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Rethinking Junior IT

Kevork Krozian, Forest Hill College

k.krozian@fhc.vic.edu.au

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Session Objectives

• To stimulate thinking to audit current junior IT courses

• To look for options and new directions

• To keep VELS in mind as required

• To consider delivery models -- dedicated ICT vs across Key Learning Areas

• Any other ideas

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Primary School snapshot

Course Details Comments/Rationale•Powerpoint

•Publisher

•Kahootz

•Word

Quite skilled and confident

Some knowledge . Eg. Why can’t I type straight away ? Because you need a text box to type into

Quite skilled and confident

Generally used to type up stories with little other skill

Apart from Powerpoint and Kahootz generally students need to learn from scratch ( not the programming language ) and it is best to assume they haven’t used other software ( apart from a browser, chat ) to any appreciable level prior to Year 7.

Multiple feeder schools about 100 – 120 into Yr 7 students

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Current Year 7Course Details Comments/Rationale

•Word : 4 – 6 weeks

•Journal online (Moodle) for reflection on each topic

•Touch typing - 4 weeks

•Publisher

•Visio : 4 - 6 weeks

•Powerpoint : 6 weeks

•Excel : 4- 6 weeks

•Digital Porfolio : 4 – 6 weeks

•Kahootz : 4 weeks

•Intro to Year 8 : 2 weeks

•Focus on skills, alignment, tabs, columns, layout, spell and grammar check. Assessed with a final task to complete

•Word counts, accuracy, technique, writing and text types

•Graded skills acquisition. Project to analyse restaurant menus and produce a tri-fold brochure of their own menu. Use Visio to create map of restaurant location

•Graded skill acquisition. Current project selected for completion (eg Olympics)

•Graded skill acquisition. Data sourced from any media outlet or class survey. Results recorded and graphed with the use of simple formulas

•Recent implementation of EdCube to create digital portfolio on any topic of choice eg my first year at Forest Hill College, my friends, social me, thinking me

•Graded tasks directly from Kahootz site following teaching resources

•Introduction to Gamemaker, web authoring

•Students do not possess these skills therefore seen to be valuable across all areas

•Students enjoy the competition and challenging themselves and each other

•Ties in with Health and Physical education nutrition unit

•Final result placed in a “time capsule” for collection in Yr 12

•Final project used in English as part of oral presentation with the use of Que cards for prompting

•Qualitative and quantitative data used. Surveys of favourite food of students in class

•Levels 4 and 5 of VELS ICT domain requires evidence of digital portfolio (or bank of digital evidence ) under ICTfor visualising thinking and ICT for creating

•Allows a self paced approach to acquiring a range of skills from

•Establishing links with the next phase of learning and orientation for Year 8.

Dedicated ICT subject – full year 4 x (72min) periods per 3 week cycle

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Current Year 8

Course Details Comments/Rationale•Gamemaker: Term 1

•Journal online (Moodle) for reflection on each topic

•Excel, Access and Word : Term 2 – 3

•Graded skill acquisition, stepping through a number of tutorials, completing a project followed by an open book assessment tasks modelled on the project principles.

• See http://www.rupert.id.au/header-links.php for a comprehensive discussion of the benefits of games programming, and specifically worked examples of application of Gamemaker •Also Tony Forster is a leader in the use of Gamemaker. Search Edulists archives. www.edulists.com.au or see http://www.users.on.net/~billkerr/g/int.htm

•Organising a party. Acquisition of spreadsheet skills for managing a budget, organising supplies, shopping online for provisions. Database skills for gathering guest data, special dietary and musical needs, forms, querying and reporting, creating name tags, mail merge and more. RSVP through web site to store in a file or email.

