Schlagwort: Hello World

  • Back to school 2022: Our support for teachers

    Back to school 2022: Our support for teachers

    Reading Time: 9 minutes

    The summer months are an exciting time at the Foundation: you can feel the buzz of activity as we prepare for the start of a new school year in many parts of the world. Across our range of fantastic (and free) programmes, everyone works hard to create new and improved resources that help teachers and students worldwide. 

    We’ve asked some of our programme leads to tell you what’s new in their respective areas. We hope that you’ll come away with a good idea of the breadth and depth of teacher support that’s on offer. Is there something we aren’t doing yet that we should be? Tell us in the comments below.

    A waving person.

    Sway Grantham has been at the forefront of writing resources for our Teach Computing Curriculum over the last three years. The Curriculum is part of the wider National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) and provides hundreds of free classroom resources for teachers, from Key Stage 1 to 4. Each resource includes lesson plans, slides, activity sheets, homework, and assessments. Since we published the Curriculum in 2020, all lessons have been reviewed and updated at least once. Managing the process of continuously improving these resources is a key part of Sway’s work.

    Hi Sway, what updates have you been making to the Teach Computing Curriculum to help teachers this year? 

    We make changes to the Teach Computing Curriculum all the time! However, specific things we are excited about ahead of the new school year are updates to how our content is presented on the website so that it’s really easy to see which unit you should be teaching in each half term. We’ve also renamed some of the units to make it clearer what they cover. And to help Key Stage 3 teachers launch Computing in secondary school with skills that are foundational for progress through the requirements of the Key Stage 3 curriculum, we’ve updated the first Year 7 unit, now called Clear messaging in digital media.

    You recently asked for teachers’ feedback as part of an annual impact survey. What did you find out?

    We are still in the process of looking through the feedback in detail, but I can share some high-level insights. 96% of teachers who responded to the survey gave a score between 7 and 10 for recommending that other teachers use the Teach Computing Curriculum. Over 80% reported that the Teach Computing Curriculum has improved their confidence, subject knowledge, and the quality of their teaching ‘a little’ or ‘a lot’. Finally, over 90% of respondents said the Curriculum is effective at supporting teachers, developing teachers’ subject knowledge, and saving teachers’ time.

    We are grateful to the 907 people who took part in the survey! You have all helped us to ensure the Curriculum has a positive impact on teachers and learners throughout England and beyond.

    A waving person.

    James Robinson dedicates his work at the Foundation to creating free pedagogical resources that underpin the classroom practice of computing teachers worldwide. He has led the creation of the Pedagogy Quick Reads and the Research Bytes newsletter for the NCCE, and the development of our 12 principles of computing pedagogy, available as a handy poster. He also works on our Hello World magazine, produces the associated Hello World podcast, and curates Hello World’s special issues, such as The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.

    James, why is it so important for teachers to underpin their classroom practice with best-practice pedagogical approaches? 

    In order to teach any area of the curriculum effectively, educators need to understand both the content they are teaching and the most effective ways to deliver that content. Computing is a broad discipline made up of lots of inter-connected knowledge. Different areas of the subject benefit from different approaches, and this may vary depending on the experience of the learners and the context within which they are learning. Understanding which approaches are best suited to different content helps educators support learners effectively.

    Computing education research related to school-aged learners is still in its early stages compared to other subjects, and new approaches and pedagogies are being developed, tested, and evaluated. Staying aware of these developments is important for educators and that’s why it’s something the Foundation is dedicated to supporting.

    What do you have in store for teachers this year?  

    This year we continue to share best practice and hear from educators applying new ideas in their classroom through Hello World magazine and podcast. Educators should also keep a look out for our second Hello World special edition exploring the breadth and depth of Computing. To get hold of a copy of this later this year, make sure you’re subscribed to Hello World.

    A waving person.

    Allen Heard and his team have very recently completed a huge project: creating a full curriculum of GCSE topics and associated questions for Isaac Computer Science, our free online learning platform for teachers and students. The new topics cover the entirety of the GCSE exam board specifications for AQA, Edexcel, Eduqas, OCR, and WJEC, and are integrated with our existing A level computer science resources. They are great to pick up and use for classwork, homework, and revision.  

    Allen, what has gone into the making of these new GCSE resources?

    I think one of the biggest and most important things that’s been evident to me while working on this project is the care and thought that our content creators have put into each and every piece they worked on. To the end user it will simply be material on a web page, but sitting behind each page are countless discussions involving the whole team around how to present certain facts, concepts, or processes. Sometimes these discussions have even caused us to reevaluate our own thinking around how we deliver computer science content. We have debated the smallest things such as glossary terms, questioning every word to make sure we are as clear and concise as possible. Hopefully the care, expertise, and dedication of the team shines through in what really is a fantastic source of information for teachers and learners.

    What do you have in store for teachers and learners this year?

    With 96% of teachers and 88% of students reporting that the content is of high quality and easily accessible, we still need to continue to support them to ultimately enable learners to achieve their potential. Looking ahead, there is still lots of work to do to make sure Isaac offers the best possible user experience. And we plan to add a lot more questions to really bolster the numbers of questions at varying levels of difficulty for learners. This will have the added benefit of being useful for any teachers wanting to up-skill too! A massive strength of the platform is its questions, and we are really keen to give as wide a range of them as possible.

    A waving person.

    Tamasin Greenough Graham leads the team at Code Club, our global network of free, in-school coding clubs for young people aged 9 to 13. In Code Clubs, participants learn to code while having fun getting creative with their new skills. Clubs can be run by anyone who wants to help young people explore digital technologies — you don’t need coding experience at all. The Code Club team offers everything you need, including coding projects with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, and lots of resources to help you support your club members. They are also on hand to answer your questions. 

    Tamasin, what kind of support can teachers expect when they decide to set up a Code Club?

    Running a Code Club really is simple and a lot of fun! We have free training to suit everyone, including webinars that guide you through getting started, a self-study online course you can take to prepare for running your Code Club, and drop-in online Q&A sessions where you can chat about your questions to our friendly team or to other educators who run clubs. 

    Once you have registered your Code Club, you’ll get access to an online dashboard packed with useful resources: from guidance on preparing and delivering your first session, to certificates to celebrate your club members’ successes, and unplugged activities for learners to do away from the screen.

    What experience do you need to run a Code Club?

    You don’t need to have any coding experience to run a club, as we provide a giant range of fun coding projects and support materials that can be easily followed by educators and young people alike. You just need to support and encourage your young coders, and you can get in touch with the Code Club team if you need any help!

    The project paths we offer provide a framework for young coders to develop their skills, whatever their starting point is. Each path starts with three Explore projects, where coders learn new coding concepts and skills. The next two Design projects in the path help them practise these skills through creating fun games, animations, or websites. The final Invent project of the path gives a design brief, and based on this learners have the space to use their new skills and their creativity to code something based on their own ideas. 

    Our project paths start with the basics of Scratch, and work through to creating websites in HTML and CSS, and to text-based coding in Python. For more advanced or adventurous coders, we also offer project paths to make physical projects with Raspberry Pi Pico, create 3D models in Blender, or even build 3D worlds in Unity.

    Why is it important to teach coding to primary-aged children?

    Lots of primary-aged children use digital technology every day, whether that be a TV, a phone, playing video games, or a computer at school. But they don’t have to be just consumers of technology. Through learning to code, young people become able to create their own technology, and our projects are designed to help them see how these new skills allow them to express themselves and solve problems that matter to them.

    What young people do with their new skills is up to them – that’s the exciting part! Computing skills open paths to a wide range of projects and work where digital skills are helpful. And while learning coding is fun and useful, it also helps learners develop a many other important skills to do with problem solving, teamwork, and creativity.

    A waving person.

    Martin O’Hanlon heads the team that produces our free online courses programme. If you’re looking for continued professional development in computer science, look no further than to our more than 35 courses. (For teachers in England, a large number of the courses count towards the NCCE’s Primary, Secondary, or GCSE certificates.) Curated in 13 curated learning pathways, all of our courses provide high-quality training that you can take at home, at a time that suits you.

    Martin, what can learners expect from taking one of our online courses?

    Our online computing courses are free and have something for everyone who is interested in computing. We offer pathways for learning to program in Python or Scratch, teaching computing in the classroom, getting started with physical computing, and many more. 

    We vary the materials and formats used in our courses, including videos, written articles, quizzes, and discussions to help learners get the most out of the experience. You will find a lot of practical activities and opportunities to practice what you learn. There are loads of opportunities to interact with and learn from others who are doing the course at the same time as you. And educators from the Raspberry Pi Foundation join the courses during facilitation periods to give their advice, support, and encouragement.

    What is the idea behind the course pathways?

    We have a large catalogue of online training courses, and the pathways give learners a starting point. They group the courses into useful collections, offering a recommended path for everyone, whether that’s people who are brand-new to computing or who have identified a gap in their existing computing skills or knowledge.

    Our aim is that these pathways help people find the right course at the right point in their computing journey.

    Thanks, everyone.

    One more thing…

    We’re also very excited to work on new research projects this school year, to help deepen the computing education community’s understanding of how to teach the subject in schools. Are you a primary teacher in England who is interested in making computing culturally relevant for your pupils?

    Young learners at computers in a classroom.

    We’re currently looking for teachers to take part in our research project around primary school culturally adapted resources, running from October 2022 to July 2023. Find out more about what taking part involves.

    The post Back to school 2022: Our support for teachers appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

    Website: LINK

  • Repair cafés in computing education | Hello World #19

    Repair cafés in computing education | Hello World #19

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Many technology items are disposed of each year, either because they are broken, are no longer needed, or have been upgraded. Researchers from Germany have identified this as an opportunity to develop a scheme of work for Computing, while at the same time highlighting the importance of sustainability in hardware and software use. They hypothesised that by repairing defective devices, students would come to understand better how these devices work, and therefore meet some of the goals of their curriculum.

    A smartphone with the back cover taken off so it can be repaired.

    The research team visited three schools in Germany to deliver Computing lessons based around the concept of a repair café, where defective items are repaired or restored rather than thrown away. This idea was translated into a series of lessons about using and repairing smartphones. Learners first of all explored the materials used in smartphones and reflected on their personal use of these devices. They then spent time moving around three repair workstations, examining broken smartphones and looking at how they could be repaired or repurposed. Finally, learners reflected on their own ecological footprint and what they had learnt about digital hardware and software.

    An educational repair café

    In the classroom, repair workstations were set up for three different categories of activity: fixing cable breaks, fixing display breaks, and tinkering to upcycle devices. Each workstation had a mentor to support learners in investigating faults themselves by using the question prompt, “Why isn’t this feature or device working?” At the display breaks and cable breaks workstations, a mentor was on hand to provide guidance with further questions about the hardware and software used to make the smartphone work. On the other hand, the tinkering workstation offered a more open-ended approach, asking learners to think about how a smartphone could be upcycled to be used for a different purpose, such as a bicycle computer. It was interesting to note that students visited each of the three workstations equally.

    Two girls solder physical computing components in a workshop.
    Getting hands-on with hardware through physical computing activities can be very engaging for learners.

    The feedback from the participants showed there had been a positive impact in prompting learners to think about the sustainability of their smartphone use. Working with items that were already broken also gave them confidence to explore how to repair the technology. This is a different type of experience from other Computing lessons, in which devices such as laptops or tablets are provided and are expected to be carefully looked after. The researchers also asked learners to complete a questionnaire two weeks after the lessons, and this showed that 10 of the 67 participants had gone on to repair another smartphone after taking part in the lessons.

    Links to computing education

    The project drew on a theory called duality reconstruction that has been developed by a researcher called Carsten Schulte. This theory argues that in computing education, it is equally important to teach learners about the function of a digital device as about the structure. For example, in the repair café lessons, learners discovered more about the role that smartphones play in society, as well as experimenting with broken smartphones to find out how they work. This brought a socio-technical perspective to the lessons that helped make the interaction between the technology and society more visible.

    A young girl solders something at a worktop while a man looks over her shoulder.
    It’s important to make sure young people know how to work safely with electronic and physical computing components.

    Using this approach in the Computing classroom may seem counter-intuitive when compared to the approach of splitting the curriculum into topics and teaching each topic sequentially. However, the findings from this project suggest that learners understand better how smartphones work when they also think about how they are manufactured and used. Including societal implications of computing can provide learners with useful contexts about how computing is used in real-world problem-solving, and can also help to increase learners’ motivation for studying the subject.

    Working together

    The final aspect of this research project looked at collaborative problem-solving. The lessons were structured to include time for group work and group discussion, to acknowledge and leverage the range of experiences among learners. At the workstations, learners formed small groups to carry out repairs. The paper doesn’t mention whether these groups were self-selecting or assigned, but the researchers did carry out observations of group behaviours in order to evaluate whether the collaboration was effective. In the findings, the ideal group size for the repair workstation activity was either two or three learners working together. The researchers noticed that in groups of four or more learners, at least one learner would become disinterested and disengaged. Some groups were also observed taking part in work that wasn’t related to the task, and although no further details are given about the nature of this, it is possible that the groups became distracted.

    The findings from this project suggest that learners understand better how smartphones work when they also think about how they are manufactured and used.

    Further investigation into effective pedagogies to set group size expectations and maintain task focus would be helpful to make sure the lessons met their learning objectives. This research was conducted as a case study in a small number of schools, and the results indicate that this approach may be more widely helpful. Details about the study can be found in the researchers’ paper (in German).

    Repair café start-up tips

    If you’re thinking about setting up a repair café in your school to promote sustainable computing, either as a formal or informal learning activity, here are ideas on where to begin:

    • Connect with a network of repair cafés in your region; a great place to start is repaircafe.org
    • Ask for volunteers from your local community to act as mentors
    • Use video tutorials to learn about common faults and how to fix them
    • Value upcycling as much as repair — both lead to more sustainable uses of digital devices
    • Look for opportunities to solve problems in groups and promote teamwork

    Discover more in Hello World

    This article is from our free computing education magazine Hello World. Every issue is written by educators for educators and packed with resources, ideas, and insights to inspire your learners and your own classroom practice.

    Cover of issue 19 of Hello World magazine.

    For more about computing education in the context of sustainability, climate change, and environmental impact, download issue 19 of Hello World, which focuses on these topics.

    You can subscribe to Hello World for free to never miss a digital issue, and if you’re an educator in the UK, a print subscription will get you free print copies in the post.

