Portrait of smart schoolboy typing on laptop with classmates on background
Submit an article to ICT in Practice Summer 2016 issue and be part of our educational technology community. The deadline for submitting your article is June 30th.
Important points
Make sure that it is your work
It is written in a simple language away from jargon.
It is related to ICT in education, nothing else…
It is at least 2 A4 and max 4 A4 pages long.
Send your articles to chris.carter@concordiashanghai.org with the subject line ‘submit an article’.
Click here to download Issue 14
by Fereshteh Forough Founder and CEO, codetoinspire.org
What happens if you lock 50 percent of a society’s population at home? During the Taliban regime, women had almost zero percent participation in social activities, education and in the workforce. Women were not allowed to leave home without a male companion. I was born as an Afghan refugee in Iran during the USSR invasion to Afghanistan. One year after the fall of Taliban, my family and I moved to Afghanistan. I got my Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Herat University and Master’s degree from Technical University of Berlin in Germany.
Looking back to Afghanistan during the Taliban regime in 2001, there were only fewer than a million students in Afghanistan with almost zero percent of girls. Currently there are more than 8.3 million students across Afghanistan which 40 percent of them are girls .
Considering Afghanistan as a country with an old history, there are still cultural, traditional and social issues which prevent women to communicate and grow within the community. I was teaching as a professor in Herat Computer Science faculty for couple of years. To be a female professor, student or entrepreneur in Computer Science field for an Afghan woman has its own unique challenges and obstacles considering it as a global matter for women around the world as well.
Imagine you are a female student graduating having studied Computer Science in Afghanistan, you are ready to join the workforce and apply what you have learned, although there are some major factors which makes it very difficult to pursue what you want.
• Safety and security barriers: despite the positive signs of improvement in Afghanistan, still it has been suffering from ongoing conflict and war zones in certain areas that limit women traveling by ground. Majority of families prefer that women travel by plane. Although it is the safest and fastest option it’s also costly and not a lot of family can afford to purchase the tickets. If a woman finds a job offer outside of her hometown, not a lot of families let their daughters travel and live alone in another another city considering the security issue.
• Social and Cultural concerns: many families are cautious about their daughter’s job employment. many of them prefer their daughter to become a teacher, because it is a well respected job in the society and you are getting paid and only deal with women. Therefore, many for graduating students from computer science may become a teachers and won’t be able to use the knowledge they have learned at school in the way they want.
• Women entrepreneurs and tech start ups: If you are an woman in Afghanistan and established your tech startup, considering the male dominated market(which is a global issue too), there is a considerable social issue that you have to deal with it. Based on my personal experience when you are approaching customers who are mainly men and explain how you can help them with your tech skills, either by designing website, developing Information Management Systems or any thing they are looking for, most of the time they don’t believe in a women’s skills or abilities. They respond, “We don’t think women can do that!”
The above reasons and many others helped me to establish Code to Inspire, a 501(c)3 nonprofit in January, 2015. CTI’s mission is to educate, inspire and empower women in Afghanistan by teaching them how to code and by improving their technical literacy so they can find future internships and jobs opportunities online.
We established the first coding school for girls in Afghanistan in November 2015 at Herat which is located in Western part of Afghanistan. It is a safe and secure educational environment where we host 50 girls from high school daily. All the girls studied computer science. CTI provides a one year educational curriculum for girls which is free of charge. We are teaching students from high school how to design websites, code in HTML, CSS and Javascript, and how to use social media(e.g. Twitter and Linkedin) to engage a larger audience and make a professional profile. Once we involve high school girls in the tech world, we encourage them to select computer science as their major when they are entering college to decrease the gender gap.
