Higher Education Whisperer: Australian Curriculum Technologies

Showing posts with label Australian Curriculum Technologies. Show all posts

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Technology Courses for Canberra Schools for Comment

The ACT Board of Senior Secondary Studies has released a suite of proposed Technologies courses for comment. These are designed to fit with the Australian Curriculum Information Communication Technology k-10. I had a quick look at "Digital Technologies". What surprised me was that this is essentially the VET program slightly reworked. The VET and school systems use different approaches to education, for example VET students are not awarded grades, they are just "Competent" or "not yet competent". Students can provide evidence of prior learning and then skip some, or all, of the courses completely: is this being implemented in schools? Also it is not clear how the teaching of the topic is undertaken.

There is no "program of learning" provided. That is, what is "competent" is defined, but not how the students get those skills, or how they are assessed. There is a feedback form provided, which appears to suggest that each teacher is expected to plan their own program of learning. If so, it seems very wasteful for every teacher in the ACT to be creating their own bespoke course materials, for a standardized curriculum.

In the VET system, students use standardized, mostly online learning materials. There is no good reason for not doing this in schools, for essentially the same curriculum.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Tablets for Canberra High School Students

Canberra goes to the polls in a few weeks time to elect a local government. If reelected, the governing Labor Party has promised a tablet computer for each of 6,000 Canberra high school students, at a cost of AU $17.2 M, over four years. There are better alternatives.

The tablet proposal works out to about AU $2,800 per student, which appears expensive. There are now folding touchscreen laptops about the size of an A4 pad, for under $500. These are suitable for older students.

However, is issuing standard devices to students educationally useful? There was a previous Australian national program to provide a computer for every high school student and have been laptop and tablet programs for students in other countries. The best known of these programs was the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC). Such programs have not been shown to significantly benefit education and may have done some harm, by diverting resources from other educational initiatives.

An alternative strategy for Canberra would be to ensure that educational resources are available on the range of devices students have at home and school. A small fund could provide for disadvantaged students who cannot afford a $500 device. More could could then be spent on training teachers for the Australian Digital Technologies Curriculum, using the CSER Digital Technologies Courses and the Inspire Center.

Funds could also be used to allow some of Canberra's teachers to work on new materials for both Technologies curricular, for senior students.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Coordinated STEM and Innovation Education Strategy Needed

The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) have released an 82 page report "Australia’s economic future: an agenda for growth". The report recommends "... all students have familiarity and competency with ICT as a very significant portion of the Australian population lack these basic skills.", also "To improve Australia’s innovative capacity, the government should give greater weight to translation activities in funding universities ...". To do that, I suggest Australia needs to first train its teachers in digital technology, so they can teach the students (this can be done online*). It would also be worthwhile making entrepreneurship as part of the curricula generally for universities. To that end I have proposed an on-line innovation course.

* See also "Proposal for Distance Education in Technology and Entrepreneurship to Train Teachers ...'".

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Canberra Code Cadets

Greetings from Unconference Canberra, where the Code Cadets students from Canberra Grammar School showed a video of their tour of silicon valley. The video was fun, but what was more impressive was the way the students were able to talk about what the saw on the trip to hi-tech companies.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Teach Coding at School Workshop in Canberra

The Australian Computer Society is hosting a "Do you want to teach Coding at your school?" workshop in Canberra, with "Code Club Australia", 19th May 2016.

"Code Club Australia is a nationwide network of free, volunteer-led, coding clubs for children. We create projects for our volunteers to teach at coding clubs. The projects we make teach children how to program by showing them how to make computer games, animations and websites.

Code Club is about fun, creativity, and learning through exploring. It’s important that the children enjoy their time at Code Club. They should understand that they’re in charge of the computer, and can (and should) make it to what they want, not the other way around.

Other benefits of Code Club, such as learning about computational thinking, or developing expertise in coding, are secondary to these two objectives."

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Online Colombo Plan

Unconference Canberra is this Saturday. So I am taking the opportunity to work up a presentation proposing an "Online Colombo Plan" for training Australian and Indian teachers jointly on-line in digital technology and entrepreneurship.