    PS If you’re interested in facilitating productive classroom discussions with your learners about ethical, legal, cultural, and environmental concerns surrounding computer science, take a look at our free online course ‘Impacts of Technology: How To Lead Classroom Discussions’.

    Website: LINK

  • Classroom activities to discuss machine learning accuracy and ethics | Hello World #18

    Classroom activities to discuss machine learning accuracy and ethics | Hello World #18

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    In Hello World issue 18, available as a free PDF download, teacher Michael Jones shares how to use Teachable Machine with learners aged 13–14 in your classroom to investigate issues of accuracy and ethics in machine learning models.

    Cover of Hello World issue 18.
    Michael Jones.

    Machine learning: Accuracy and ethics

    The landscape for working with machine learning/AI/deep learning has grown considerably over the last couple of years. Students are now able to develop their understanding from the hard-coded end via resources such as Machine Learning for Kids, get their hands dirty using relatively inexpensive hardware such as the Nvidia Jetson Nano, and build a classification machine using the Google-driven Teachable Machine resources. I have used all three of the above with my students, and this article focuses on Teachable Machine.

    For this module, I’m more concerned with the fuzzy end of AI, including how credible AI decisions are, and the elephant-in-the-room aspect of bias and potential for harm.

    Michael Jones

    For the worried, there is absolutely no coding involved in this resource; the ‘machine’ behind the portal does the hard work for you. For my Year 9 classes (students aged 13 to 14) undertaking a short, three-week module, this was ideal. The coding is important, but was not my focus. For this module, I’m more concerned with the fuzzy end of AI, including how credible AI decisions are, and the elephant-in-the-room aspect of bias and potential for harm.

    Getting started with Teachable Machine activities

    There are three possible routes to use in Teachable Machine, and my focus is the ‘Image Project’, and within this, the ‘Standard image model’. From there, you are presented with a basic training scenario template — see Hello World issue 16 (pages 84–86) for a step-by-step set-up and training guide. For this part of the project, my students trained the machine to recognise different breeds of dog, with border collie, labrador, saluki, and so on as classes. Any AI system devoted to recognition requires a substantial set of training data. Fortunately, there are a number of freely available data sets online (for example, download a folder of dog photos separated by breed by accessing helloworld.cc/dogdata). Be warned, these can be large, consisting of thousands of images. If you have more time, you may want to set students off to collect data to upload using a camera (just be aware that this can present safeguarding considerations). This is a key learning point with your students and an opportunity to discuss the time it takes to gather such data, and variations in the data (for example, images of dogs from the front, side, or top).

    Drawing of a machine learning ars rover trying to decide whether it is seeing an alien or a rock.
    Image recognition is a common application of machine learning technology.

    Once you have downloaded your folders, upload the images to your Teachable Machine project. It is unlikely that you will be able to upload a whole subfolder at once — my students have found that the optimum number of images seems to be twelve. Remember to build this time for downloading and uploading into your lesson plan. This is a good opportunity to discuss the need for balance in the training data. Ask questions such as, “How likely would the model be to identify a saluki if the training set contained 10 salukis and 30 of the other dogs?” This is a left-field way of dropping the idea of bias into the exploration of AI — more on that later!

    Accuracy issues in machine learning models

    If you have got this far, the heavy lifting is complete and Google’s training engine will now do the work for you. Once you have set your model on its training, leave the system to complete its work — it takes seconds, even on large sets of data. Once it’s done, you should be ready to test you model. If all has gone well and a webcam is attached to your computer, the Output window will give a prediction of what is being viewed. Again, the article in Hello World issue 16 takes you through the exact steps of this process. Make sure you have several images ready to test. See Figure 1a for the response to an image of a saluki presented to the model. As you might expect, it is showing as a 100 percent prediction.

    Screenshots from Teachable Machine showing photos of dogs classified as specific breeds with different degrees of confidence by a machine learning model.
    Figure 1: Outputs of a Teachable Machine model classifying photos of dog breeds. 1a (left): Photo of a saluki. 1b (right): Photo of a Samoyed and two people.

    It will spark an interesting discussion if you now try the same operation with an image with items other than the one you’re testing in it. For example see Figure 1b, in which two people are in the image along with the Samoyed dog. The model is undecided, as the people are affecting the outcome. This raises the question of accuracy. Which features are being used to identify the dogs as border collie and saluki? Why are the humans in the image throwing the model off the scent?

    Getting closer to home, training a model on human faces provides an opportunity to explore AI accuracy through the question of what might differentiate a female from a male face. You can find a model at helloworld.cc/maleorfemale that contains 5418 images almost evenly spread across male and female faces (see Figure 2). Note that this model will take a little longer to train.

    Screenshot from Teachable Machine showing two datasets of photos of faces labeled either male or female.
    Figure 2: Two photo sets of faces labeled either male or female, uploaded to Teachable Machine.

    Once trained, try the model out. Props really help — a top hat, wig, and beard give the model a testing time (pun intended). In this test (see Figure 3), I presented myself to the model face-on and, unsurprisingly, I came out as 100 percent male. However, adding a judge’s wig forces the model into a rethink, and a beard produces a variety of results, but leaves the model unsure. It might be reasonable to assume that our model uses hair length as a strong feature. Adding a top hat to the ensemble brings the model back to a 100 percent prediction that the image is of a male.

    Screenshots from Teachable Machine showing two datasets of a model classifying photos of the same face as either male or female with different degrees of confidence, based on the face is wearing a wig, a fake beard, or a tophat.
    Figure 3: Outputs of a Teachable Machine model classifying photos of the author’s face as male or female with different degrees of confidence. Click to enlarge.

    Machine learning uses a best-fit principle. The outputs, in this case whether I am male or female, have a greater certainty of male (65 percent) versus a lesser certainty of female (35 percent) if I wear a beard (Figure 3, second image from the right). Remove the beard and the likelihood of me being female increases by 2 percent (Figure 3, second image from the left).

    Bias in machine learning models

    Within a fairly small set of parameters, most human faces are similar. However, when you start digging, the research points to there being bias in AI (whether this is conscious or unconscious is a debate for another day!). You can exemplify this by firstly creating classes with labels such as ‘young smart’, ‘old smart’, ‘young not smart’, and ‘old not smart’. Select images that you think would fit the classes, and train them in Teachable Machine. You can then test the model by asking your students to find images they think fit each category. Run them against the model and ask students to debate whether the AI is acting fairly, and if not, why they think that is. Who is training these models? What images are they receiving? Similarly, you could create classes of images of known past criminals and heroes. Train the model before putting yourself in front of it. How far up the percentage scale are you towards being a criminal? It soon becomes frighteningly worrying that unless you are white and seemingly middle class, AI may prove problematic to you, from decisions on financial products such as mortgages through to mistaken arrest and identification.

    It soon becomes frighteningly worrying that unless you are white and seemingly middle class, AI may prove problematic to you, from decisions on financial products such as mortgages through to mistaken arrest and identification.

    Michael Jones

    Encourage your students to discuss how they could influence this issue of race, class, and gender bias — for example, what rules would they use for identifying suitable images for a data set? There are some interesting articles on this issue that you can share with your students at helloworld.cc/aibias1 and helloworld.cc/aibias2.

    Where next with your learners?

    In the classroom, you could then follow the route of building models that identify letters for words, for example. One of my students built a model that could identify a range of spoons and forks. You may notice that Teachable Machine can also be run on Arduino boards, which adds an extra dimension. Why not get your students to create their own AI assistant that responds to commands? The possibilities are there to be explored. If you’re using webcams to collect photos yourself, why not create a system that will identify students? If you are lucky enough to have a set of identical twins in your class, that adds just a little more flavour! Teachable Machine offers a hands-on way to demonstrate the issues of AI accuracy and bias, and gives students a healthy opportunity for debate.

    Michael Jones is director of Computer Science at Northfleet Technology College in the UK. He is a Specialist Leader of Education and a CS Champion for the National Centre for Computing Education.

    More resources for AI and data science education

    At the Foundation, AI education is one of our focus areas. Here is how we are supporting you and your learners in this area already:

    An image demonstrating that AI systems for object recognition do not distinguish between a real banana on a desk and the photo of a banana on a laptop screen.
    • Computing education researchers are working to answer the many open questions about what good AI and data science education looks like for young people. To learn more, you can watch the recordings from our research seminar series focused on this. We ourselves are working on research projects in this area and will share the results freely with the computing education community.
    • You can find a list of free educational resources about these topics that we’ve collated based on our research seminars, seminar participants’ recommendations, and our own work.

    Website: LINK

  • What we learnt from the CSTA 2022 Annual Conference

    What we learnt from the CSTA 2022 Annual Conference

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    From experience, being connected to a community of fellow computing educators is really important, especially given that some members of the community may be the only computing educator in their school, district, or country. These professional connections enable educators to share and learn from each other, develop their practice, and importantly reduce any feelings of isolation.

    It was great to see the return of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Annual Conference to an in-person event this year, and I was really excited to be able to attend.

    A teacher attending Picademy laughs as she works through an activity

    Our small Raspberry Pi Foundation team headed to Chicago for four and a half days of meetups, professional development, and conversations with educators from all across the US and around the world. Over the week our team ran workshops, delivered a keynote talk, gave away copies of Hello World magazine, and signed up many new subscribers. You too can subscribe to Hello World magazine for free at helloworld.cc/subscribe.

    Hello World CSTA team
    Hello World CSTA stand

    We spoke to so many educators about all parts of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s work, with a particular focus on the Hello World magazine and podcast, and of course The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy. In collaboration with CSTA, we were really proud to be able to provide all attendees with their own physical copy of this very special edition. 

    An educator's picture of The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy on Twitter.

    It was genuinely exciting to see how pleased attendees were to receive their copy of The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy. So many came to talk to us about how they’d used the digital copy already and their plans for using the book for training and development initiatives in their schools and districts. We gave away every last spare copy we had to teachers who wanted to share the book with their colleagues who couldn’t attend.

    An educator with their copy of The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.

    Don’t worry if you couldn’t make it to the conference, The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy is available as a free PDF, which due to its Creative Commons licence you are welcome to print for yourself.

    Another goal for us at CSTA was to support and encourage new authors to the magazine in order to ensure that Hello World continues to be the magazine for computing educators, by computing educators. Anyone can propose an article idea for Hello World by completing this form. We’re confident that every computing educator out there has at least one story to tell, lessons or learnings to share, or perhaps a cautionary tale of something that failed.

    We’ll review any and all ideas and will support you to craft your idea into a finished article. This is exactly what we began to do at the conference with our workshop for writers led by Gemma Coleman, our fantastic Hello World Editor. We’re really excited to see these ideas flourish into full-blown articles over the coming weeks and months.

    CSTA workshop with Gemma from Hello World
    People listening to the Hello World workshop

    Our week culminated in a keynote talk delivered by Sue, Jane, and James, exploring how we developed our 12 pedagogy principles that underpin The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, as well as much of the content we create at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. These principles are designed to describe a set of approaches that educators can add to their toolkit, giving them a shared language and the agency to select when and how they employ each approach. This was something we explored with teachers in our final breakout session where teachers applied these principles to describe a lesson or activity of their own.

    The work from someone who attended the CSTA Hello World workshop
    People enjoying the workshop

    We found the experience extremely valuable and relished the opportunity to talk about teaching and learning with educators and share our work. We are incredibly grateful to the entire CSTA team for organising a fantastic conference and inviting us to participate.

    Discover more with Hello World — for free

    Cover of issue 19 of Hello World magazine.

    Subscribe now to get each new Hello World straight to your digital inbox, for free! And if you’re based in the UK and do paid or unpaid work in education, you can subscribe for free print issues.

    Website: LINK

  • Computing and sustainability in your classroom | Hello World #19

    Computing and sustainability in your classroom | Hello World #19

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Issue 19 of our free magazine Hello World, written by and for the computing education community, focuses on the interaction between sustainability and computing, from how we can interact with technology responsibly, to its potential to mitigate climate change.

    Cover of issue 19 of Hello World magazine.

    To give you a taste of this brand-new issue, here is primary school teacher Peter Gaynord’s article about his experience of using an environmental case study to develop a cross-curricular physical computing unit that gives his learners a real-life context.

    Peter Gaynord.
    Peter Gaynord.

    Real-life problem solving

    The prospect of developing your own unit of work from scratch can feel very daunting. With the number of free resources available, it begs the question, why do it? Firstly, it gives you the opportunity to deliver computing that is interwoven with the rest of your curriculum. It also naturally lends itself to a constructionist approach to learning through meaningful engagement with real-world problem-solving. In this article, I am going to share my experience of developing a ten-lesson unit of physical computing for students aged nine to ten that is linked to the more general topic of the environment.

    To engage children in the process of problem-solving, it is important that the problem is presented as a real and meaningful one. To introduce the topic of the environment, we showed pupils a video of the Panama Canal, including information about the staggering amount of CO2 that is saved by ships taking this route instead of the alternative, longer routes that use more fuel. However, we explained that because of the special geographical features, a moving bridge needed to be constructed over the canal. The students’ challenge was first to design a solution to the problem, and then to make a working model.

    An model of a bridge.
    One bridge model from Peter’s class.

    The model would use physical computing as part of the solution to the problem. The children would program a single-geared motor using a Crumble microcontroller to slowly lift and lower the bridge by the desired amount. We decided to issue a warning to drivers that the road bridge was about to close using a Sparkle, a programmable LED. Ultimately, the raising and lowering of the bridge would happen automatically when a ship approached. For this purpose, we would use an ultrasonic sensor to detect the presence of the ship.

    Building the required skills

    To develop the skills required to use the Crumble microcontroller, we led some discrete computing lessons based largely on the Teach Computing Curriculum’s ‘Programming A — Selection in physical computing’ unit. In these lessons, the children developed the skill of sensing and responding differently to conditions using the selection programming construct. They learnt this key concept alongside controlling and connecting the motor, the Sparkle, and the ultrasonic sensor.

    A learner does physical computing in the primary school classroom.
    Physical computing allows learners to get hands-on.

    For students to succeed, we also had to teach them skills from other subjects, and consider at what stage it would be most useful to introduce them. For example, before asking children to document their designs, we first needed to teach the design technology (DT) objectives for communicating ideas through sketches. Most other DT objectives that covered the practical skills to make a model were interwoven as the project progressed. At the end of the project, we guided the children through how to evaluate their design ideas and reflect on the process of model making. Before pupils designed their solutions, we also had to introduce some science for them to apply to their designs. We covered increasing forces using levers, pulleys, and gears, as well as the greenhouse effect and how burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming.

