead to either confusion about what's required, or everything doing a different thing, or both.

I was responding to @TechMonkey's point about a nation of users. Having said that, maybe it's because I've just got too cynical about Britain anyway... =]

This isn't about nations, it's about the majority versus the minority of people and the respective priorities for their needs.

I can imagine. It's because I'm defining it as a process rather than the way the OED describes it (which would include setting up a rule on Outlook as "programming"). We'll all have these built-in ideas based on our previous experience and I don't think any of them can be said to be Right or Wrong. In my case, for example, when I think of a "coder", I'm put in mind of a software/web developer whose day job is to create/develop executable programs or web apps. I'm not put in mind of a sysadmin who scripts up bulk operations to save themselves time or automate things for users (as I do, for example). I don't think there's any easy way to explain why I get that feeling, I just do - as will be the same for yourself and for many others. But then, what exactly did we expect in a field with so little in the way of regulation?

Thinking about the conclusion of the thread I started on this very topic a little while ago, I believe that's where we got to in the end: we couldn't ultimately agree on precisely what "coding" means to the body of us (i.e. say, the majority) as IT pros ourselves, so what chance would Gove and other policy-makers have? Depending on how you define it, "coding" could be seen as absolutely fundamental to computing. By other definitions, however - such as mine, which calls it a synonym for "software development" - it isn't. Consequently, how this policy is gone about will vary and will depend on the individual parties implementing and advising on it.

Best get that in the job spec quickly!

Meh, great excuse not to have attended a support call five minutes before it was actually logged as often seems to be the expectation...

I'll be there for Friday and Saturday, shame really as I'll miss out on Gove (was planning to take up a sniper position behind the Millgate stand). I've been trying to keep track of everyone who's going but it's SO HARD because quite a few seem to be having their plans cancelled at the last minute (commiserations!)... :/ Like @alexbillbridgnorth, I thought you were going for example?

We have that "problem" here. Because we're the local centre for SEN support, we have a high proportion of children requiring directed supported in the classroom. Consequently we have about 30 TAs as opposed to the usual 10 or so. All added up, there's your missing £350K or so that a normal school of similar size would have in disposable income that we don't, resulting in a lot of corners being cut elsewhere. That's my analysis of the problem anyway.

Absolutely, @tmcd35, which brings us on to a common stumbling block. I'd agree that "value" is indeed the proper thing to measure here. The problem then is: how? I think the reason we so commonly "default" to exam results is that they're one of the easiest metrics to use. Regular, everyone does them, measurement criteria well-established, league tables every year etc. They're also cold hard numbers so you don't need to be a pedagogical expert to evaluate them (i.e. parents can see some evidence of how good a school is). What else could we use to actually measure the added value to the T&L experience? It's very often because people don't know - and the teaching unions like you to believe it's impossible anyway - that we just default back to exam results again. Also, @Garacesh, I know I'm nitpicking but I'd point out it's not so much the number of kids as the number of kids in groups, i.e. class sizes, that tends to have an impact on exam results, with smaller class sizes tending towards better results.

I agree that having to "measure" every little thing lies at the heart of a lot of what's wrong with society in general (when it's done improperly anyway), not just this picture. The sad fact, however, is that the alternative is a whole load of white elephants - and haven't we seen enough of those? The idea of measuring the impact an innovation has had - particularly when large sums of money are involved - is to make sure we're not just throwing time/money/shinies at a problem and hoping it will go away. We've seen plenty of that in all sectors, so we bring in accountability to try and avoid it, as well as to inform future planning. But unfortunately, accountability relies on being able to measure the success or failure of something. "Did the £7K we spent on 32 tablets actually make any difference or may we just as well not have bothered?" After all, if it does have a positive impact, you might want to buy another set next year, whereas if it doesn't that's £7K you can spend on something else. So you have to be able to measure... something, in... some way. It's when the criteria and/or the process for doing so are messed up (often because the accountability for X rests with someone who doesn't really understand X) that we see these other problems we're all so familiar with...

Quite possibly, but the perennial difficulty there is: how do you measure it then?

Let's bear in mind that such a move is likely to have happened within, say, the past three years. That may or may not be long enough for the impact on learning outcomes to become visible in terms of results. In particular I would assume you're referring to institutions with true whole-school 1:1; this is far less common than a phased introduction across year groups. In the case of the school I mentioned earlier, 1:1 has been rolled out in the bottom year group and is expected to reach Year 8 this coming September. Accordingly, there may not be any impact shown for another few years as we no longer measure levels of progress at the end of Key Stage 3 through examination. However, many schools do keep their own records perfectly well and I'd be asking for those - who knows, if all you want is an anonymised summary over time you may well be able to FoI it (just a guess). The statutory expectation is that pupils should make three levels of progress from Key Stages 2 to 4, so in the case of an early-adopter school that went for this a couple of years ago you could ask for data showing the anticipated acceleration in levels of progress over the course of Key Stage 3 for a particular cohort, along with how this affected band setting at the start of their Key Stage 4.

Apparently I can cut a mean Gangnam Style (confirmed by staff do's) but other than that I tend to leave off the jiving... having said that, you never know what can happen after a few cocktails...

We could set kids' tablets up for that anyway. They can download Microsoft Remote Desktop, connect to our Guest network and they'd literally just need the IP of our beefy RDP host to get in and get on with things.