Online Colombo Plan

Proposal for Distance Education in Technology and Entrepreneurship to Train Teachers Jointly in Australia and India

By Tom Worthington FACS CP

IT Education for Sustainable Development

Australia and India can cooperate on e-learning to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals to:

Train teachers in technology
Further understanding between the nations
Provide new education export industry for Australia

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

"... end poverty ... protect the planet ... ensure prosperity for all ... foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies ... based on a spirit of strengthened global solidarity ..."

UN General Assembly resolution 70/17, Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, A /RES/70/1 (21 October 2015). Retrieved from https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N15/291/89/PDF/N1529189.pdf

Quality Education

"Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all".
UN SDG 4, General Assembly resolution 70/17, p. 17, 2015.

General Assembly resolution 70/17, p. 17, 2015.

Partnerships for the Goals

UN SDG Goal 17: Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

SDG 17: "Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing ..."

General Assembly resolution 70/17, p. 26, 2015.

India-Australia Cooperation on Education

“Supporting the mobility of students ... Sharing best practice education materials ... Supporting skills development ...”

(2015, August 24). Memorandum of understanding Between the Government of Australia and The Government of the Republic of India on Cooperation in the Fields of Education, Training and Research. Retrieved from http://www.australiaindiaeducation.com/app/webroot/img/userfiles/MOU_2015.pdf

Skills Development Initiatives in Indian Budget

1500 Multi Skill Training Institutes (MSTIs) as Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)
National Skill Certification Board (MSDE, 2016)

Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Budget Highlights 2016-2017. 29 February 2016 New Delhi: Government of India. Retrieved from http://pib.gov.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=137484

Free E-Learning Materials

Engaging India, edX Course from ANU in English and Hindi
Digital technology, courses for teachers, from University of Adelaide and Google
An Introduction to Innovation, open access course module
Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship, open access book

Australian Curriculum Technologies

National Australian Digital Technologies Curriculum for all schools was endorsed 18 September 2015
Thousands of teachers need to be trained
Free Digital Curriculum Course for Teachers by University of Adelaide and Google

Four Colombo Plans

Colombo Plan, 1951: Western nations Cold War strategy against USSR, during which 20,000 university students from region educated in Australia (Oakman, p. 3, 2010).
Virtual Colombo Plan, 2001: $230M from Australian Government to support of DE programs based in developing countries, including the African Virtual University (Wolff, p.25, 2002).
New Colombo Plan, 2013: $100M for scholarships over five years to send Australian students to study in Indo-Pacific universities (New Colombo Plan Secretariat, 2013).
Digital Colombo Plan, 2015: AARnet proposal for fibre-optic link to region's educational institutions and for direct e-learning (AARnet, 2015).

Propose Certificate Programs for Indian Teachers

Align courses to Australian AITSL teaching standards
Deliver to smart phones using off-the-shelf free open access learning management system

More Information

Disclaimer: this is a proposal by the author and does not represent the views of any of the organizations mentioned.

References

(2015, August 24). Memorandum of understanding Between the Government of Australia and The Government of the Republic of India on Cooperation in the Fields of Education, Training and Research. Retrieved from http://www.australiaindiaeducation.com/app/webroot/img/userfiles/MOU_2015.pdf

AARnet. (2015, May 29). Draft National Strategy for International Education : AARNet Submission. Retrieved from https://submissions.education.gov.au/Forms/Draft-National-Strategy-for-International-Education-public-consultation/_layouts/SP.Submissions/ViewDoc.ashx?id=%7B8983b29c-3de0-474c-9c5a-5e335c901721%7D

New Colombo Plan Secretariat. (2013). New Colombo Plan: Guidelines Scholarship Program. Canberra:Australian Government. Retrieved fromhttp://www.dfat.gov.au/new-colombo-plan/downloads/ncp-guidelines-scholarship-program.pdf

Oakman, D. (2010). Facing Asia: a history of the Colombo Plan (p. 323). ANU Press. Retrieved from http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/whole7.pdf

User:Tom Worthington/Books/Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship. (2016, April 3). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tom_Worthington/Books/Commercialisation_and_Entrepreneurship&oldid=713313890

Wolff, L. (2002). The African Virtual University: the challenge of higher education development in sub-Saharan Africa. TechKnowLogia, International Journal of Technologies for the Advancement of Knowledge and Learning, 4(2). Retrieved from http://www.techknowlogia.org/TKL_Articles/PDF/384.pdf

Worthington, T. (2015, April 10). An Introduction to Innovation. Canberra:The Higher Education Whisperer. Retrieved from http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2015/04/designing-innovation-course-part-3.html#ch419

Monday, March 28, 2016

IT Education for Sustainable Development

Australia and India can cooperate on e-learning to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals to:

Train teachers in technology
Further understanding between the nations
Provide new education export industry for Australia

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

"... end poverty ... protect the planet ... ensure prosperity for all ... foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies ... based on a spirit of strengthened global solidarity ..."