    An end pivot model of a bridge.
    Another bridge model made in Peter’s class.

    It is very important not to specify a solution for students at the beginning, otherwise the whole project becomes craft instead of problem-solving. However, it is important to spend some time thinking about any practical aspects of the model building that may need extra scaffolding. Experience suggested that it was important to limit the scale of the children’s models. We did this by showing them a completed central bridge span and later, guiding the building of this component so that all bridges had the same scale. It also turned out to be very important that the children were limited in their model building to using one single-geared motor. This would ensure that all children engaged with actively thinking about how to utilise the lever and pulley system to increase force, instead of relying on using more motors to lift the bridge.

    If you want to finish reading Peter’s article and see his unit outline, download Hello World issue 19 as a free PDF.

    Discover more in Hello World 19 — for free

    As always, you’ll find this new issue of Hello World packed with resources, ideas, and insights to inspire your learners and your own classroom practice:

    • Portraits of scientists who apply artificial intelligence models to sustainability research
    • Research behind device-repair cafés
    • A deep dive into the question of technology obsolescence
    • And much more

    All issues of Hello World as available as free PDF downloads. Subscribe to never miss a digital issue — and if you’re an educator in the UK, you can subscribe to receive free print copies in the post.

    PS: US-based educators, if you’re at CSTA Annual Conference in Chicago this month, come meet us at booth 521 and join us at our sessions about writing for Hello World, the Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, and more. We look forward to seeing you there!

    Website: LINK

  • We’ll see you at CSTA 2022 Annual Conference

    We’ll see you at CSTA 2022 Annual Conference

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Connecting face to face with educators around the world is a key part of our mission at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and it’s something that we’ve sorely missed doing over the last two years. We’re therefore thrilled to be joining over 1000 computing educators in the USA at the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Annual Conference in Chicago in July.

    Gemma Coleman
    Kevin Johnson
    James Robinson

    You will find us at booth 521 in the expo hall throughout the conference, as well as running four sessions. Gemma, Kevin, James, Sue, and Jane are team members representing Hello World magazine, the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, and our other free programmes and education initiatives. We thank the team at CSTA for involving us in what we know will be an amazing conference.

    Sue Sentance
    Jane Waite.
    Jane Waite

    Talk to us about computer science pedagogy

    Developing and sharing effective computing pedagogy is our theme for CSTA 2022. We’ll be talking to you about our 12 pedagogy principles, laid out in The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, available to download for free.

    Cover of The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.

    An exciting piece of news is that everyone attending CSTA 2022 will find a free print copy of the Big Book in their conference goodie bag!

    We’re really looking forward to sharing and discussing the book and all our work with US educators, and to seeing some familiar faces. We’re also hoping to interview lots of old and new friends about your approaches to teaching computing and computer science for future Hello World podcast episodes.

    Your sessions with us

    Our team will also be running a number of sessions where you can join us to learn, discuss, and prepare lesson plans.

    Semantic Waves and Wavy Lessons: Connecting Theory to Practical Activities and Back Again

    Thursday 14 July, 9am–12pm: Pre-conference workshop (booking required) with James Robinson and Jane Waite

    If you enjoy explaining concepts using unplugged activities, analogy, or storytelling, then this practical pre-conference session is for you. In the session, we’ll introduce the idea of semantic waves, a learning theory that supports learners in building knowledge of new concepts through careful consideration of vocabulary and contexts. Across the world, this approach has been successfully used to teach topics ranging from ballet to chemistry — and now computing.

    Three computer science educators discuss something at a screen.

    You’ll learn how this theory can be applied to deliver powerful explanations that connect abstract ideas and concrete experiences. By taking part in the session, you’ll gain a solid understanding of semantic wave theory, see it in practice in some freely available lesson plans, and apply it to your own planning.

    Write for a Global Computing Community with Hello World Magazine

    Friday 15 July, 1–2pm: Workshop with Gemma Coleman

    Do you enjoy sharing your teaching ideas, successes, and challenges with others? Do you want to connect with a global community of over 30,000 computing educators? Have you always wanted to be a published author? Then come along to this workshop session.

    Issues of Hello World magazine arranged to form a number five.
    Hello World has been going strong for five years — find out how you can become one of its authors.

    Every single computing or CS teacher out there has at least one lesson to share, idea to voice, or story to tell. In the session, you’ll discuss what makes a good article with Gemma Coleman, Hello World’s Editor, and you’ll learn top tips for how to communicate your ideas in writing. Gemma will also guide you through writing a plan for your very own article. Even if you’re not sure whether you want to write an article, doing this is a powerful way to reflect on your teaching practice.

    Developing a Toolkit for Teaching Computer Science in School

    Saturday 16 July, 4–5pm: Keynote talk by Sue Sentance

    To teach any subject requires good teaching skills, knowledge about the subject being taught, and specific knowledge that a teacher gains about how to teach a particular topic, to their particular students, in a particular context. Teaching computer science is no different, and it’s a challenge for teachers to develop a go-to set of pedagogical strategies for such a new subject, especially for elements of the subject matter that they are just getting to grips with themselves.

    12 principles of computing pedagogy: lead with concepts; structure lessons; make concrete; unplug, unpack, repack; work together; read and explore code first; foster program comprehension; model everything; challenge misconceptions; create projects; get hands-on; add variety.

    In this keynote talk, our Chief Learning Officer Sue Sentance will focus on some of the 12 pedagogy principles that we developed to support the teaching of computer science. We created this set of principles together with other teachers and researchers to help us and everyone in computing and computer science education reflect on how we teach our learners. Sue will share how we arrived at the principles, and she’ll use classroom examples to illustrate how you can apply them in practice.

    Exploring the Hello World Big Book of Computing Pedagogy

    Sunday 17 July, 9–10am: Workshop with Sue Sentance

    The set of 12 pedagogy principles we’ve developed for teaching computing are presented in our Hello World Big Book of Computing Pedagogy. The book includes summaries, teachers’ perspectives, and lesson plans for each of the 12 principles.

    A tweet praising The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.

    All CSTA attendees will get their own print copy of the Big Book, and in this practical session, we will use the book to explore together how you can use the 12 principles in the planning and delivery of your lessons. The session will be very hands-on, so bring along something you know you want or need to teach.

    See you at CSTA in July

    CSTA is now just a month away, and we can’t wait to meet old friends, make new connections, and learn from each other! Come find us at booth 521 or at our sessions to meet the team, discover Hello World magazine and the Hello World podcast, and find out more about our educational work. We hope to see you soon.

    Website: LINK

  • A cybersecurity club for girls | Hello World #18

    A cybersecurity club for girls | Hello World #18

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    In this article adapted from Hello World issue 18, teacher Babak Ebrahim explains how his school uses a cybersecurity club to increase interest in Computing among girls. Babak is a Computer Science and Mathematics teacher at Bishop Challoner Catholic College Secondary in Birmingham, UK. He is a CAS Community Leader, and works as a CS Champion for the National Centre for Computing Education in England.

    Babak Ebrahim.
    Cover of Hello World issue 18.

    Cybersecurity for girls

    It is impossible to walk into an upper-secondary computer science lesson and not notice the number of boys compared to girls. This is a common issue across the world; it is clear from reading community forums and news headlines that there is a big gap in female representation in computing. To combat this problem in my school, I started organising trips to local universities and arranging assembly talks for my Year 9 students (aged 13–14). Although this was helpful, it didn’t have as much impact as I expected on improving female representation.

    Girls do a cybersecurity activity at a school club.
    Girls engage in a cryptography activity at the club.

    This led me to alter our approach and target younger female students with an extracurricular club. As part of our lower-secondary curriculum, all pupils study encryption and cryptography, and we were keen to extend this interest beyond lesson time. I discovered the CyberFirst Girls Competition, aimed at Year 8 girls in England (aged 12–13) with the goal of influencing girls when choosing their GCSE subjects (qualifications pupils take aged 14–16). Each school can enter as many teams as they like, with a maximum of four girls in each team. I advertised the event by showing a video of the previous year’s attendees and the winning team. To our delight, 19 girls, in five teams, entered the competition.

    Club activities at school

    To make sure that this wasn’t a one-off event, we started an after-school cybersecurity club for girls. All Computing teachers encouraged their female students to attend. We had a number of female teachers who were teaching Maths and Computing as their second subjects, and I found it more effective when these teachers encouraged the girls to join. They would also help with running the club. We found it to be most popular with Year 7 students (aged 11–12), with 15 girls regularly attending. We often do cryptography tasks in the club, including activities from established competitions. For example, I recently challenged the club to complete tasks from the most recent Alan Turing Cryptography Competition. A huge benefit of completing these tasks in the club, rather than in the classroom, was that students could work more informally and were not under pressure to succeed. I found this year’s tasks quite challenging for younger students, and I was worried that this could put them off returning to the club. To avoid this, I first taught the students the skills that they would need for one of the challenges, followed by small tasks that I made myself over two or three sessions.

    Three teenage girls at a laptop

    For example, one task required students to use the Playfair cipher to break a long piece of code. In order to prepare students for decoding this text, I showed them how the cipher works, then created empty grids (5 x 5 tables) and modelled the technique with simple examples. The girls then worked in teams of two to encrypt a short quote. I gave each group a different quotation, and they weren’t allowed to let other groups know what it was. Once they applied the cipher, they handed the encrypted message to another group, whose job was to decrypt it. At this stage, some would identify that the other group had made mistakes using the techniques, and they would go through the text together to identify them. Once students were confident and competent in using this cipher, I presented them with the competition task, and they then applied the same process. Of course, some students would still make mistakes, but they would realise this and be able to work through them, rather than being overwhelmed by them. Another worthwhile activity in the club has been for older pupils, who are in their second year of attending, to mentor and support girls in the years below them, especially in preparation for participating in competitions.

    Trips afield

    Other club activities have included a trip to Bletchley Park. As a part of the package, students took part in a codebreaking workshop in which they used the Enigma machine to crack encrypted messages. This inspirational trip was a great experience for the girls, as they discovered the pivotal roles women had in breaking codes during the Second World War. If you’re not based in the UK, Bletchley Park also runs a virtual tour and workshops. You could also organise a day trip to a local university where students could attend different workshops run by female lecturers or university students; this could involve a mixture of maths, science, and computer science activities.

    Girls do a cybersecurity activity at a school club.
    Girls engage in a cryptography activity at the club.

    We are thrilled to learn that one of our teams won this year’s CyberFirst Girls Competition! More importantly, the knowledge gained by all the students who attend the club is most heartening, along with the enthusiasm that is clearly evident each week, and the fun that is had. Whether this will have any impact on the number of girls who take GCSE Computer Science remains to be seen, but it certainly gives the girls the opportunity to discover their potential, learn the importance of cybersecurity, and consider pursuing a career in a male-dominated profession. There are many factors that influence a child’s mind as to what they would like to study or do, and every little extra effort that we put into their learning journey will shape who they will become in the future.

    What next?

    Find out more about teaching cybersecurity

    Find out more about the factors influencing girls’ and young women’ engagement in Computing

    Website: LINK

  • Making the most of Hello World magazine | Hello World #18

    Making the most of Hello World magazine | Hello World #18

    Reading Time: 9 minutes

    Hello World magazine, our free magazine written by computing educators for computing educators, has been running for 5 years now. In the newest issue, Alan O’Donohoe shares his top tips for educators to make the most out of Hello World.

    Issues of Hello World magazine arranged to form a number five.

    Alan has over 20 years’ experience teaching and leading technology, ICT, and computing in schools in England. He runs exa.foundation, delivering professional development to engage digital makers, supporting computing teaching, and promoting the appropriate use of technology.

    Alan’s top tips

    Years before there was a national curriculum for computing, Hello World magazines, or England’s National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE), I had ambitious plans to overhaul our school’s ICT curriculum with the introduction of computer science. Since the subject team I led consisted mostly of non-specialist teachers, it was clear I needed to be the one steering the change. To do this successfully, I realised I’d need to look for examples and case studies outside of our school, to explore exactly what strategies, resources and programming languages other teachers were using. However, I drew a blank. I couldn’t find any local schools teaching computer science. It was both daunting and disheartening not knowing anyone else I could refer to for advice and experience.

    An educator holds up a copy of Hello World magazine in front of their face.
    “Hello World helps me keep up with the current trends in our thriving computing community.” – Matt Moore

    Thankfully, ten years later, the situation has significantly improved. Even with increased research and resources, though, there can still be the sense of feeling alone. With scarce prospects to meet other computing teachers, there’s fewer people to be inspired by, to bounce ideas off, to celebrate achievement, or share the challenges of teaching computing with. Some teachers habitually engage with online discussion forums and social media platforms to plug this gap, but these have their own drawbacks. 

    It’s great news then that there’s another resource that teachers can turn to. You all know by now that Hello World magazine offers another helping hand for computing teachers searching for richer experiences for their students and opportunities to hone their professional practice. In this Insider’s Guide, I offer practical suggestions for how you can use Hello World to its full potential.  

    Put an article into practice  

    Teachers have often told me that strategies like PRIMM and pair programming have had a positive impact on their teaching, after first reading about them in Hello World. Over the five years of its publication, there’s likely to have been an article or research piece that particularly struck a chord with you — so why not try putting the learnings from that article into practice?

    An educator holds up a copy of Hello World magazine in front of their face.
    “Hello World gives me loads of ideas that I’m excited to try out in my own classroom.” – Steve Rich

    You may choose to go this route on your own, but you could persuade colleagues to join you. Not only is there safety in numbers, but the shared rewards and motivation that come from teamwork. Start by choosing an article. This could be an approach that made an impression on you, or something related to a particular theme or topic that you and your colleagues have been seeking to address. You could then test out some of the author’s suggestions in the article; if they represent something very different from your usual approach, then why not try them first with a teaching group that is more open to trying new things? For reflection and analysis, consider conducting some pupil voice interviews with your classes to see what their opinions are of the activity, or spend some time reflecting on the activity with your colleagues. Finally, you could make contact with the author to compare your experiences, seek further support, or ask questions. 