Our targets are girls who are currently studying computer science or girls who have recently graduated.With the computer science students, we are developing mobile applications. The students will find a real issue in society and try to develop an App solution for that, with a real use case. Not only will they learn teamwork and how to make a product from scratch to the final stage but there are will be social impact issues as well. Imagine the guy who didn’t believe in women’s technical skills, all of a sudden using an App that was developed and designed by women and is actually is solving an issue. When he starts using app, his act will be empowering women too. One of the most important challenges that we are going to tackle with CTI, is to find internships and job opportunities for our female students online and to help them earn an income. Thanks to recent technological achievements, the only thing you need to connect to the whole world faster, easier, without geographical/physical boundary is a computer and Internet connection.
The students can use CTI’s facility and do their jobs online, therefore, the families will not be worried about traveling and their daughter’s safety.
I strongly believe that education is the key for women empowerment which includes financial inclusion of women in a country’s economy. More educated women leads to less domestic violence, a decrease in early marriages and less of a maternal mortality rate.
Educated mothers, make the next generation more willing to learn and and this will make more peace and less war.
ISSUE 13
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Hatırlarsanız 5 Aralık`da Ankara`da FatihETZ konferansında yapmış olduğum sunumda İngıltere´de her okulda bir teknoloji koordinatörü olduğunu söylemiştim. Tabiki hem vakit yetersizliğinden, hem de heyecandan bunun sebepleri hakkında detaylı bilgi verme fırsatım olmadı. Öncelikle tekrar vurgulayalımki teknoloji koordinatörlerinin teknisyenlerle bir alakası yoktur. Zaman zaman diğer öğretmenlere teknik konularda yardımcı olduğumuz doğrudur, ancak bu sadece vaktimiz olduğu zaman mümkün. Büyük okullarda zaten tam zamanlı bir teknisyen vardır, küçük okullarda özel firmalardan haftada genellikle 2 gün görev yapacak elemanlara iş verirler.
Peki, eğitim teknolojileri koordinatörlerinin görevi nedir?
Ben sizlerle ilkokullarda çalışırken iş sözleşmemde yazılı olan listeyi paylaşmak isterim. Bu listeye gore ICT koordinatörünün görevleri:
Ben Wilbury İlköğretim okulunda ilk işe başladığım zaman, okul müdüremiz ve iş yöneticimiz beni toplantıya davet ettiler. Bana ilk sordukları soru vizyonumun ne olduğu idi. Ben okulda biraz vakit harcamadan ve okulun eğitime olan bakış açısını anlamadan bu soruya cevap veremiyeceğimi söyledim. Okul müdüremiz benimle aynı fikirde idi. Bana araştırma yapıp, okul yönetim kuruluna sunmak üzere 4 hafta içerisinde bir rapor hazırlamamı tavsiye ettiler.
Önce teknisyenle okuldaki teknolojik altyapı, araç ve gereçler üzerine sohbet ettik. Daha sonra derslere katılıp öğretmen ve öğrencileri gözlemleyip, görüşlerini sordum. Son olarak da her branş ders yöneticisi ile teknoloji müfredatı ile kendi alanları arasındaki bağlantıyı nasıl algıladıkları üzerine konuştuk. Bütün bu bilgiler benim okulun 1 ve 3 yıllık planlarını hazırlamam için yeterli idi, ancak vizyonumuzu belirlemek için okul yönetileri tarafından öğrencilerin ihtiyaçlarına göre karar verilen hedefleri bilmem şarttı. Bu bilgileri topladıkdan sonra raporumu yazdım. Bu raporda:
Ben bu bilgileri kullanarak hem okul için vizyon raporumu hem de altyapı planımı hazırladım. 2014 yılında üniversiteye geçtigimde okul hem ulusal ve uluslar arası yarışmalarda teknoloji alanında bir çok ödül kazanmıştı hem de İngiltere parlementosu ve eğitim bakanlığı tarafından bu alanda örnek okul olarak seçilmişti. Bu başarının sebebi, sadece aldığımız araç ve gereçler değildi tabiki. Kendi okulumuzun ihtiyacına uygun olarak geliştirdiğimiz disiplinler arası müfredatımız, sürekli öğretmen eğitimi, ailelere bu vizyonda yer vermemiz ve öğrencilere karar verirken danışmamız da bu başarıya katkıda bulunmuştur.