Quality Education

Partnerships for the Goals

India-Australia Cooperation on Education

Mr Christopher Pyne MP, Australian Minister for Education and Mrs Smriti Zubin Irani Indian Minister of Human Resource Development

Australia Free E-Learning Materials

Engaging India, edX Course from ANU in English and Hindi
Digital technology, courses for teachers, from University of Adelaide and Google

Australian Curriculum Technologies

National Australian Digital Technologies Curriculum for all schools was endorsed 18 September 2015
Thousands of teachers need to be trained
Free Digital Curriculum Course for Teachers by University of Adelaide and Google

Four Colombo Plans

Colombo Plan, 1951: Western nations Cold War strategy against USSR, during which 20,000 university students from region educated in Australia (Oakman, p. 3, 2010).
Virtual Colombo Plan, 2001: $230M from Australian Government to support of DE programs based in developing countries, including the African Virtual University (Wolff, p.25, 2002).
New Colombo Plan, 2013: $100M for scholarships over five years to send Australian students to study in Indo-Pacific universities (New Colombo Plan Secretariat, 2013).
Digital Colombo Plan, 2015: AARnet proposal for fibre-optic link to region's educational institutions and for direct e-learning (AARnet, 2015).

Propose Certificate Programs for Indian Teachers

Combine CSER course content with ANU multi-cultural techniques to create on-line courses for the Digital Technologies to teachers of the Indo-Pacific region, starting with Australia and India.

Align courses to Australian AITSL teaching standards
Deliver to smart phones using off-the-shelf free open access learning management system

References

Oakman, D. (2010). Facing Asia: a history of the Colombo Plan (p. 323). ANU Press. Retrieved from http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/whole7.pdf

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Resources for Teaching ICT in Schools

Joel Cowey talked about the CSIRO ICT in Schools Program at the Australian Computer Society in Canberra, 10th February 2016. Joel explained how the program (ICTiS) partners volunteer ICT professionals and with school teachers who are teaching the new Australian Digital Technologies Curriculum. He showed some hardware used in schools for teaching ICT, as well as pointing out useful online resources. Here are some links:

For IT Professionals and Teachers:

CSIRO ICT in Schools Registration
InteACT ACT IT Teachers Association
Australian Digital Technologies Curriculum
Free Online Course for Teaches on the Digital Curriculum
Teach for Australia Program for graduates to take up teaching
Double degree for science teaching from ANU and University of Canberra
Comp8440 ANU Free and Open Source Software Development

Activities for Students:

CS Unplugged Learning activities to teach Computing
ICT Explorers Computer club for students
Bebras Australia Computational Thinking CHALLENGE

Hardware for teaching IT:

Bee Bot a teaching robot for young students
Arduino Low cost single board computer
Arduino LilyPad Low cost computer designed to sew into fabric
Makey Makey Game controller for kids

Monday, February 1, 2016

US Computer Science For All Could Follow Australian Approach

US President Obama has issued a proposal for "Computer Science For All" (White House, 30 January 2016), for school students to learn computer science. This proposes $4B to states and $100M to school districts for training teachers, materials and regional partnerships. I suggest the US could adapt the Australian Digital Technologies Curriculum, which is far broader than just computer science.

Also the USA could adapt the CSER Digital Technologies Course, from Computer Science Education Research Group (CSER) at the University of Adelaide for training teachers online. Training teachers in digital technologies will have benefits across the school system and it would be best if this teaching incorporated the use of digital technology.

ps: I have arranged for Joel Cowey from CSIRO to speak on the CSIRO ICT in Schools Program at the Australian Computer Society in Canberra,10 February.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Internet Use by Australian School Students

Goodwin, K. (2016) interviewed just over one thousand parents in Australia on their children's use of the Internet for learning. Half were from capital cities, half with primary school age children and half secondary school. Three quarters of parents said that Internet at home helped children learn. About half said their children use the Internet at home for research, watch tutorials and collaborate with other students.