•Game programming provides a context for a wide range of cross domain learning. Drag and drop tools means kids do not get bogged down in programming syntax. Games require graphics and sound so the links to the domains of music and art are obvious. Sound and graphics creation and editing through a variety of software options.•See http://www.freewebs.com/schoolgamemaker/IT%20Course-game.doc for a multidisciplinary game making project (based on a media project by Keith Richardson and Tony Forster)

•Games have a narrative or storyline, though branching, get kids to develop game storylines as a literacy activity. See also Tim Rylands http://www.timrylands.com/ and Brock Dubbels •Game making can be a good way to learn kinematics: speed, acceleration and gravity, a few ideas at http://www.rupert.id.au/header-links.php

•Quest style games which have lots of narrative could be made in a 2nd •language, see http://www.freewebs.com/schoolgamemaker/ for how to set up dialogue in a quest game with foreign character sets

Excellent set of activities that engage students readily. Varied and specialised skills acquired. Use of validation in Access, querying with Boolean operators, Use of formulas in Excel and the mastery of spreadsheet functions for budget and guest list creation and management. Peer evaluated with scope for student input into the direction of the overall task.

Dedicated ICT subject – full year 4 x (72min) periods per 3 week cycle

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Current Year 8

Course Details Comments/Rationale•Web authoring with Dreamweaver and Fireworks Term 3

•Digital Portfolio – 6 weeks

Flash Animation

•Graded exercises covering layout, graphics, colours, fonts, naming conventions, styles, attention to copyright and intellectual property, provision of feedback, peer evaluation, disclaimer. Completion of a personal website as a final product.

•Recent implementation of EdCube to create digital portfolio on any topic of choice eg my schoo, my friends, social me, thinking me, sporting me, healthy me, mathematical me, IT me

•A set of 5 graded exercises covering basic animation skills for addition to web site as swf files

•Quite a robust activity that engages students fully. Excellent skill development in “ .. evaluate the integrity of the located information based on its accuracy and the reliability of the web host” ( VELS level 4 ) as students gather data for inclusion on their personal web site.

•Levels 4 and 5 of VELS ICT domain requires evidence of digital portfolio (or bank of digital evidence ) under ICT for visualising thinking and ICT for creating

Planning, storyboards, visualising thinking. Tasks include motion and shape tweening, path orientation, sound, video, mask layer and more depending on student ability and interest.

continued

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Current Year 9

Course Details Comments/Rationale•Creation of a DVD

•Software/Hardware used

•Combination of Dreamweaver and Nero Vision to create DVD interface

Journal online (Moodle) for reflection

•Through the use of a wide range of software types students create a DVD as a final product.

•Research into multimedia file types and quality•Research classification system and proposed content

Animation with Flash and Actionscript

•Sound content with Acid Pro

•Image content with digital camera, scanner or internet

•Video content with video camera or internet

•Voice recording with audacity

•Creating interface and pages with Dreamweaver and Fireworks

•Video conversion for web ready deployment

•Photoshop for DVD label and DVD case cover

•Publish DVD to active web site for testing•Burn DVD and present to class

•Very engaging and exciting for students with the freedom to choose almost any topic as the subject of their DVD.

•Research into alternate multimedia file types, conversion options, quality and size implications

•Research classification system and classify the DVD product

•High level of autonomy and ability to direct learning. Eg. Foreign language text inclusion, alternate designs for navigation, page background music or manually load on clicking, file format types, data gathering, team work, peer review and feedback.

•Validation and testing by extracting ONLY DVD files and checking all links on another machine

•Consideration of consistency in design and layout requirements across pages

Planning, storyboards, visualising thinking for animation and web interface. Peer evaluation and input. Rubrics for assessment.

Based on current software DVD will only play on a computer and not a DVD player. To play on a DVD player need to use other software such as Adobe Encore or Sony Vegas ( cost vs benefit issue )

Dedicated ICT subject - 1 semester only 4 x (72min) periods per 3 week cycle

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Current Year 10

Course Details Comments/Rationale•Flash and Actionscript

•Journal online (Moodle) for reflection and record keeping

• Up to 20 graded learning activities covering layout, graphics, colours, fonts, naming conventions, use of Actionscript 3.0:

•Refresher activities from Yr 9•Adding sounds to movies•Path orientation•Drawing in Flash•Buttons and movies•Compositing or Nesting•3D Effects in Flash•A runner in Flash•First Actionscript•Mouse control •Keyboard control, screen wrapping•Collision detection•Jigsaw puzzle ( can be Quiz type )•Colouring car parts•Scrolling space background•Saving the Earth shooting game

•A choice of projects such as a •poker machine or•billiards game or •car racing game or other

•Journal required as part of the reflection

•Peer evaluation required on any improvements after task completion

•Very engaging •Students rarely off task•Individual discussion and tailoring extension work