Yıllarca bu görevi yaptıkdan sonra daha iyi anladım ki, bir okulun en etkili eğitim aracı teknoloji değil, öğretmenleridir ve onlara ihtiyaçlarına ve okulun eğitim hedeflerine uygun bir şekilde sürekli eğitimden yararlanma imkanı verilmeli. Ancak bu şekilde okullar bilgi çağının gerektirdiği bilgi ve becerileri öğrencilerine kazandırabilecek bir eğitim programı oluşturabilirier. Teknolojik araç ve gereçlere milyonlar harcanabilir, hatta binlerce içerik de geliştirilebilir. Ancak artık kabul etmeliyiz ki, herkese uyan bir elbise tasarlanamaz, yani eğitimin kişiselleştirilmesi gereklidir . Londra´daki bir çocukla, Londra dışındaki bir çocuğun eğitim ihtiyaçları aynı değildir, dolayısıyla kullanılan aktiveteler ve araçlar da farklı olmalıdır. Verimli sonuç alınması için teknolojik araç ve gereçleri her okulun vizyonu doğrultusunda, etkili bir şekilde kullanılmasını planlayıp, gözlemleyecek bu alanda yetişmiş bilgili eğitimcilere ihtiyaç vardır.
İşte bu noktada bilişim öğretmenlerine çok, hem de çok ihtiyacımız var! Eğitimin bilgi çağını yakalaması için gerekli olan vizyonu her okulda tasarlayıp okulları geleceğe taşıyacak eğitim teknolojisi liderlerine çok, hem de çok ihtiyacımız var!
Türkiye´mizin her köşesindeki her okulda bir eğitim teknolojisi koordinatörü görmek dileğiyle…
Not: Umarım Türkçem anlaşılır, eğer yanlış görürseniz lütfen benimle iletişime geçin.
Submit an article to ICT in Practice Winter 2016 issue and be part of our educational technology community. The deadline for submitting your article is December 31st
Important points
Make sure that it is your work
It is written in a simple language away from jargon.
It is related to ICT in education, nothing else…
It is at least 2 A4 and max 4 A4 pages long.
Send your articles to yallsop@msn.com with the subject line ‘submit an article’.
Click here to download the PDF version.
When something is new, or we are teaching outside of our comfort zone it is only natural to keep our lessons ‘safe’ and potentially a bit dull for our students. As teachers are developing their practice in computing education here in the UK, potentially, they could focus on their own subject knowledge and resources rather than creativity in the classroom. Here at Manchester Metropolitan University I wanted to challenge the trainee computing teachers, and their subject mentors in school, to add a sense of innovation and fun to their classrooms. One way to do this was to join in with the #poundlandpedagogy challenge.
The Poundland Pedagogy challenge requires teachers to have a shop and find something that they could use to provide a fresh idea in their classroom. The initiative was originally developed in the UK by Isobella Wallace and you can see lots of ideas on Twitter using #poundlandpedagogy or #poundstorepedagogy. The students here were presented with a range of poundshop items and had to take a ‘lucky dip’ to see what they got. They then had to take their item into school and use it in some way in their computing teaching. They were so creative and have managed to use just about everything from blindfolds to plastic cups. There’s just a giant furry moustache that has us stumped at the moment.
Ideas we have used include clothes pegs and a washing line to place instructions in our algorithm in order, an egg timer to compare the length of time our different sorting algorithms take and string to make different network topologies. We have also used lolly sticks to write pupil names on to choose groups and used a kitchen timer when the interactive whiteboard was otherwise engaged.