The research was commissioned by NBN Co, an Australian government owned company set up to provide a national broadband network. NBN Co obviously have an interest in talking up the value of digital technology for education. In particular the interview questions appear to have been designed to support the assertion that high speed broadband is needed at home to provide video for education. No questions appear to have been asked about the need to provide Internet for students outside the home.

It should be noted that NBN Co is providing high speed broadband, which is far in excess of the speed required just for educational video. The ABS (2015) notes that the OECD definition of broadband used by the Australian government is 256kbps. In contrast the minimum speed being offered by NBN Co. is 20 Mbps, more than seventy five times the OECD minimum and many times the speed required for educational video.

NBN Co. is only providing fixed broadband for homes and small businesses, it is not providing mobile wireless data, as used by smart phones and tablet computers outside the home. Mobile devices equipped with 3G and 4G wireless modems might render NBCo's multi-billion dollar fiber and fixed wireless network obsolete before it can be completed.

For comparison, Pegrum, Oakley and Faulkner (2013) report on the adoption of mobile devices in ten Western Australian non-government schools in 2011. iPads were most popular, followed by iPod Touches (a small tablet device) and iPhones. Lower level classes had shared devices in the classroom, while older students each had their own device. M-learning, was still being integrated into the teaching.

Pegrum, Oakley and Faulkner (2013) identify professional development (PD) for teachers in the educational use of computers as a major need. One program set up to provide PD is the CSER Digital Technologies MOOC (Falkner, Vivian & Falkner, 2015). This is a series of free on-line courses from the University of Adelaide to teach about the new Australian Digital Technologies curriculum. The course is initially being offered for teaching in Kindergarten to year six (K-6) but is being expanded to cover later years.

Teaching digital technology to teachers on-line is challenging. (Falkner, Vivian & Falkner, p. 66, 2015) note that the average Australian primary teacher is a 42 year old generalist (secondary teachers are a few years older). These teachers are likely to have had minimal exposure to computers in their teacher training. Teachers are reportedly working 46 hours per week and 8 to 9 days a year on PD. Asking teachers to spend extra time to use IT to learn to use IT to teach IT is a challenge. CSER prepared seven MOOC Modules:

Introduction

Data – Patterns & Play

Data - Representation

Digital Systems

Information Systems

Algorithms & Programming

Visual Programming

Falkner, Vivian an Falkner (p. 68, 2015) report that the first offering of the course had 1378 enrolled, 438 of who did not engage in the course and 99 completed. This is a 7.2% completion rate (10.5% of those encouraging), which is reasonable for a MOOC. The same course, offered with a tutor as a conventional e-learning course may be expected to have a much higher completion rate.

References

ABS. (2015, May). Discussion Paper: Consultation on topics emerging from submissions to the Information and Communication Technology Statistics Review, Australian Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved from http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uyH8X-8-ieoJ:www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/Lookup/8179.0.55.002Main%2BFeatures3May%2B2015+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

Falkner, K., Vivian, R., & Falkner, N. (2015, January). Teaching Computational Thinking in K-6: The CSER Digital Technologies MOOC. In Proceedings of the 17th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2015) (Vol. 27, p. 30). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rebecca_Vivian/publication/277022717_Teaching_Computational_Thinking_in_K-6_The_CSER_Digital_Technologies_MOOC/links/556000e308ae6f4dcc9273e9.pdf

Goodwin, K. (2016). nbn Digital Parenting Report, NBN Co. Retrieved from https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6oyb4klf9k5k8wy/AAANBdLx0ZuuLzriOBOolPIUa/nbn%20Digital%20Parenting%20Report.pdf?dl=0

Pegrum, M., Oakley, G., & Faulkner, R. (2013). Schools going mobile: A study of the adoption of mobile handheld technologies in Western Australian independent schools. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(1). Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/submission/index.php/AJET/article/viewFile/64/25

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

CSIRO ICT in Schools program

Joel Cowey will speak on the CSIRO ICT in Schools Program (RSVP) at the Australian Computer Society in Canberra, 5pm, 10th February 2016.