    Strike up a conversation

    Authors generally welcome correspondence from readers, even those that don’t agree with their opinions! While it’s difficult to predict exactly what the outcome may be, it could lead to a productive professional correspondence. Here are some suggestions: 

    • Establish the best way to contact the author. Some have contact details or clues about where to find them in their articles. If not, you might try connecting with them on LinkedIn, or social media. Don’t be disappointed if they don’t respond promptly; I’ve often received replies many months after sending. 
    • Open your message with an introduction to yourself moving onto some positive praise, describing your appreciation for the article and points that resonated deeply with you.
    • If you have already tried some of the author’s suggestions, you could share your experiences and pupil outcomes, where appropriate, with them.
    An educator holds up a copy of Hello World magazine in front of their face.
    “One of the things I love about Hello World is the huge number of interesting articles that represent a wide range of voices and experiences in computing education.” – Catherine Elliott
    • Try to maintain a constructive tone. Even if you disagree with the piece, the author will be more receptive to a supportive tone than criticism. If the article topic is a ‘work in progress’, the author may welcome your suggestions.
    • Enquire as to whether the author has changed their practice since writing the article or if their thinking has developed.
    • You might take the opportunity to direct questions at the author asking for further examples, clarity or advice.  
    • If the author has given you an idea for an article, project, or research on a similar theme, they’re likely to be interested in hearing more. Describe your proposal in a single sentence summary and see if they’d be interested in reading an early draft or collaborating with you.

    Start a reading group

    Take inspiration from book clubs, but rather than discuss works of fiction, instead invite members of your professional groups or curriculum teams to discuss content from issues of Hello World. This could become a regular feature of your meetings where attendees can be invited to contribute their own opinions. To achieve this, firstly identify a group that you’re a part of where this is most likely to be received well. This may be with your colleagues, or fellow computing teachers you’ve met at conferences or training days. To begin, you might prescribe one specific single article or broaden it to include a whole issue. It makes sense to select an article likely to be popular with your group, or one that addresses a current or future area of concern.

    An educator holds up a copy of Hello World magazine in front of their face.
    “I love Hello World! I encourage my teaching students to sign up, and give out copies when I can. I refer to articles in my lectures.” – Fiona Baxter

    To familiarise attendees with the content, share a link to the issue for them to read in advance of the meeting. If you’re reviewing a whole issue, suggest pages likely to be most relevant. If you’re reviewing a single article, make it clear whether you are referring to the page numbers as printed or those in the PDF. You could make it easier by removing all other pages from the PDF and sending it as an attachment. Remember that you can download back issues of Hello World as PDFs, which you can then edit or print. 

    Encourage your attendees to share the aspects of the article that appealed to them, or areas they could not agree with the author or struggled to see working in their particular setting. Invite any points of issue for further discussion and explanation — somebody in the group might volunteer to strike up a conversation with the author by passing on the feedback from the group. Alternatively, you could invite the author of the piece to join your meeting via video conference to address questions and promote discussion of the themes. This could lead to developing a productive friendship or professional association with the author.  

    Propose an article

    “I wish!” is a typical response I hear when I suggest to a teacher that they should seriously consider writing an article for Hello World. I often get the responses, “I don’t have enough time”, “Nobody would read anything I write”, or, “I don’t do anything worth writing about”. The most common concern I hear, though, is, “But I’m not a writer!”. So you’re not the only one thinking that! 

    “We strongly encourage first-time writers. My job is to edit your work and worry about grammar and punctuation — so don’t worry if this isn’t your strength! Remember that as an educator, you’re writing all the time. Lesson plans, end-of-term reports, assessment feedback…you’re more of a writer than you think! If you’re not sure where to start, you could write a lesson plan, or contribute to our ‘Me and my Classroom’ feature.”

    — Gemma Coleman, Editor of Hello World

    Help and support is available from the editorial team. I for one have found this to be extremely beneficial, especially as I really don’t rate my own writing skills! Don’t forget, you’re writing about your own practice, something that you’ve done in your career — so you’ll be an expert on you. Each article starts with a proposal, the editor replies with some suggestions, then a draft follows and some more refinements. I ask friends and colleagues to review parts of what I’ve written to help me and I even ask non-teaching members of my family for their opinions. 

    Writing an article for Hello World can really help boost your own professional development and career prospects. Writing about your own practice requires humility, analytical thinking and self reflection. To ensure you have time to write an article, make it fit in with something of interest to you. This could be an objective from your own performance management or appraisal. This reduces the need for additional work and adds a level of credibility.

    An educator reads a copy of Hello World magazine on public transport.
    “Professionally, writing for Hello World provides recognition that you know what you’re talking about and that you share your knowledge in a number of different ways.” – Neil Rickus

    If that isn’t enough to persuade you, for contributors based outside of the UK (who usually aren’t eligible for free print copies), Hello World will send you a complimentary print copy of the magazine that you feature in to say thank you. Picture the next Hello World issue arriving featuring an article written by you. How does this make you feel? Be honest — your heart flutters as you tear off the wrapper to go straight to your article. You’ll be impressed to see how much smarter it looks in print than the draft you did in Microsoft Word. You’ll then want to show others, because you’ll be proud of your work. It generates a tremendous sense of pride and achievement in seeing your own work published in a professional capacity. 

    Hello World offers busy teachers a fantastic, free and accessible resource of shared knowledge, experience and inspiring ideas. When we feel most exhausted and lacking inspiration, we should treasure those mindful moments where we can sit down with a cup of tea and make the most of this wonderful publication created especially for us.

    Celebrate 5 years of Hello World with us

    We marked Hello World’s fifth anniversary with a recent Twitter Spaces event with Alan and Catherine Elliot as our guests. You can catch up with the event recording on the Hello World podcast. And the newest Hello World issue, with a focus on cybersecurity, is available as a free PDF download — dive it today.

    Cover of Hello World issue 18.

    How have you been using Hello World in your practice in the past five years? What do you hope to see in the magazine in the next five? Let us know on Twitter by tagging @HelloWorld_Edu.

    Website: LINK

  • It’s back: The Hello World podcast for the computing education community

    It’s back: The Hello World podcast for the computing education community

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    We set out last year to gather more stories, ideas, and inspiration from and for the computing education community in between Hello World magazine issues: we launched the Hello World podcast. On the podcast, we dive deeper into articles from Hello World, and we speak with people from all over the world who work as teachers, educators, and other computing education professionals.

    Hello World logo.

    Season 3 of the Hello World podcast starts on Monday

    The Hello World podcast helps connect the global community of computing educators and Hello World readers, and lets them share their experiences. After two seasons and a short pause during the autumn, we are finally back with a brand-new Hello World podcast season. Regular listeners will also notice a new theme music!

    Each episode, we explore computing, coding, and digital making education by delving into an exciting topic together with our guests: experts, practitioners, and other members of the Hello World community.

     In season 3, we’re exploring:

    • The role of makerspaces, both within schools and the wider community 
    • The relevance of imagination and storytelling to computing 
    • Computing in the context of science and ecology
    • How learners can promote and support computing as digital leaders
    • And much more…
    A phone with headphones plugged in next to a cup of coffee on a table.

    Meet our guests for episode 1 of the new season

    In our first episode, which will be available from 7 February, your hosts Carrie Anne and James ask the question “What role do makerspaces play in the classroom?”. We talk to two fantastic guests, each with a wealth of experience in designing and developing makerspaces:

    Nick Provenzano.
    Nick Provenzano

    Nick Provenzano, who is a Teacher and Makerspace Director at University Liggett School in Michigan. He is also an author, makerspace builder, international keynote speaker and Raspberry Pi Certified Educator.

    Chris Hillidge
    Chris Hillidge

    Chris Hillidge, who established FabLab Warrington in 2016 and manages the STEM strategy for students aged 4 to 19 across The Challenge Academy Trust. Chris is a Specialist Leader of Education, consultant, and Raspberry Pi Certified Educator.

    If you’ve not tried out the Hello World podcast yet, why not get started by diving into one of our most popular episodes?

    You’ll find the upcoming season and past episodes on your favourite podcast platform, where you can also subscribe to never miss an episode. Alternatively, you can listen via your browser at helloworld.cc/podcast.

    Website: LINK

  • Green information technology and classroom discussions

    Green information technology and classroom discussions

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    The global IT industry generates as much CO2 as the aviation industry. In Hello World issue 17, we learn about the hidden impact of our IT use and the changes we can make from Beverly Clarke, national community manager for Computing at School and author of Computer Science Teacher: Insight Into the Computing Classroom.

    • Beverly Clarke
    • Cover of issue 17 of Hello World.
      Hello World issue 17

    With the onset of the pandemic, the world seemed to shut down. Flights were grounded, fewer people were commuting, and companies and individuals increased their use of technology for work and communication. On the surface, this seemed like a positive time for the environment. However, I soon found myself wondering about the impact that this increased use of technology would have on our planet, in particular the increases in energy consumption and e-waste. This is a major social, moral, and ethical issue that is hiding in plain sight — green IT is big news.

    This is a major social, moral, and ethical issue that is hiding in plain sight — green IT is big news.

    Energy and data centres

    Thinking that online is always better for the planet is not always as straightforward as it seems. If we choose to meet via conference call rather than travelling to a meeting, there are hidden environmental impacts to consider. If there are 50 people on a call from across the globe, all of the data generated is being routed around the world through data centres, and a lot of energy is being used. If all of those people are also using video, that is even more energy than audio only.

    Stacks of server hardware behind metal fencing in a data centre.
    Data centres consume a lot of energy — and how is that energy generated?

    Not only is the amount of energy being used a concern, but we must also ask ourselves how these data centres are being powered. Is the energy they are using coming from a renewable source? If not, we may be replacing one environmental problem with another.

    What about other areas of our lives, such as taking photos or filming videos? These two activities have probably increased as we have been separated from family and friends. They use energy, especially when the image or video is then shared with others around the world and consequently routed through data centres. A large amount of energy is being used, and more is used the further the image travels.

    Not only is the amount of energy being used a concern, but we must also ask ourselves how these data centres are being powered.

    Similarly, consider social media and the number of posts individuals and companies make on a daily basis. All of these are travelling through data centres and using energy, yet for the most part this is not visible to the user.

    E-waste

    E-waste is another green IT issue, and one that will only get worse as we rely on electronic devices more. As well as the potential eyesore of mountains of e-waste, there is also the impact upon the planet of mining the precious metals used in these electronics, such as gold, copper, aluminium, and steel.

    The processes used to mine these metals lead to pollution, and we should also consider that some of the precious metals used in our devices could run out, as there is not an endless supply in the Earth’s surface.

    It is also problematic that a lot of e-waste is sent to developing countries with limited recycling plants […].

    It is also problematic that a lot of e-waste is sent to developing countries with limited recycling plants, and so much of the e-waste ends up in landfill. This can lead to toxic substances being leaked into the Earth’s surface.

    First steps towards action

    With my reflective hat on, I started to think about discussions we as teachers could have with pupils around this topic, and came up with the following:

    • Help learners to talk about the cloud and where it is located. We can remind them that the cloud is a physical entity. Show them images of data centres to help make this real, and allow them to appreciate where the data we generate every day goes.
    • Ask learners how many photos and videos they have on their devices, and where they think those items are stored. This can be extended to a year group or whole-school exercise so they can really appreciate the sheer amount of data being used and sent across the cloud, and how data centres fit with that energy consumption. I did this activity and found that I had 7163 photos and 304 videos on my phone — that’s using a lot of energy!
    A classroom of students in North America.
    Helping young people gain an understanding of the impact of our use of electronic devices is an important action you can take.
    • Ask learners to research any local data centres and find out how many data centres there are in the world. You could then develop this into a discussion, including language related to data centres such as sensors, storage devices, cabling, and infrastructure. This helps learners to connect the theory to real-world examples.
    • Ask learners to reflect upon how many devices they use that are connected to the Internet of Things.
    • Consider for ourselves and ask parents, family, and friends how our online usage has changed since before the pandemic.
    • Consider what happens to electronic devices when they are thrown away and become e-waste. Where does it all go? What is the effect of e-waste on communities and countries?

    Tips for greener IT

    UK-based educators can watch a recent episode of TV programme Dispatches that investigates the carbon footprint of the IT industry. You can add the following tips from the programme to your discussions:

    • Turn off electronic devices when not in use
    • Use audio only when on online calls
    • Dispose of your old devices responsibly
    • Look at company websites and see what their commitment is to green IT, and consider whether we should support companies whose commitment to the planet is poor
    • Use WiFi instead of 3G/4G/5G, as it uses less energy

    These lists are not exhaustive, but provide a good starting point for discussions with learners. We should all play our small part in ensuring that we #RestoreOurEarth — this year’s Earth Day theme — and having an awareness and understanding of the impact of our use of electronic devices is part of the way forward.

    Some resources on green IT — do you have others?

    What about you? In the comments below, share your thoughts, tips, and resources on green IT and how we can bring awareness of it to our learners and young people at home.

    Website: LINK

  • Snapshots from the history of AI, plus AI education resources

    Snapshots from the history of AI, plus AI education resources

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    In Hello World issue 12, our free magazine for computing educators, George Boukeas, DevOps Engineer for the Astro Pi Challenge here at the Foundation, introduces big moments in the history of artificial intelligence (AI) to share with your learners:

    The story of artificial intelligence (AI) is a story about humans trying to understand what makes them human. Some of the episodes in this story are fascinating. These could help your learners catch a glimpse of what this field is about and, with luck, compel them to investigate further.                   

    The imitation game

    In 1950, Alan Turing published a philosophical essay titled Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which started with the words: “I propose to consider the question: Can machines think?” Yet Turing did not attempt to define what it means to think. Instead, he suggested a game as a proxy for answering the question: the imitation game. In modern terms, you can imagine a human interrogator chatting online with another human and a machine. If the interrogator does not successfully determine which of the other two is the human and which is the machine, then the question has been answered: this is a machine that can think.

    A statue of Alan Turing on a park bench in Manchester.
    The Alan Turing Memorial in Manchester

    This imitation game is now a fiercely debated benchmark of artificial intelligence called the Turing test. Notice the shift in focus that Turing suggests: thinking is to be identified in terms of external behaviour, not in terms of any internal processes. Humans are still the yardstick for intelligence, but there is no requirement that a machine should think the way humans do, as long as it behaves in a way that suggests some sort of thinking to humans.