•Excellent skill development at VELS Level 6 as “ .. students apply a range of techniques, equipment and procedures that minimise the cost, effort and time of processing ICT solutions and maximise the accuracy, clarity and completeness of the information. Their products demonstrate a clear sense of purpose and respect for the audience”

•Aim is to gain confidence in taking on challenges rather than racing to finish a product

•Process of learning is the focus rather than the answer to a problem though we celebrate discovery of a solution

•Debugging competitions – first to find error gets a chocolate

•Deliberate bugs introduced as challenges bases on actual errors in class

•Web deployment aspect very attractive as choice of language to teach

•Planning, storyboards, visualising thinking, reflection, self assessment

•VELS ICT Level 6 “ students compare their own solutions with others and justify suggestions to improve quality”

Programming Elective – 1 semester only 4 x (72min) periods per week

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Delivery Structure - Yr 9

Course Outline – Task list

MyFHC Intranet

Assessment – Task list with rubrics for assessment

Course individual tasks worksheet

Reporting – rubrics descriptors transfer to report and VELS level

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Review what in junior IT ?? New College Strategic Plan 2010 - 2012

Develop a whole school understanding of key learning attributes that identify all students at Forest Hill College Expansion of enhancement activitiesStudents given opportunity to do individual workCatering for differentiated learning with tracking and monitoring of individual progress

More challengeBetter assessment practicesHigher order thinking *

Agreed pedagogical approaches including teaching literacy across the curriculumThe use of ICT in teaching, learning, assessment and planning

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What is higher order thinking ?• Higher-order thinking requires students to manipulate

information and ideas in ways that transform their meaning and implications. This transformation occurs when students combine facts and ideas in order to synthesize, generalize, explain, hypothesize or arrive at some conclusion or interpretation

• Evaluation - Judging the outcome • Synthesis - Putting together • Analysis - Taking apart • Application - Making use of knowledge • Comprehension - Confirming or understanding • Knowledge - Gathering Information

• Manipulating information and ideas through these processes allows students to solve problems and discover new (for them) meanings and understandings. When students engage in the construction of knowledge, an element of uncertainty is introduced into the instructional process and makes instructional outcomes not always predictable; i.e., the teacher is not certain what will be produced by students. In helping students become producers of knowledge, the teacher's main instructional task is to create activities or environments that allow them opportunities to engage in higher-order thinking.

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What is lower order thinking ?• Lower-order thinking occurs when students are asked to receive or recite factual

information or to employ rules and algorithms through repetitive routines.• Students are given pre-specified knowledge ranging from simple facts and information to

more complex concepts. Such knowledge is conveyed to students through a reading, work sheet, lecture or other direct instructional medium.

• The instructional process is to simply transmit knowledge or to practise procedural routines.• Students are in a similar role when they are reciting previously acquired knowledge; i.e.,

responding to test-type questions that require recall of pre-specified knowledge. • More complex activities still may involve reproducing knowledge when students only

need to follow pre-specified steps and routines or employ algorithms in a rote fashion.

• “Technology alone cannot move learners to higher order thinking skills, but some applications are more suited for this task than others” (Burns, 2006). Burns classifies applications into “Lower-Order and Higher-Order Applications”.

How an application is used by an educator determines whether it is a lower or higher order application. An example of this is the use of the Internet. If used as an electronic textbook it would be a lower order application as only lower order skills are used if the learner does not validate, question, or evaluate, the information obtained. When learners engage in online collaboration they would be using higher order thinking skills and therefore the Internet would be used as a higher order application (Burns, 2006).