ICT in Schools, a partnership program (ICTiS) creates and supports ongoing, flexible partnerships between volunteer ICT professionals and teachers, showcasing real world, contemporary ICT in the classroom.

ICTiS supports implementation of the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies and the ICT capabilities and how to fully utilise the knowledge, skills and capacity of ICT volunteer. Explore what makes effective, successful partnerships and where the program is going in the future.

Joel Cowey works in CSIRO Education and Outreach and coordinates the ICT in Schools a partnership program element. He sees the best way of improving ICT literacy in the community is through high quality STEM education and to ensure students get the opportunity to learn about STEM subjects at school.

Joel has spent 6 years as a purely ICT geek working for the Departments of Defence, Environment, and Education, 23 years as a teacher of science and ICT and three years as a science and IT education policy officer in the commonwealth Department of Education. There have been occasional stints tutoring IT at TAFE and university and time off for travel, study and parenting.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Technologies Curriculum for Australian Schools Endorsed by Education Ministers

The "Foundation to Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Technologies" was endorsed on Friday 18 September 2015 by all Australian State and Territory Ministers for Education for use in schools. The ministers met as the "Education Council" and appropriately the meeting was held by video conference. Unfortunately the Federal Government is providing a minimal $3.5M over four years to support teaching coding in schools. It also appears that state governments are unlikely to make the coordinated investment needed to introduce the new curriculum (training teachers, providing on-line materials and support). As a result schools will have to rely on voluntary work by groups such as Information Technology Educators ACT who recently held an excellent workshop in Canberra. Despite this volunteer work, it is likely Australia will slip further behind in its supply of STEM qualified workforce. This will result in a drop in exports in five to ten years time, when the qualified people needed to create new hi-tech companies and products will not be available. In addition Australia will have to pay to import technology curriculum materials.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Techniques for Teaching the Technologies Curriculum in Australian Schools

The Technologies Curriculum for Foundation to Year 10 in Australian Schools is expected to be formally approved on 18 September 2015. On Thursday I attended the Information Technology Educators ACT (InTEACT) workshop on how to teach the new curriculum. I attended presentations by CISCO and Intel and then hands-on exercise with Grok Learning's programming teaching materials.

CISCO emphasized that the courses at their "CISCO Networking Academy" were not just for training network engineers. As an example they have a course on "Entrepreneurship". What was not clear was how applicable these courses are to the new Technologies Curriculum, given it is for younger students. Also it was not clear if these were aligned with Australian educational requirements.

The Intel presentation did not start well with some claims in the corporate slides at the start lacking credibility. As an example a claim that less than 10% of the world's population had Internet access (the Intel figure I think was 2%) did not seem to match estimates of 40%.

Also a description of the Arduino compatible Intel Galileo single board computer was a little confusing. Also what was not clear was that a Teacher’s guide to the Intel Galileo was developed with Macquarie University (and so should me more than just a sales brochure). The guide is designed for the Australian Curriculum, with projects which also suit other Arduino compatible hardware. Unfortunately the PDF version of the guide is 15 Mbytes (a bit big). What was good was that there were several Intel education kits to try out.

Lastly I took part in a workshop run with Australian company, Grok Learning. We ran through two of their one hour coding exercises on "Frozen Fractals" (Python Turtle and Blockly Turtle). These are designed for an iPad, although I used them on a laptop. The exercise was to use "turtle graphics" to draw a snowflake, to learn about geometry and iteration. The two versions of the exercise used a visual programming language (Blockly) and one using Python.

The programming environment used will be familiar to those who have done one of the newer introduction to programming exercises at a university, based on the "Snap!" programming environment and UC Berkeley's "Beauty and Joy of Computing" (Harvey, 2012). The use of turtle graphics for teaching extends much further back, at least to the mid 1970s (Solomon & Papert, 1976). It is interesting to see that it has taken more than 40 years for the hardware to catch up with teaching ideas.

Grok's lesson screen shows a progress bar along the top, with circles representing information for the students and diamonds for tasks. About half the screen is devoted to lesson content, the other half has a window for entering code at the top and a window for results below. When I started the lesson the code window was only large enough for one line, but I found I could drag to make it larger.