In the example below the students are learning about signed integers in binary using sign and magnitude. The student in the pound shop shower cap represents the sign. The pupils loved it and strangely, all wanted a turn to wear the shower cap! You can imagine them all now remembering that for their exams.
In this lesson pupils are programming for a prize. The more complex their code the more chances they have of winning at the end of the lesson in the prize draw. For each feature their code has (in this case IF, ELIF and WHILE) a raffle ticket with their name on it is added to the draw. Pupils are really keen to develop their code to win the prize (today, part of a poundland pen set). The raffle tickets cost (you’ve guessed it!) a pound and last for lots of lessons.
‘Splat mats’, designed to go under toddler high chairs to catch all the mess when they are eating, work wonders in a classroom – no, not for the mess – for writing on with dry wipe markers and using again and again. In this example, the pupils are designing apps for a business. They use the green pens at the start of the lesson to identify what they need to learn during their lesson (journey) and then red pens at the end to identify how far they have come and summarise their progress. A great way of getting reluctant writers to do some planning and evaluating.
These suggestions are by no means exhaustive and I’m sure you will have many more creative ideas of your own. Go and have a browse in your local pound shop (or Euro / Dollar equivalent) and let you imagination run wild. Once you try something, tweet your idea with the hashtag #poundlandpedagogy or #poundstorepedagogy and include us @ICTinPractice too so we can see all the great ideas out there. In the meantime if anyone has an idea what to do with a giant furry moustache that fits on bicycle handlebars – let us know!
This article is written with massive thanks to the Manchester Metropolitan University Computing PGCE students, their pupils and mentors.
This book has been written for primary teacher trainees, in service primary school teachers and teacher support staff to develop their knowledge and understanding of primary computing. The book is also useful for parents and teachers, from any country, to gain an insight into what young children learn, when working with different types of technology, from the Early Years Foundation Stage through to Key Stage 3.
EDITORS
Yasemin Allsop
Yasemin Allsop worked as an ICT Coordinator in primary schools in London for almost 10 years. She is currently employed as Senior Lecturer in Primary Computing and ICT at Roehampton University. She has MA ICT in Education from the London Knowledge Lab, University of London. She is also an MPhil/PhD student, focusing on children’s thinking, learning and metacognition when designing digital games. She published widely in quality journals and presented at conferences. She is the editor of an online magazine called ICT in Practice where educators from around the world share their experiences of using technology in education. More information can be found on her website at www.yaseminallsop.me.uk
Ben Sedman
Ben Sedman is a Senior Lecturer within the Faculty of Education at Manchester Metropolitan University. Previous to this role he taught for 7 year within the Primary sector. Ben currently teaches within the STEM Division at MMU, delivering primary D&T and Computing sessions to trainees and teachers. He has completed his MA in Education, has been involved in a European funded project and helps coordinate the Erasmus Exchange Programme. Ben is interested in a range of creative teaching approaches and enjoys photography. This is his first book. Some of his work can be viewed at www.bensedmanphotography.com
CHAPTERS & AUTHORS
1) What is computing? – Yasemin Allsop
2) Computing in the Early Years – Eleanor Hoskins
3) Tell a story and make a game –Yasemin Allsop
4) Computer science unplugged! – Alessandro Bogliolo
5) Tinkering time: Adventures in 3D designs -Selcuk Ozdemir & Ahmet Celik
6) Film, animation and podcasting: lets get creative! – Ben Sedman
7) Embedding computing in science -Maggie Morrissey
8) Linking mathematics and computing – Sue Pope
9) E-Safety and digital citizenship – Ben Sedman
10) Imagine, write and share: blogs, wikis and – Ben Sedman
11) Transition to Secondary: Mapping Your Skills – Ellie Overland
12) A brief overview of monitoring, evaluation and assessment of computing – Yasemin Allsop
13) Planning and assessment of computing and computational thinking- Mark Dorling and John Woollard
* We would like to thank Susan Adams for her contribution to Chapter 3 with an activity.
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