    In his essay, Turing also discusses learning machines. Instead of building highly complex programs that would prescribe every aspect of a machine’s behaviour, we could build simpler programs that would prescribe mechanisms for learning, and then train the machine to learn the desired behaviour. Turing’s text provides an excellent metaphor that could be used in class to describe the essence of machine learning: “Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child’s? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain. We have thus divided our problem into two parts: the child-programme and the education process.”

    A chess board with two pieces of each colour left.
    Chess was among the games that early AI researchers like Alan Turing developed algorithms for.

    It is remarkable how Turing even describes approaches that have since been evolved into established machine learning methods: evolution (genetic algorithms), punishments and rewards (reinforcement learning), randomness (Monte Carlo tree search). He even forecasts the main issue with some forms of machine learning: opacity. “An important feature of a learning machine is that its teacher will often be very largely ignorant of quite what is going on inside, although he may still be able to some extent to predict his pupil’s behaviour.”

    The evolution of a definition

    The term ‘artificial intelligence’ was coined in 1956, at an event called the Dartmouth workshop. It was a gathering of the field’s founders, researchers who would later have a huge impact, including John McCarthy, Claude Shannon, Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, Arthur Samuel, Ray Solomonoff, and W.S. McCulloch.   

    Go has vastly more possible moves than chess, and was thought to remain out of the reach of AI for longer than it did.

    The simple and ambitious definition for artificial intelligence, included in the proposal for the workshop, is illuminating: ‘making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving’. These pioneers were making the assumption that ‘every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it’. This assumption turned out to be patently false and led to unrealistic expectations and forecasts. Fifty years later, McCarthy himself stated that ‘it was harder than we thought’.

    Modern definitions of intelligence are of distinctly different flavour than the original one: ‘Intelligence is the quality that enables an entity to function appropriately and with foresight in its environment’ (Nilsson). Some even speak of rationality, rather than intelligence: ‘doing the right thing, given what it knows’ (Russell and Norvig).

    A computer screen showing a complicated graph.
    The amount of training data AI developers have access to has skyrocketed in the past decade.

    Read the whole of this brief history of AI in Hello World #12

    In the full article, which you can read in the free PDF copy of the issue, George looks at:

    • Early advances researchers made from the 1950s onwards while developing games algorithms, e.g. for chess.
    • The 1997 moment when Deep Blue, a purpose-built IBM computer, beating chess world champion Garry Kasparov using a search approach.
    • The 2011 moment when Watson, another IBM computer system, beating two human Jeopardy! champions using multiple techniques to answer questions posed in natural language.
    • The principles behind artificial neural networks, which have been around for decades and are now underlying many AI/machine learning breakthroughs because of the growth in computing power and availability of vast datasets for training.
    • The 2017 moment when AlphaGo, an artificial neural network–based computer program by Alphabet’s DeepMind, beating Ke Jie, the world’s top-ranked Go player at the time.
    Stacks of server hardware behind metal fencing in a data centre.
    Machine learning systems need vast amounts of training data, the collection and storage of which has only become technically possible in the last decade.

    More on machine learning and AI education in Hello World #12

    In your free PDF of Hello World issue 12, you’ll also find:

    • An interview with University of Cambridge statistician David Spiegelhalter, whose work shaped some of the foundations of AI, and who shares his thoughts on data science in schools and the limits of AI 
    • An introduction to Popbots, an innovative project by MIT to open AI to the youngest learners
    • An article by Ken Kahn, researcher in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, on using the block-based Snap! language to introduce your learners to natural language processing
    • Unplugged and online machine learning activities for learners age 7 to 16 in the regular ‘Lesson plans’ section
    • And lots of other relevant articles

    You can also read many of these articles online on the Hello World website.

    Find more resources for AI and data science education

    In Hello World issue 16, the focus is on all things data science and data literacy for your learners. As always, you can download a free copy of the issue. And on our Hello World podcast, we chat with practicing computing educators about how they bring AI, AI ethics, machine learning, and data science to the young people they teach.

    If you want a practical introduction to the basics of machine learning and how to use it, take our free online course.

    Drawing of a machine learning ars rover trying to decide whether it is seeing an alien or a rock.

    There are still many open questions about what good AI and data science education looks like for young people. To learn more, you can watch our panel discussion about the topic, and join our monthly seminar series to hear insights from computing education researchers around the world.

    We are also collating a growing list of educational resources about these topics based on our research seminars, seminar participants’ recommendations, and our own work. Find the resource list here.

    Website: LINK

  • Cat Lamin on building a global educator family | Hello World #17

    Cat Lamin on building a global educator family | Hello World #17

    Reading Time: 7 minutes
    Cat Lamin.

    In Hello World issue 17, Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Cat Lamin talks about how building connections and sharing the burden can help make us better educators, even in times of great stress:

    “I felt like I needed to play my part”

    In March 2020, the world suddenly changed. For educators, we jumped from face-to-face teaching to a stark new landscape, with no idea of how the future would look. As generous teachers pushed out free resources, I felt like I needed to play my part. Suddenly, an idea struck me. In September 2017, I had decided to be brave and submit a talk to PyConUK to discuss my mental health. Afterwards, several people in the audience shared their own stories with me or let me know that it helped them just to hear that someone else struggled too. I realised that in times of pressure, we need a chance to talk and we had lost these outlets. In school, we would pop to the staffroom or a friend’s classroom for a quick vent, but that wasn’t an option anymore. People were feeling isolated, scared, stressed and didn’t have anyone to turn to.

    I realised that in times of pressure, we need a chance to talk, and we had lost these outlets.

    Cat Lamin

    Thus, the first Global Google Educator Group Staffroom: Mental Health Matters was launched on 14 March 2020, which coincided with the US government announcing school closures and UK teachers still waiting anxiously to hear when doors would close. The aim of Staffroom was to give teachers a safe space to talk about how they’re feeling under the overwhelming weight of school closures. To say it was a success would be an understatement, with teachers joining the calls from Australia, Malaysia, the USA, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Europe and more!

    Pily Perfil.

    “Staffroom for me is a place and time to connect with other teachers from around the world. I remember seeing the calendar invites by mail and I kept thinking I should join but was afraid to do it. The first time I did it, I listened first and it made me realize that my struggles during pandemic online teaching were the same struggles as everywhere else.” – Pily Hernandez, Monterrey, Mexico

    Which William are you today?

    In those early days, we just gave teachers a chance to talk. The format of our meetings was simple: what’s your name, where are you from, and then an ice breaker question like ‘What colour do you feel like?’ or ‘What song represents your current mood?’ It wasn’t long before we hit upon a winning formula by making our own ‘Which image are you today?’ picture scale (see the ‘Which William’ image below!). Using the picture scales allowed people to really express how they felt. Often someone who had been happily chatting would explain that they were actually struggling to keep their head above water because a silly image allowed them to be honest.

    A grid of photos of the same toddler expressing different emotions.
    Which William are you today?

    One of the most important messages from Staffroom was that many people involved with technology in schools were feeling alone. After years of suggesting teachers use technology, suddenly they were blamed for schools not being properly prepared. They were struggling with not necessarily knowing what to suggest to teachers with technology difficulties, as they were grappling with their own personal lockdown situations. Hearing that other people, all around the world, were experiencing something similar was hugely eye-opening and took a great amount of weight off their shoulders.

    Abid Patel.

    “As someone who thrived from having in person connections and networking opportunities, lockdown hit me hard. Staffroom really helped to keep those connections going and has developed into such a lovely safe space to talk and connect with others.” – Abid Patel, London, UK

    We varied the tone of the sessions depending on the needs of the attendees. In the first few months, we shared our lockdown situations and our different experiences across the world. We could share advice and tips, as well as best practice for delivering content and things that had gone terribly wrong since switching to remote teaching. Or we’d discuss food in different countries around the world (did you know that in Australia, fish and chips is made from shark?) or joke about whether Vegemite was actually an edible product (it’s ok, I tried it live on camera during one Staffroom). Other days, we would discuss how difficult we were finding teaching, isolation or life in general during a pandemic.

    An honest environment

    One of the things that people continuously mentioned was that Staffroom was a safe place where they felt they could share, be listened to, and be understood. We made it clear that no one had to speak unless they wanted to. I made a point of always being completely honest about my own mental health. As a person who had suffered from depression and anxiety in the past, it was no surprise to me when I was diagnosed with both near the end of 2020, and I was fortunate enough to get virtual therapy. I shared my story with the group, which allowed attendees to feel more comfortable being open and talking about their own struggles, in some cases leading to their own diagnosis and getting much-needed support.

    Frederick Ballew.

    “Staffroom has been the best ‘out of my comfort zone’ leap that I have ever taken. I have met educators from all over the world and learned that there are more things that unite us than divide us in this world of education.” – Frederick Ballew, Minnesota, USA

    People would join Staffroom to share new jobs, engagements, even cross-country moves, but equally they would join after losing a loved one or hearing of a pupil sick in hospital. Staffroom became a safe haven for teachers, coaches, IT directors, and pretty much anyone involved in technology within education. It is a place where we could bond over shared experience, share a joke, ask questions, get ideas, and even plan our futures.

    Do not underestimate the power of connections, and of sharing your story.

    Cat Lamin

    Alongside Staffroom, I also built a website to allow teachers to share their mental health stories and to feel a little less alone (mentalhealthineducation.com). I continue to host regular Staffrooms, although less frequently. 18 months ago, we needed a chance to talk three times a week, but now we meet two or three times a month instead. You can find current Staffroom dates at www.globalgeg.org/events. If you take one thing away from this article, however, it is this: do not underestimate the power of connections, and of sharing your story.

    Cat Lamin is a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, CAS Master Teacher, and Google Certified Innovator who works as a freelance trainer and coach, supporting schools with digital strategy and enabling educators to use technology more effectively. For running this regular mental health staffroom, she was awarded a Mental Health Champion Award from Edufuturist.

    Share your thoughts about Hello World with me!

    Your insights are invaluable to help us make Hello World as useful as it can be for computing educators around the globe. Hello World is a magazine for educators from educators — so if you are interested in having a 20-minute chat with me about what you like about the magazine, and what you would like to change, then please sign up here. I look forward to speaking with you.

    Download Hello World for free

    The brand-new issue of our free Hello World magazine for computing educators focuses on all things health and well-being.

    Cover of issue 17 of Hello World.

    It is full of inspiring stories and practical ideas for teaching your learners about computing in this context, and supporting them to use digital technologies in beneficial ways.

    Download the new issue of Hello World for free today:

    To never miss a new issue, you can subscribe to Hello World for free. Also check out the first-ever special edition of Hello World, The Big Book of Pedagogy. It focuses on approaches to teaching computing in the classroom, and you can download the special edition for free.

    Wherever you are in the world, you can listen to our Hello World podcast too! Each episode, we explore a new topic with some of the computing educators who’ve written for the magazine.

    Website: LINK

  • Hello World’s first-ever special edition is here!

    Hello World’s first-ever special edition is here!

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Hello World, our free magazine for computing and digital making educators, has just published its very first special edition: The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy!

    “When I started to peruse the draft for The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, I was simply stunned.”

    Monica McGill, founder & CEO of CSEDResearch.org

    Cover of The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.

    This special edition focuses on practical approaches to teaching computing in the classroom, and includes some of our favourite pedagogically themed articles from previous issues of Hello World, as well as a few never-seen-before pieces. It is structured around twelve pedagogical principles, first developed by us as part of our work related to the National Centre for Computing Education in England. These twelve principles are based on up-to-date research around the best ways of approaching the teaching and learning of computing.

    A girl doing a physical computing project with Raspberry Pi hardware.

    Grounded in research and practice

    Computing education is still relatively new, and it’s a field that’s constantly changing and adapting. Despite leaving school less than ten years ago, I remember my days in the computer lab being limited to learning about how to add animations on PowerPoints and trying out basic Excel formulas (and yes, there was still the odd mouse with a ball knocking about!).

    A tweet praising The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.
    The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy — a big hit with educators!

    Computing education research is even younger, and we are proud to be an important part of this growing space. As an organisation, we engage in rigorous original research around computing education and learning for young people, and we share all of our research work through blogs, reports, research seminars, and academic publications. We’re particularly proud to have partnered with the University of Cambridge to establish the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre. 

    12 principles of computing pedagogy: lead with concepts; structure lessons; make concrete; unplug, unpack, repack; work together; read and explore code first; foster program comprehension; model everything; challenge misconceptions; create projects; get hands-on; add variety.
    Our special edition of Hello World is organised around twelve pedagogical principles.

    The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy represents another way in which we bring research and practice to computing educators in an accessible and engaging way. The book aims to be an educator’s companion to learning about tried and tested approaches to teaching computing.

    A tweet praising The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.
    The perfect morning read for computing educators.

    It includes articles on techniques for fostering program comprehension, advice for bringing physical computing to your classroom, and introductions to frameworks for structuring your computing lessons. As with all Hello World content, we’re bridging the gap between research and practice by giving you accessible chunks of research, followed by stories of trusty educators who have tried out the approaches in their classroom or educational space.

    A tweet praising The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.
    Teachers are jumping for joy at this special edition.

    Monica McGill, founder and CEO of CSEDResearch.org, says about Hello World’s latest offering, “When I started to peruse the draft for The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, I was simply stunned. I found the ready-to-consume content to be solidly based on research evidence and tried-and-true best practices from teachers themselves. This resource provides valuable insights into introducing computing to students via unplugged activities, integrating the Predict–Run–Investigate–Modify–Make (PRIMM) pedagogical model, and introducing physical devices for computing — all written in a way that teachers can adopt and use in their own classrooms.”

    We’ve been thrilled to see the reaction of educators to this special edition, with many teachers already using it as a reference guide and for a spot of CPD. Why not join them and download it for free today?

    Subscribe now to get each new Hello World — whether regular issue or special edition — straight to your digital inbox, for free! And if you’re based in the UK and do paid or unpaid work in education, you can subscribe for free print issues.

    PS Have you listened to our Hello World podcast yet? A new episode has just come out, and it’s great! Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

    Website: LINK

  • Inspiring learners about computing through health and well-being projects | Hello World #17

    Inspiring learners about computing through health and well-being projects | Hello World #17

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Your brand-new issue of the free Hello World magazine for computing educators focuses on all things health and well-being, featuring useful tools for educators, great ideas for schools, and inspiring projects, ideas, and resources from teachers around the world!

    Cover of issue 17 of Hello World.