Tasks in the progress bar are gray at the start, then turn amber when attempted and green when completed successfully. One minor problem is that it would be difficult to distinguish green and amber if the user can't distinguish color (or has a monochrome screen). However, it would not be difficult for Grok to provide a non-color indicator, to meet accessibility requirements.

To see how they went, a student first runs their code and then submits it for marking. The system shows the required behavior of the turtle and then overlays what the student's code does. One problem is, as with any automated test, the student's result must be identical to the expected result, even for irrelevant details. As an example, when asked to draw a square I left the turtle pointing a different direction to the model answer and so this was not marked as correct by the system. Also there were no helpful hints as what to do next, if your result was not correct.

Grok's implementation is only a few weeks old and they were still making some improvements. Overall the exercises worked well for teaching programming fundamentals. However, these exercises would only really be useful where the student was able to obtain help from a human tutor, such as in a classroom. On its own, for a distance education student, the exercises would be very frustrating. Even a certified computer professional, such as myself, would find it difficult. ;-)

The workshop was held in the Inspire Centre at the University of Canberra. This building was purpose built to teach teachers how technology can be incorporated into education and is the best expression of the hight tech classroom I have seen, anywhere in the world. The event started with seating arranged in theater mode (rows of chairs facing the front). I went out for a coffee in the foyer and by the time I came back the room had been rearranged: a folding wall had divided the room in two and one half was changed to group work around tables.

The Inspire Centre illustrates the sort of investment which needs to be made by Australian governments (and the non-government schools sector) to implement the Technologies Curriculum in Australian schools. While InTEACT's initiative in holding this workshop (and the contribution by companies involved) is to be commended, an investment of many hundreds of millions of dollars is needed for teacher training, equipment and curriculum development. That may sound a lot of money, but is minor compared to that spent on the previous "Building the Education Revolution" and laptops for schools programs. Unfortunately while it is relatively easy to get money for tangible hardware and buildings, it is more difficult to resources the more useful teacher training and course content which is needed for a real education revolution.

References

Harvey, B. (2012). The Beauty and Joy of Computing: Computer Science for Everyone. Proceedings of Constructionism 2012, 33-39. http://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/BJC.pdf

Solomon, C. J., & Papert, S. (1976, June). A case study of a young child doing Turtle Graphics in LOGO. In Proceedings of the June 7-10, 1976, national computer conference and exposition (pp. 1049-1056). ACM. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1499799.1499945

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Technologies Curriculum for Australian Schools Next Week

At the ACS Canberra Conference, Julie King, Curriculum Lead, Technology at ACRA, said she was expecting approval of the "Foundation to Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Technologies" by Australian education ministers on 18 September 2015. This is significant as these are the school years when students decide what they will do after school. I suggest that by directly supporting the implementation of the Technologies Curriculum, professional bodies, VET and university sectors can best encourage students to go on to ICT study and careers. One way to do that is for professions and HE to create on-line course content for use by schools. These materials would be best created in a way they can be used by teachers in the classroom, as well as being packaged for direct study by the students.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Review of the Australian School Curriculum Misses Importance of e-Learning

The Australian Government has released the Final Report of a "Review of the Australian Curriculum" by Professor Ken Wiltshire AO and Dr Kevin Donnelly. Available are:

Final Report of the Review of the Australian Curriculum: (PDF 3.27 MB or DOCX 11.82 MB)
Initial Australian Government Response Review of the Australian Curriculum
Supplementary Material for the Review of the Australian Curriculum
Fact Sheet on the Review of the Australian Curriculum
Frequently Asked Questions on the Review of the Australian Curriculum

One concern I have is that sufficient weight is not being given to the way the Internet is changing how education is provided. The report mentions "Internet" only twice in 294 pages (on Page 147).

In the first reference the authors comment that just having information via the Internet is not sufficient for understanding. However this fails to mention decades of research and practical experience showing it is possible to provide quality education on-line:

"The argument that the disciplines are changing so rapidly that it is impossible to identify them with any certainty or precision and, as a result, that all students need to do is to access the internet when wanting information, is misleading. Information is not knowledge and understanding is not wisdom. Education, while dealing with information and understanding, is primarily concerned with knowledge and wisdom that while evolving and open to debate has stood the test of time."