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Review what in junior IT ?? Focus on the Thinking Curriculum

• Learning centred vs teacher ( teaching ) centred• Process driven vs content driven• Students setting own questions vs students answering only others questions• Shared experiences and learning vs private thought processes• Developing independent, critical, creative and caring learners• More ‘just in time’ vs ‘just in case’ learning• Mistakes to be learned from vs mistakes to be avoided or feared• Teacher fellow learner/collaborator vs expert

source http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/TradvsTOC.asp

Focus on the ‘constructionists’ model – students learn by creating • more meaningful and transferable learning will result when students are given opportunities to construct knowledge from their own point of view•Different options for selecting project topics•Training students•Collecting information •Scaffolding process•Organising•Evaluation•Synthesis ( one group’s project linked to another group’s project )•Assessment

source http://www.edtech.vt.edu/edtech/id/models/powerpoint/constructionism.pdf

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Review what in junior IT ?? Teaching to, and awareness of, multiple intelligences

• Linguistic intelligence ("word smart") -- eg. Succinct instructions for games interface• Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart") -- eg. Trigonometry in games programming• Spatial intelligence (“picture smart") – eg. adding artistic, aesthetic elements to programming tasks• Musical intelligence (“music smart") -- eg. adding self composed music to project• Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart") -- eg. reflect on human reaction times in games• Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart") -- eg. allow for multiple players in games, feedback• Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart") -- eg. allow for a player to track performance over time• Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart") -- eg.adding nature based components (plants, animals) to project

source http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm

Enhancing cross-curricular learning, content and coordination• Why teach something twice if once will serve your purpose ? • Learning in Science with the “enquiry based approach” no different to learning in and with ICT • aligning teaching Excel skills with Maths Petrol vs LPG vs Diesel consumption project• aligning DVD production in ICT with Media• aligning Oral presentation in English with presentation in ICT • aligning LOTE with Gamemaker allowing other language instructions• aligning Heart Rate monitor use in HPE with uploading and analysing in Excel• Use of a database for the creation of a dating game perhaps in Human Development • Use of research skills to locate and verify Australian Standards in Technology• Kahootz type environments in ICT and Arts cross teaching and collaboration• Kahootz and animated LOTE story books• Music and sound editing in DVD production

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Review what in junior IT ?? Dedicated junior ICT vs non dedicated junior ICT classes

• Local solutions will vary across the spectrum from one end to the other • At Forest Hill in mid 90s all junior ICT removed and then replaced 5 years later• Data on school models would be interesting and informative• Problem of non ICT qualified teachers assessing ICT skills, knowledge and content ??• At University of Washington efforts underway to make Computer Science a compulsory

component of any Science degree

Content and options and new directions •Not necessarily cramming more into less space and time•Why all of Word, Powerpoint, Publisher, Web authoring in depth ? Can we focus on one here and create time/space if we are using WYSIWYG ?•XNA Game Studio 3.1 – Programming with Visual C# both for the PC and the Xbox - Email: P.Taylor@LaTrobe.edu.au•Alice - 3D programming www.alice.org •Blender – 3D animation and programming with Python www.blender.org •Scratch – programming scratch.mit.edu •Programming using mobile devices or PDAs - Flash Lite to play Flash games on Mobile Phones•Quicktime VR - Virtual reality programming•Robotics - Does it have a place in junior IT , even at a simple level ? •Data Visualisation links -- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/•Teacher Tube with extensive tutorials

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Review what in junior IT ?? Stronger links with the feeder Primary schools

• Can we work with the Primary schools and define a minimum skill set to achieve by Grade 6?• Can some of these skills be taught as visits beyond the annual 45 mins Grade 5 orientation ?• Consider an ICT skills audit for new Year 7s • Support Primary teachers in delivery of ICT skills . Can we build bridges and collaborate ?• Projects eg. Kahootz learning activity for Grade 4 or 5 prepared by Year 7, 8 ?

Stronger links with VCE ICT • Any vertical streaming ? Can a Yr 10 do a VCE subject ? What about a Year 9 ?• Why not insist on a minimum skill set before a student can do Yr 11 or 12 IT ? • Consider closer links between junior and VCE ICT teachers • Consider clearly communicating pathways for junior IT students towards VCE . Eg. How many of you would do Yr 10 programming and then Yr 11 IT if it had the following content …… ?

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Rethinking Junior ITwhere to now ?

Invitation to join and participate on mailing lists Specific Junior IT online community has colleagues and resources for sharing. Many ideas in this presentation came from this and related

online communities http://www.edulists.com.au

•To imagine the possibilities, to excite the staff and students•To join the journey of discovery and share the rewards of achievement and learning•I will be working on Programming with Scratch, Xbox XNA Game Studio 3.1, Alice and Blender for inclusion in junior IT for 2010 and 2011.•Join me and others on this and similar journeys on the online communities