    One such project was created by the students of James Abela, Head of Computing at Garden International School in Kuala Lumpur, Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, founder of the South East Asian Computer Science Teachers Association, and author of The Gamified Classroom:

    Protecting children from breathing hazardous air

    In 2018, Indonesia burned approximately 529,000 hectares of land. That’s an area more than three times the size of Greater London, or almost the size of Brunei. With so much forest being burned, the whole region felt the effects of the pollution. Schools frequently had to ban outdoor play and PE lessons, and on some days schools were closed completely. Many schools in the region had an on-site CO2 detector to know when pollution was bad, but by the time the message could get out, children had already been breathing in the polluted air for several minutes.

    A forest fire.
    The air pollution from a forest fire gets dispersed by winds and can spread way beyond the area of the fire.

    My Year 12 students (aged 16–17) followed the news and weather forecasts intently, and we all started to see how the winds from Singapore and Sumatra were sending pollution to us in Kuala Lumpur. We also realised that if we had measurements from around the city, we might have some visibility as to when pollution was likely to affect our school.

    Making room for student-led projects

    I’ve always encouraged my students to do their own projects, because it gives programming tasks meaning and creates something that they can be genuinely proud of. The other benefit is that it is something to talk about in university essays and interviews, especially as they often need to do extensive research to solve the problems central to their projects.

    This project was […] a genuine passion project in every sense of the word.

    James Abela

    This project was much more than this: it was a genuine passion project in every sense of the word. Three of my students approached me with the idea of tracking CO2 to give schools a better idea of when there was pollution and which way it was going. They had had some experience of using Raspberry Pi computers, and knew that it was possible to use them to make weather stations, and that the latest versions had wireless LAN capability that they could use. I agreed to support them during allocated programming time, and to help them reach out to other schools.

    Circuit design of the CO2 sensor using just Raspberry Pi, designed on circuito.io

    I was able to offer students support with this project because I flip quite a lot of the theory in my class. Flipped learning is a teaching approach in which some direct instruction, for example reading articles or watching specific videos, is done at home. This enables more class time to be used to answer questions, work through higher-order tasks, or do group work, and it creates more supervised coding time.

    I was able to offer students support with this project because I flip quite a lot of the theory in my class.

    James Abela

    I initially started doing this because when I set coding challenges for homework, I often had students who confessed they spent all night trying to solve it, only for me to glance at the code and notice a missing colon or indentation issue. I began flipping the less difficult theory for students to do as homework, to create more programming time in class where we could resolve issues more quickly. This then evolved into a system where students could work much more at their own pace and eventually led to a point at which older students could, in effect, learn through their own projects, such as the pollution monitor.

    Building the pollution monitor

    The students started by looking at existing weather station projects — for example, there is an excellent tutorial on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s projects site. Students discovered that wind data is relatively easy to get over a larger area, but the key component would be something to measure CO2. […]

    Check out issue 17 of Hello World to read the rest of James’s article and find out all the details about the hardware and software his students used for this passion project. He says:

    This project really helped these students to decide whether they enjoyed the hardware side of computing, and solving real-world issues really encouraged them to see computing as a practical subject. This is a message that has really resonated with other students, and we’ve since doubled the number of students taking A level computer science.

    James Abela

    Download the new Hello World for free!

    Issue 17 of Hello World is bursting with inspiring ideas for teaching your learners about computing in the context of health and well-being. And you’ll find lots more great content in its 100 pages!

    James’s article is also a wonderful example of an educator empowering their students to build a tech project they care about. You’ll discover more insights and practical tips on making computing relevant to all your learners in the following articles of the new Hello World issue:

    • Inspiring Young People With Contexts They Care About
    • Computing for all: Designing a Culturally Relevant Curriculum
    • Going Back to Basics: Part 2 — a follow-on from issue 16 about how to take beginner digital makers through their first physical computing projects

    Download the new issue of Hello World for free today:

    If you’re an educator based in the UK, you can subscribe to receive each new issue in print completely free!

    We’ve also just released the first-ever special edition of Hello World — The Big Book of Pedagogy — which focuses on approaches to teaching computing in the classroom. Download it for free today.

    And wherever you are in the world, don’t forget to listen to the Hello World podcast, where each episode we dive into a new topic from the magazine with some of the computing educators who’ve written for us.

    Website: LINK

  • How do you use data to solve a real-world problem? | Hello World #16

    How do you use data to solve a real-world problem? | Hello World #16

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    In our brand-new issue of Hello World magazine, editor Gemma Coleman speaks to Kate Farrell from Data Education in Schools to discuss the importance of teaching data to help students navigate the world.

    Cover of Hello World magazine issue 16.
    The big theme of issue 16 of Hello World is data science and data literacy, and on how to teach those topics to your students.

    When I was searching for contributors for this issue of Hello World, a pattern quickly began to emerge: “Data? You want to speak to Kate.” Kate Farrell is director of curriculum development and professional learning on the Data Education in Schools project, part of the Data-Driven Innovation Skills Gateway in Scotland. With the project developing teaching materials, professional development, and even qualifications for schools that want to teach data education to learners aged 3–18, “It’s not the kind of role that fits easily on a business card,” she laughs.

    Kate Farrell.
    Kate Farrell

    The project started in 2019, with the team looking at the Scottish curriculum and mapping out where data could be embedded and how it could be used to support various subjects. “We know that teachers are under stress and won’t be able to deliver extra stuff, so we’re looking to understand how we get better at doing data literacy within the rest of the curriculum,” Kate explains. “How do we provide and support opportunities to look at data in the rest of the curriculum in cool new ways?”

    “We like taking topics that you wouldn’t instantly think are about data science.”

    The team runs monthly seminars drawing upon this theme, to help teachers see its applicability across all subjects. “We like taking topics that you wouldn’t instantly think are about data science. Yes, the sciences, computer science, and maths are where you would expect it, but there are huge amounts of data and data use in geography, music, social studies, and even PE.”

    One example is the DataFit series of lessons for upper primary and lower secondary students, with a mission to simultaneously increase data literacy and physical activity literacy. This includes an introduction to activity-monitoring devices, such as step counters on phones. The lesson has the twin aims of teaching students how monitoring steps or sleep activity can be a positive thing, and also encouraging them to reflect on how they feel about their phone collecting their personal data.

    “A lot of students don’t realise their phone is keeping track of their step count, just by virtue of it sitting in their pockets,” Kate muses. “It’s been interesting to see just how little some learners know about the data that’s being kept and tracked about them.”

    Data Education in Schools ran a similarly themed workshop for students aged 10–11, with a series of events in an imagined Data Town being examined, to investigate how data can impact our lives. The day started by giving each student a cardboard mobile phone on which they could install apps in the form of stickers if they gave the town certain pieces of information about themselves, such as their favourite colour or football team. “Some kids would just install anything, give up any data, because they wanted the stickers – just like many kids will just download any app,” Kate explains. The apps and associated products then developed as they gathered more data, which was then presented back to the students. The purpose was to get students to reflect on how they felt about the products and how they used their data.

    “[…] a series of ‘aha’ moments for students, as they realised what sharing their data meant.”

    Later in the workshop, the mayor of Data Town announced that the town had sold the data to an advertising company who wanted to know people’s favourite colour, and to a gym who wanted to know their fitness data to help them decide the location of a new branch. “This meant a series of ‘aha’ moments for students, as they realised what sharing their data meant. Some of the kids who had opted not to collect the stickers were suddenly very smug!”

    The project keeps a balance in the story it tells about data, with teaching materials encompassing both the risks of data collection and the huge benefits it can bring. “That is our main aim: how can we help learners use data to make their lives and the lives of their communities better — data for social good.” In the Data Town workshop, students also chose to share data with hospitals and researchers, and later found that this had helped them to develop new medicines. “We didn’t just want to send across the message that sharing data is bad. Yes, you can share your data, but be aware who you’re sharing it with, who you’re trusting with it.”

    “How can we help learners use data to make their lives and the lives of their communities better?”

    The materials that Data Education in Schools has produced use a framework called PPDAC: Problem, Plan, Data, Analysis, and Conclusion. This is an established approach to statistical literacy, and using this data problem-solving cycle in a real-world context is a powerful way to engage learners with data topics. “The aim is to empower students with the tools to be campaigning, to be making real-world changes to their lives and their communities using data.”

    Kate gives a simple example of how a class could look at how much plastic their canteen is using, collecting the data on plastic products and then using that data to make the case to reduce their plastic consumption.

    The project has also worked with Scottish exam board SQA to develop a National Progression Award in Data Science; they believe it is the world’s first data science school qualification. The award is aimed at upper secondary students, colleges, and workplaces as an introductory qualification in data science. It carries the same ethos as their materials for younger learners: to help students understand how data is used in society, both negatively and positively, and develop skills to help them make better decisions.

    “We need learners to be able to look at the news, and their social media stream, and question what they’re looking at, or ask: where is the evidence?”

    “I want people to realise that although data science sounds scary, it’s so important to learners’ lives these days. We’ve seen it with the pandemic. Being able to interpret and analyse data is hugely important. We need learners to be able to look at the news, and their social media stream, and question what they’re looking at, or ask: where is the evidence? This is so important, whether or not they go on to become a data scientist… although we’d love it if they did!”

    Subscribe to Hello World for free

    Issue 16 of Hello World focuses on data science and data literacy; it is full of teaching ideas and inspiration to help you and your students use data to make decisions and to make sense of the world. Also in this issue:

    • Key digital skills for young people with SEND
    • Top tips and case studies on how to run a successful computing club
    • Reflections on decolonising the computing curriculum
    • And more

    Subscribe now to get each new digital issue straight to your inbox! And if you’re based in the UK and do paid or unpaid work in education, you can subscribe for free print issues.

    PS Have you listened to our Hello World podcast yet? Episode 4 has just come out, and it’s great! Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

    Website: LINK

  • The all-new Hello World podcast for educators interested in computing and digital making

    The all-new Hello World podcast for educators interested in computing and digital making

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    There is growing momentum behind the idea of putting computing, computer science, and digital making at the heart of modern education. At the Raspberry Pi Foundation, we want to connect with and support computing educators, both inside and outside of the classroom. Hello World magazine, which we started in 2017, is a platform to help educators all over the world to find inspiration, share experiences, and learn from one another. Hello World is free and has proven to be very popular, with subscribers hailing from 172 countries across the globe!

    Hello World, coming directly to your ears now

    The Hello World community has told us that they’re hungry for more content while they wait for each new magazine issue. So to complement the magazine, we’ve launched a brand-new Hello World podcast to meet this need! That means you can now hear directly from the educators who are writing Hello World articles, dive a little deeper, and have some fun along the way.

    Guests Cat Lamin and Neil Rickus speaking to Hello World podcast hosts Carrie Anne Philbin and James Robinson about well-being and technology

    In season 1 of the Hello World podcast, you will:

    • Explore the importance of creativity and passion in computing with PBS Digital Innovator and CUE Rock Star Amanda Haughs
    • Dive into the role of ethics in computing with Isaac Computer Science content creator Diane Dowling
    • Discover how to look after our well-being while teaching with technology, with practical tips from computing educator Cat Lamin and senior lecturer in computing education at the University of Hertfordshire Neil Rickus
    • Get answers to the question “Are these the droids you’re looking for to teach algorithms?” with computing teacher Huzaifah Zainon and advanced skills computing teacher Nicki Cooper

    Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

    Start listening to our first episodes now, wherever you usually get your podcasts. And make sure to subscribe to never miss an episode!

    Let us know if you have a question or a topic you would like us to explore on the Hello World podcast. You can get even more involved by featuring as a guest on a future episode, sharing your top tips and best teaching practices with computing educators around the world. Get in touch with us at podcast@helloworld.cc with your suggestions! 

    Website: LINK

  • Universal design for learning in computing | Hello World #15

    Universal design for learning in computing | Hello World #15

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    In our brand-new issue of Hello World magazine, Hayley Leonard from our team gives a primer on how computing educators can apply the Universal Design for Learning framework in their lessons.

    Cover of issue 15 of Hello World magazine

    Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for considering how tools and resources can be used to reduce barriers and support all learners. Based on findings from neuroscience, it has been developed over the last 30 years by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), a nonprofit education research and development organisation based in the US. UDL is currently used across the globe, with research showing it can be an efficient approach for designing flexible learning environments and accessible content.

    A computing classroom populated by students with diverse genders and ethnicities

    Engaging a wider range of learners is an important issue in computer science, which is often not chosen as an optional subject by girls and those from some minority ethnic groups. Researchers at the Creative Technology Research Lab in the US have been investigating how UDL principles can be applied to computer science, to improve learning and engagement for all students. They have adapted the UDL guidelines to a computer science education context and begun to explore how teachers use the framework in their own practice. The hope is that understanding and adapting how the subject is taught could help to increase the representation of all groups in computing.

    The UDL guidelines help educators anticipate barriers to learning and plan activities to overcome them.

    A scientific approach

    The UDL framework is based on neuroscientific evidence which highlights how different areas or networks in the brain work together to process information during learning. Importantly, there is variation across individuals in how each of these networks functions and how they interact with each other. This means that a traditional approach to teaching, in which a main task is differentiated for certain students with special educational needs, may miss out on the variation in learning between all students across different tasks.

    A stylised representation of the human brain
    The UDL framework is based on neuroscientific evidence

    The UDL guidelines highlight different opportunities to take learner differences into account when planning lessons. The framework is structured according to three main principles, which are directly related to three networks in the brain that play a central role in learning. It encourages educators to plan multiple, flexible methods of engagement in learning (affective networks), representation of the teaching materials (recognition networks), and opportunities for action and expression of what has been learnt (strategic networks).

    The three principles of UDL are each expanded into guidelines and checkpoints that allow educators to identify the different methods of engagement, representation, and expression to be used in a particular lesson. Each principle is also broken down into activities that allow learners to access the learning goals, remain engaged and build on their learning, and begin to internalise the approaches to learning so that they are empowered for the future.

    Examples of UDL guidelines for computer science education from the Creative Technology Research Lab

    Multiple means of engagement Multiple means of representation Multiple means of
    action and expression
    Provide options for recruiting interests
    * Give students choice (software, project, topic)
    * Allow students to make projects relevant to culture and age    		 Provide options for perception
    * Model computing through physical representations as well as through interactive whiteboard/videos etc.
    * Select coding apps and websites that allow adjustment of visual settings (e.g. font size/contrast) and that are compatible with screen readers    		 Provide options for physical action
    * Include CS unplugged activities that show physical relationships of abstract computing concepts
    * Use assistive technology, including a larger or smaller mouse or touchscreen devices
    Provide options for sustaining effort and persistence
    * Utilise pair programming and group work with clearly defined roles
    * Discuss the integral role of perseverance and problem-solving in computer science    		 Provide options for language, mathematical expressions, and symbols
    * Teach and review computing vocabulary (e.g. code, animations, algorithms)
    * Provide reference sheets with images of blocks, or with common syntax when using text    		 Provide options for expression and communication
    * Provide sentence starters or checklists for communicating in order to collaborate, give feedback, and explain work
    * Provide options that include starter code
    Provide options for self-regulation
    * Break up coding activities with opportunities for reflection, such as ‘turn and talk’ or written questions
    * Model different strategies for dealing with frustration appropriately    		 Provide options for comprehension
    * Encourage students to ask questions as comprehension checkpoints
    * Use relevant analogies and make cross-curricular connections explicit    		 Provide options for executive function
    * Embed prompts to stop and plan, test, or debug throughout a lesson or project
    * Demonstrate debugging with think-alouds

    Each principle of the UDL framework is associated with three areas of activity which may be considered when planning lessons or units of work. It will not be the case that each area of activity should be covered in every lesson, and some may prove more important in particular contexts than others. The full table and explanation can be found on the Creative Technology Research Lab website at ctrl.education.ufl.edu/projects/tactic.

    Applying UDL to computer science education

    While an advantage of UDL is that the principles can be applied across different subjects, it is important to think carefully about what activities to address these principles could look like in the case of computer science.

    Maya Israel
    Researcher Maya Israel will speak at our April seminar

    Researchers at the Creative Technology Research Lab, led by Maya Israel, have identified key activities, some of which are presented in the table on the previous page. These guidelines will help educators anticipate potential barriers to learning and plan activities that can overcome them, or adapt activities from those in existing schemes of work, to help engage the widest possible range of students in the lesson.

    UDL in the classroom

    As well as suggesting approaches to applying UDL to computer science education, the research team at the Creative Technology Research Lab has also investigated how teachers are using UDL in practice. Israel and colleagues worked with four novice computer science teachers in US elementary schools to train them in the use of UDL and understand how they applied the framework in their teaching.

    Smiling learners in a computing classroom

    The research found that the teachers were most likely to include in their teaching multiple means of engagement, followed by multiple methods of representation. For example, they all offered choice in their students’ activities and provided materials in different formats (such as oral and visual presentations and demonstrations). They were less likely to provide multiple means of action and expression, and mainly addressed this principle through supporting students in planning work and checking their progress against their goals.

    Although the study included only four teachers, it highlighted the flexibility of the UDL approach in catering for different needs within variable teaching contexts. More research will be needed in future, with larger samples, to understand how successful the approach is in helping a wide range of students to achieve good learning outcomes.

    Find out more about using UDL

    There are numerous resources designed to help teachers learn more about the UDL framework and how to apply it to teaching computing. The CAST website (helloworld.cc/cast) includes an explainer video and the detailed UDL guidelines. The Creative Technology Research Lab website has computing-specific ideas and lesson plans using UDL (helloworld.cc/udl).

    Maya Israel will be presenting her research at our computing education research seminar series, on 20 April 2021. Our seminars are free to attend and open to anyone from anywhere around the world. Find out more about the current seminar series, which focuses on diversity and inclusion in computing education.

    Further reading on UDL

    Subscribe to Hello World for free

    In issue 15 of Hello World, we hear from five teachers who have made the switch to computing from another subject. They tell us about the challenges they have faced, as well as the joys of teaching young people how to create new things with technology. All this and much, much more in the new issue!

    Educators based in the UK can subscribe to receive print copies for free!

    Website: LINK

  • “Tinkering is an equity issue” | Hello World #14

    “Tinkering is an equity issue” | Hello World #14

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    In the brand-new issue of Hello World magazine, Shuchi Grover tells us about the limits of constructionism, the value of formative assessment, and why programming can be a source of both joy and angst.

    • Cover of Hello World issue 14
    • Shuchi Grover

    How much open-ended exploration should there be in computing lessons?

    This is a question at the heart of computer science education and one which Shuchi Grover is delicately diplomatic about in the preface to her new book, Computer Science in K-12: An A-to-Z Handbook on Teaching Programming. The book’s chapters are written by 40 teachers and researchers in computing pedagogy, and Grover openly acknowledges the varying views around discovery-based learning among her diverse range of international authors.

    “I wonder if I want to wade there,” she laughs. “The act of creating a program is in itself an act of creation. So there is hands-on learning quite naturally in the computer science classroom, and mistakes are made quite naturally. There are some things that are so great about computer science education. It lends itself so easily to being hands-on and to celebrating mistakes; debugging is par for the course, and that’s not the way it is in other subjects. The kids can actually develop some very nice mindsets that they can take to other classrooms.”

    Shuchi Grover showing children something on a laptop screen

    Grover is a software engineer by training, turned researcher in computer science education. She holds a PhD in learning sciences and technology design from Stanford University, where she remains a visiting scholar. She explains how the beginning of her research career coincided with the advent of the block-based programming language Scratch, now widely used as an introductory programming language for children.

    “Almost two decades ago, I went to Harvard to study for a master’s called technology innovation and education, and it was around that time that I volunteered for robotics workshops at the MIT Media Lab and MIT Museum. Those were pretty transformative for me: I started after-school clubs and facilitated robotics and digital storytelling clubs. In the early 2000s, I was an educational technology consultant, working with teachers on integrating technology. Then Scratch came out, and I started working with teachers on integrating Scratch into languages, arts, and science, all the things that we are doing today.”

    A girl with her Scratch project
    Student Joyce codes in Scratch at her Code Club in Nunavut

    Do her formative experiences at MIT, the birthplace of constructionist theory of student-centred, discovery-based learning, lead her to lean one way or another in the tinkering versus direct instruction debate? “The learning in informal spaces is, of course, very interest-driven. There is no measurement. Children are invited to a space to spend some time after school and do whatever they feel like. There would be kids who would be chatting away while a couple of them designed a robot, and then they would hand over the robot to some others and say, ‘OK, now you go ahead and program it,’ and there were some kids who would just like to hang about.

    “When it comes to formal education, there needs to be more accountability, you want to do right by every child. You have to be more intentional. I do feel that while tinkering and constructionism was a great way to introduce interest-driven projects for informal learning, and there’s a lot to learn from there and bring to the formal learning context, I don’t think it can only be tinkering.”

    “There needs to be more accountability to do right by every child.”

    “Everybody knows that engagement is very important for learning — and this is something that we are learning more about: it’s not just interest, it’s also culture, communities, and backgrounds — but all of this is to say that there is a personal element to the learning process and so engagement is necessary, but it’s not a sufficient condition. You have to go beyond engagement, to also make sure that they are also engaging with the concepts. You want at some point for students to engage with the concept in a way that reveals what their misconceptions might be, and then they end up learning and understanding these things more deeply.

    “You want a robust foundation — after all, our goal for teaching children anything at school is to build a foundation on which they build their college education and career and anything beyond that. If we take programming as a skill, you want them to have a good understanding of it, and so the personal connections are important, but so is the scaffolding.

    “How much scaffolding needs to be done varies from context to context. Even in the same classroom, children may need different levels of scaffolding. It’s a sweet spot; within a classroom a teacher has to juggle so much. And therein lies the challenge of teaching: 30 kids at a time, and every child is different and every child is unique.

    “It’s an equity issue. Some children don’t have the prior experience that sets them up to tinker constructively. After all, tinkering is meant to be purposeful exploration. And so it becomes an issue of who are you privileging with the pedagogy.”

    She points out that each chapter in her book that comes from a more constructionist viewpoint clearly speaks of the need for scaffolding. And conversely, the chapters that take a more structured approach to computing education include elements of student engagement and children creating their own programs. “Frameworks such as Use-Modify-Create and PRIMM just push that open-ended creation a little farther down, making sure that the initial experiences have more guide rails.”

    Approaches to assessment

    Grover is a senior research scientist at Looking Glass Ventures, which in 2018 received a National Science Foundation grant to create Edfinity, a tool to enable affordable access to high-quality assessments for schools and universities.

    In her book, she argues that asking students to write programs as a means of formative assessment has several pitfalls. It is time-consuming for both students and teachers, scoring is subjective, and it’s difficult to get a picture of how much understanding a student has of their code. Did they get their program to work through trial and error? Did they lift code from another student?

    “Formative assessments that give quick feedback are much better. They focus on aspects of the conceptual learning that you want children to have. Multiple-choice questions on code force both the teachers and the children to experience code reading and code comprehension, which are just so important. Just giving children a snippet of code and saying: ‘What does this do? What will be the value of the variable? How many times will this be executed?’ — it goes down to the idea of code tracing and program comprehension.

    “Research has also shown that anything you do in a classroom, the children take as a signal. Going back to the constructionist thing, when you foreground personal interest, there’s a different kind of environment in the classroom, where they’re able to have a voice, they have agency. That’s one of the good things about constructionism.

    “Formative assessment signals to the student what it is that you’re valuing in the learning process. They don’t always understand what it is that they’re expected to learn in programming. Is the goal creating a program that runs? Or is it something else? And so when you administer these little check-ins, they bring more alignment between a teacher’s goals for the learners and the learners’ understanding of those goals. That alignment is important and it can get lost.”

    Grover will present her latest research into assessment at our research seminar series next Tuesday 6 October — sign up to attend and join the discussion.

    The joy and angst of programming

    The title of Grover’s book, which could be thought to imply that computer science education consists solely of teaching students to program, may cause some raised eyebrows.

    What about building robots or devices that interact with the world, computing topics like binary, or the societal impacts of technology? “I completely agree with the statement and the belief that computer science is not just about programming. I myself have been a proponent of this. But in this book I wanted to focus on programming for a couple of reasons. Programming is a central part of the computer science curriculum, at least here in the US, and it is also the part that teachers struggle with the most.

    “I want to show where children struggle and how to help them.”

    “As topics go, programming carries a lot of joy and angst. There is joy in computing, joy when you get it. But when a teacher is encountering this topic for the first time there is a lot of angst, because they themselves may not be understanding things, and they don’t know what it is that the children are not understanding. And there is this entire body of research on novice programming. There are the concepts, the practices, the pedagogies, and the issues of assessment. So I wanted to give the teachers all of that: everything we know about children and programming, the topics to be learnt, where they struggle, how to help them.”

    Computer Science in K-12: An A-to-Z Handbook on Teaching Programming (reviewed in this issue of Hello World) is edited by Shuchi Grover and available now.

    Hear more from Shuchi Grover, and subscribe to Hello World

    We will host Grover at our next research seminar, Tuesday 6 October at 17:00–18:30 BST, where she will present her work on formative assessment.

    Hello World is our magazine about all things computing education. It is free to download in PDF format, or you can subscribe and we will send you each new issue straight to your home.

    In issue 14 of Hello World, we have gathered some inspiring stories to help your learners connect with nature. From counting penguins in Antarctica to orienteering with a GPS twist, great things can happen when young people get creative with technology outdoors. You’ll find all this and more in the new issue!

    Educators based in the UK can subscribe to receive print copies for free!

    Website: LINK

  • What are the effects of the pandemic on education? | Hello World #13

    What are the effects of the pandemic on education? | Hello World #13

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    How has computing education changed over the last few months? And how will the coronavirus pandemic affect education in the long term? In the introduction to our newest issue of Hello World, our CEO Philip Colligan reflects on the incredible work of front-line educators, and on the challenges educators and students will face.

    Hello World issue 13 front cover

    In just a few short weeks, the coronavirus pandemic has had a profound impact on every aspect of life, not least education. With 1.2 billion young people affected by the closure of schools, teachers have joined health and care workers, and the many others, who are on the front line of the fight against the virus.

    As chair of governors at a state school here in Cambridge, I’ve seen first-hand the immense pressure that schools and teachers are under. The abrupt transition to emergency remote teaching, caring for the most vulnerable students, supporting families who are experiencing the health and economic devastation wrought by the virus, and doing all of this while looking after themselves and their loved ones. The word ‘heroic’ doesn’t feel nearly sufficient to describe the efforts of teachers all over the world.

    At the Raspberry Pi Foundation, we wanted to learn about how different schools have responded, what’s working, what the challenges are, and crucially, what is happening to computing education. We spoke to teachers at primary schools, secondary schools, and further education colleges. Most were based in the UK, with a few in India and the US.

    Even from this small collection of interviews, we saw incredible innovation and resilience, coupled with a determination to ensure that all young people could continue learning during the lockdown.

    Most of the teachers that we spoke to were specialists in computing. Their expertise with technology has put them centre-stage, with many stepping into leadership roles, supporting the rapid roll-out of online learning, and providing invaluable support to colleagues and students alike. We hope that this leads to schools giving greater priority to computing education. Digital technologies are keeping the world connected and working. Equipping all young people with the ability to harness the power of computing has never been more vital.

    We’ve also seen profound challenges. The digital divide has never been more apparent. Far too many young people lack access to a computer for learning at home. This is a problem that can be fixed at a cost that is trivial compared to the long-term economic impact of the educational disadvantage that it causes.

    But we’re also hearing first-hand how educational disadvantage isn’t just about access to technology. Many families are struggling to support home learning, whether because of the condition of their housing, their work or caring responsibilities, or the struggle to put food on the table. Teachers have responded compassionately, offering practical support where it’s needed most, and planning now for how they will help students catch up when schools reopen.

    We know that school closures disproportionately impact the most disadvantaged students. If we are going to reduce the long-term economic and social impact of the virus, there needs to be a huge global effort to invest in addressing the educational impact that it has caused.

    As we start to figure out what a post-lockdown world might look like, the only thing that feels certain is we are facing a long period of disruption to formal education. We need to find new ways to combine online learning, classroom and remote teaching, mentoring, and non-formal learning experiences, to ensure that all young people, whatever their backgrounds, are able to thrive and fulfil their potential. The stories we’ve heard from these educators give me hope that we can, but they will need the support of government, industry, and nonprofits. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is committed to playing our part.

    Get your free copy today!

    Besides the Learning in lockdown feature, issue 13 of Hello World contains articles and opinion pieces on managing screen time, safeguarding in online lessons, and how the education landscape is shifting at an unprecedented rate.

    We’ve also collected together some of the best free resources for online learning, and we share fantastic activities in our resources section.

    Download your free copy to read about all this and more!

    And if you’re an educator in the UK, you can take out a free subscription to receive print copies of Hello World.

    Website: LINK

  • The Raspberry Pi Press store is looking mighty fine

    The Raspberry Pi Press store is looking mighty fine

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Eagle-eyed Raspberry Pi Press fans might have noticed some changes over the past few months to the look and feel of our website. Today we’re pleased to unveil a new look for the Raspberry Pi Press website and its online store.

    Did you know?

    Raspberry Pi Press is the publishing imprint of Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd, which is part of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK-based charity that does loads of cool stuff with computers and computer education.

    Did you also know?

    Raspberry Pi Press publishes five monthly magazines: The MagPi, HackSpace Magazine, Wireframe, Custom PC, and Digital SLR Photography. It also produces a plethora of project books and gorgeous hardback beauties, such as retro gamers’ delight Code the Classics, as well as Hello World, the computing and digital making magazine for educators! Phew!

    And did you also, also know?

    The Raspberry Pi Press online store ships around the globe, with copies of our publications making their way to nearly every single continent on planet earth. Antarctica, we’re looking at you, kid.

    It’s upgrade time!

    With all this exciting work going on, it seemed only fair that Raspberry Pi Press should get itself a brand new look. We hope you’ll enjoy skimming the sparkling shelves of our online newsagents and bookshop.

    Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little tsundoku

    You can pick up all the latest issues of your favourite magazines or treat yourself to a book or three, and you can also subscribe to all our publications with ease. We’ve even added a few new payment options to boot.

    New delivery options

    We’ve made a few changes to our shipping options, with additional choices for some regions to make sure that you can easily track your purchases and receive timely and reliable deliveries, even if you’re a long way from the Raspberry Pi Press printshop.

    Customers in the UK, the EU, North America, Australia, and New Zealand won’t see any changes to delivery options. We continue to work to make sure we’re offering the best price and service we can for everyone, no matter where you are.

    Have a look and see what you think!

    So hop on over to the new and improved Raspberry Pi Press website to see the changes for yourself. And if you have any feedback, feel free to drop Oli and the team an email at [email protected].

    Website: LINK

  • Using Raspberry Pi for deeper learning in education

    Using Raspberry Pi for deeper learning in education

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    Using deeper learning as a framework for transformative educational experiences, Brent Richardson outlines the case for a pedagogical approach that challenges students using a Raspberry Pi. From the latest issue of Hello World magazine — out today!

    A benefit of completing school and entering the workforce is being able to kiss standardised tests goodbye. That is, if you don’t count those occasional ‘prove you watched the webinar’ quizzes some supervisors require.

    In the real world, assessments often happen on the fly and are based on each employee’s ability to successfully complete tasks and solve problems. It is often obvious to an employer when their staff members are unprepared.

    Formal education continues to focus on accountability tools that measure base-level proficiencies instead of more complex skills like problem-solving and communication.

    One of the main reasons the U.S. education system is criticised for its reliance on standardised tests is that this method of assessing a student’s comprehension of a subject can hinder their ability to transfer knowledge from an existing situation to a new situation. The effect leaves students ill-prepared for higher education and the workforce.

    A study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found a significant gap between how students felt about their abilities and their employer’s observations. In seven out of eight categories, students rated their skills much higher than their prospective employers had.

    Some people believe that this gap continues to widen because teaching within the confines of a standardised test encourages teachers to narrow their instruction. The focus becomes preparing students with a limited scope of learning that is beneficial for testing.

    With this approach to learning, it is possible that students can excel at test-taking and still struggle with applying knowledge in new ways. Educators need to have the support to not only prepare students for tests but also to develop ways that will help their students connect to the material in a meaningful manner.

    In an effort to boost the U.S. education system’s ability to increase the knowledge and skills of students, many private corporations and nonprofits directly support public education. In 2010, the Hewlett Foundation went so far as to develop a framework called ‘deeper learning’ to help guide its education partners in preparing learners for success.

    The principles of deeper learning

    Deeper learning focuses on six key competencies:

      1. Master core academic content
      2. Think critically and solve
        complex problems
      3. Work collaboratively
      4. Communicate effectively
      5. Learn how to learn
      6. Develop academic mindsets

    This framework ensures that learners are active participants in their education. Students are immersed in a challenging curriculum that requires them to seek out and acquire new information, apply what they have learned, and build upon that to create new knowledge.

    While deeper learning experiences are important for all students, research shows that schools that engage students from low-income families and students of colour in deeper learning have stronger academic outcomes, better attendance and behaviour, and lower dropout rates. This results in higher graduation rates, and higher rates
    of college attendance and perseverance than comparison schools serving similar students. This pedagogical approach is one we strive to embed in all our work at Fab Lab Houston.

    A deeper learning timelapse project

    The importance of deeper learning was undeniable when a group of students I worked with in Houston built a solar-powered time-lapse camera. Through this collaborative project, we quickly found ourselves moving beyond classroom pedagogy to a ‘hero’s journey’ — where students’ learning paths echo a centuries-old narrative arc in which a protagonist goes on an adventure, makes new friends, encounters roadblocks, overcomes adversity, and returns home a changed person.

    In this spirit, we challenged the students with a simple objective: ‘Make a device to document the construction of Fab Lab Houston’. In just one sentence, participants understood enough to know where the finish line was without being told exactly how to get there. This shift in approach pushed students to ask questions as they attempted to understand constraints and potential approaches.

    Students shared ideas ranging from drone video to photography robots. Together everyone began to break down these big ideas into smaller parts and better define the project we would tackle together. To my surprise, even the students that typically refused to do most things were excited to poke holes in unrealistic ideas. It was decided, among other things, that drones would be too expensive, robots might not be waterproof, and time was always a concern.

    The decision was made to move forward with the stationary time-lapse camera, because although the students didn’t know how to accomplish all the aspects of the project, they could at least understand the project enough to break it down into doable parts and develop a ballpark budget. Students formed three teams and picked one aspect of the project to tackle. The three subgroups focused on taking photos and converting them to video, developing a remote power solution, and building weatherproof housing.

    A group of students found sample code for Raspberry Pi that could be repurposed to take photos and store them sequentially on a USB drive. After quick success, a few ambitious learners started working to automate the image post-processing into video. Eventually, after attempting multiple ways to program the computer to dynamically turn images into video, one team member discovered a new approach: since the photos were stored with a sequential numbering system, thousands of photos could be loaded into Adobe Premiere Pro straight off the USB with the ‘Automate to Sequence’ tool in Premiere.

    A great deal of time was spent measuring power consumption and calculating solar panel and battery size. Since the project would be placed on a pole in the middle of a construction site for six months, the students were challenged with making their solar-powered time-lapse camera as efficient as possible.

    Waking the device after it was put into sleep mode proved to be more difficult than anticipated, so a hardware solution was tested. The Raspberry Pi computer was programmed to boot up when receiving power, take a picture, and then shut itself down. With the Raspberry Pi safely shut down, a timer relay cut power for ten minutes before returning power and starting the cycle again.

    Finally, a waterproof container had to be built to house the electronics and battery. To avoid overcomplicating the process, the group sourced a plastic weatherproof ammunition storage box to modify. Students operated a 3D printer to create custom parts for the box.

    After cutting a hole for the camera, a small piece of glass was attached to a 3D-printed hood, ensuring no water entered the box. On the rear of the box, they printed a part to hold and seal the cable from the solar panel where it entered the box. It only took a few sessions before the group produced a functioning prototype. The project was then placed outside for a day to test the capability of the device.

    The test appeared successful when the students checked the USB drive. The drive was full of high-quality images captured every ten minutes. When the drive was connected back to Raspberry Pi, a student noticed that all the parts inside the case moved. The high temperature on the day of the test had melted the glue used to attach everything. This unexpected problem challenged students to research a better alternative and reattach the pieces.

    Once the students felt confident in their device’s functionality, it was handed over to the construction crew, who installed the camera on a twenty-foot pole. The installation went smoothly and the students anxiously waited to see the results.

    Less than a week after the camera went up, Houston was hit hard with the rains brought on by hurricane Harvey. The group was nervous to see whether the project they had constructed would survive. However, when they saw that their camera had survived and was working, they felt a great sense of pride.

    They recognised that it was the collaborative effort of the group to problem-solve possible challenges that allowed their camera to not only survive but to capture a spectacular series of photos showing the impact of the hurricane in the location it was placed.

    BakerRipleyTimeLapse2

    This is “BakerRipleyTimeLapse2” by Brent Richardson on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

    A worthwhile risk

    Overcoming many hiccups throughout the project was a great illustration of how the students learned how to learn and
    to develop an academic mindset; a setback that at the beginning of the project might have seemed insurmountable was laughable in the end.

    Throughout my experience as a classroom teacher, a museum educator, and now a director of a digital makerspace, I’ve seen countless students struggle to understand the relevance of learning, and this has led me to develop a strong desire to expand the use of deeper learning.

    Sometimes it feels like a risk to facilitate learning rather than impart knowledge, but seeing a student’s development into a changed person, ready to help someone else learn, makes it worth the effort. Let’s challenge ourselves as educators to help students acquire knowledge and use it.

    Get your FREE copy of Hello World today

    Issue 12 of Hello World is available now as a FREE PDF download. UK-based educators can also subscribe to receive Hello World directly to their door in all its shiny printed goodness. Visit the Hello World website for more information.

    Website: LINK

  • Exploring the interface of ecology, mathematics, and digital making | Hello World #11

    Exploring the interface of ecology, mathematics, and digital making | Hello World #11

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    In Hello World issue 11, Pen Holland and Sarah Wyse discuss how educators and students can get closer to the natural world while honing maths and computing skills. Using a Raspberry Pi, you too can join this citizen science collaboration.

    Connectedness to nature as measured by the Nature Connection Index is currently the lowest in young people aged 16-24, with everyone aged 8-34 reporting lower connectedness, compared to the 35+ age groups.

    Although there is some positive correlation between individuals living in the same households, parents are now less likely to raise their children where they grew up themselves, and as such they may be less knowledgeable about local species. Connecting with nature does not have to mean a trip out into the wilds: urban ecology is increasingly popular in research, and even the most determined of city dwellers is likely to pass a municipal tree or two during their day.

    The positive association between connectedness to nature and wellbeing should encourage us all to appreciate and explore our local environments. However, being at one with the natural world doesn’t preclude an abundance of enjoyable science and technology. For example, the authors’ overriding memory of GCSE maths involves triangles – a lot of triangles – combined with frequent musings over how this could possibly ever be useful in the real world. Fast forward 20 years, and we’ve spent more time than we’d like to count surrounded by triangles, chanting ‘SOH CAH TOA’ in the name of ecology.

    Calculating the terminal velocity of winged seeds

    The Seed Eater project arose from research into how fast winged seeds (samaras) fall, in order to predict how far they might travel across a landscape, and hence understand how quickly populations of invasive trees might spread. In the past, ecologists have measured the terminal velocity of seeds using stopwatches and lasers, but stopwatches are inaccurate, and lasers are expensive.

    Timestamped images in which the seed appears tell us the time taken for it to fall through the field of view (A). The distance at which the seed lands from the wall (B) and the viewing angle of the camera (C) are used to calculate distance travelled by the seed while in view. Finally, the speed at which the seed is travelling can be calculated as distance/time.

    Enter stage left, Pieter the Seed Eater; a low-cost device fitted with a Raspberry Pi computer and camera that captures a sequence of images, assesses which timestamped images contain a falling seed, and then calculates how far the seed fell, and hence how fast it was travelling.

    Pieter the Seed Eater was introduced in issue 10 of Hello World, and if you missed that, you can download a free PDF copy of the magazine from the website.

    Pieter the Seed Eater was designed to measure the terminal velocity of pine (Pinus species) seeds from invasive trees in New Zealand, with a particular interest in the variation in falling speeds among seeds from the same cones, between different cones on the same tree, between trees in the same population, and between populations across the landscape. His diet is now expanding to take in a whole range of pine species, but there are many other species of tree around the world that also have winged seeds, in a variety of fascinating shapes.

    Introducing teaching resources

    To help emphasise the connections between nature and STEM, and because Pieter doesn’t have time to eat all the seeds, we are making cross-curricular resources available to support teaching activities. These range from tree identification and seed collection, through seed dispersal experiments and Seed Eater engineering, to terminal velocity measurements and understanding population spread.

    There are several ways to measure tree height, which can be a stimulating discussion and activity. Fire arrows attached to string over high branches, go exploring on Google street view, or use trigonometry, making measurements in a variety of simple or sophisticated ways. Are they all equally accurate? Would they all work on isolated trees and in a dense forest?

    These draw on links from elsewhere (for example, the tree identification keys provided by the Natural History Museum, and helicopter seed templates hosted by STEM Learning UK), as well as new material designed specifically for Pieter the Seed Eater, and more general cross-curricular activities related to ecology. In addition, participants can contribute their data to an online database and explore questions about their data using visualisation tools for dispersal equations and population spread.

    The teaching resources fall into four main categories:

    • Neighbourhood trees
    • Dispersal
    • Terminal velocity
    • Population spread

    Each section contains background information, suggested activities for groups and individuals, data recording sheets, and stretch activities for students to carry out in class or at home. The resources are provided as Google slides under a Creative Commons license so that you can edit and adapt them for your own educational needs, with links to the National Curriculum highlighted throughout (thanks to Mary Howell, professional development leader at STEM Learning UK) and interactive graphics hosted online to help understand some of the concepts and equations more easily. Python code for the Seed Eater can be downloaded or written from scratch (or in Scratch!), so that you can set up the device or let students engineer it from first principles. It will need some calibration, but that is all part of the learning experience, and the resources come with some troubleshooting ideas to get started.

    How can you join in?

    Relevant resources are available here. These are currently aimed at Key Stage 3 (age 11-14) and 4 (14-16), but will be developed and extended as time passes, feedback is incorporated, and new requests are made.

    Ultimately, we would like to reach Key Stage 1 to sixth form and beyond, and develop the project into a citizen science collaboration in which people around the world share information about their local trees and seeds with the global community.

    We welcome feedback and engagement with the project from anyone who is interested in taking part – get in touch via Twitter or email [email protected]

    Get your FREE copy of Hello World today

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