The second mention of the Internet claims that "many" complained about a lack of hard copy of the curriculum materials. It is not clear how these many complaints were received, given that the review used an an online submission process (those who sent a submission must have had Internet access). Also, as the authors state, not all households have Internet access, but the ABS says 83% do. There are more than one million householders without Internet access, if many of had complained (in this context "many" would be tens of thousands of people).

"The bulk of parents seem to have been unhappy about the token involvement of parents in development of the curriculum, and report frustration in being able to gain independent access to curriculum documents. Many complain about the lack of hard copy, pointing out that not all households have internet access (265); nor are all parents computer literate. As in so many other aspects of government service delivery in Australia, purely web-based delivery is not adequate."

The technologies curriculum, that is teaching ICT is better covered in the report, than the use of ICT for teaching:

"There is also strong support for its inclusion in
the Australian Curriculum – particularly from professional bodies associated with computers and technologies – and a belief that it appropriately captured the critical elements of the learning area and provided a sound curriculum foundation which could accommodate future instances of digital technology. The Australian Computer Society (ACS) says:

The ACS strongly endorses the creation of the digital technologies subject and notes the
important distinction of this subject from the role of ICT as a general capability. Both aspects
are critically important in the education of students, but the distinction between them is vital
for individual students and for Australia as a nation.414" Page 208

Recommendation 15 of the report is likely to be most contriversial and with which I have most difficulty with:

"ACARA revise the Australian Curriculum to place more emphasis on morals, values and spirituality as outlined in the Melbourne Declaration, and to better recognise the contribution of Western civilisation, our Judeo-Christian heritage, the role of economic development and industry and the
democratic underpinning of the British system of government to Australia’s development." Page 246

It is not clear to me why the many Australian citizens who do not have a British Judeo-Christian heritage should have their taxes spent indoctoranating their children in someone else's values. Discussion of "Western civilisation" belongs in history courses, but alongside the other civilisations which have contributed to today's Australia.

An emphasis on morals and values would be appropriate for schools, along the lines of the Primary Ethics, program developed by St James Ethics Centre for NSW primary schools. However, this should discuss Judeo-Christian concepts alongside other religions and moral systems of Australians.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Alignment of School Curriculum in Technologies with Vocational Education

Recently I took part in a discussion of how to introduce young people to a career in IT. One point made was that this does not need to be via the academic path of high school to university. There is the alternative path of Vocational Education. But does the new School Curriculum in Technologies, align with the Vocational Certificates in technology, such as Certificate II in Information, Digital Media and Technology (the CA20111), run by TAFEs and Registered Training Organisations (RTOs)?

A few weeks ago I took part in a two day workshop to help implement the new technologies curriculum in Canberra schools. But there was no mention of alignment with vocational education, even though the Canberra Institute of Technology has facilities co-located with one of Canberra's school campuses. The current school curriculum in technologies is for up to year 10 and it would make sense if the student could then undertake vocation training in years 11 and 12, either in the school or at a separate organisation.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Aligning the new Australian School Technologies Curriculum with Higher Education

At the "Byte Sized Digital Technologies", work-shop I am discussing aspects of the "Australian Curriculum: Technologies" with primary teachers from the public and private school sectors. We are looking at project based activities which could be used in schools for teaching the new curriculum. It occurred to me that it would be useful to align the school curriculum with the teaching of technology in higher education. At present universities are looking to develop new educational materials to deliver in new ways, not only online but using techniques such as project based work. It may be possible to provide versions of the university materials for schools to use. Universities are likely to see providing materials to schools as a useful activity for encouraging enrolments at their institution. Universities would normally concentrate on upper secondary school (Year 11 & 12), being just before university. However, research by Macpherson (2013) indicates that student's interest in IT declines after the age of 12-13 years, so it might be better to start with Year 7.

Curriculum Documents

Schools: ACARA provide the Technologies F-10 Curriculum on an easy to read beta website (the old site has so many errors as not to be usable).
Higher Education: The most widely referenced curriculum is the ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Programs in Computer Science the latest version of which is December 2013. Unfortunately the ACM/IEEE-CS guidelines are in the form of a not as usable 518 page PDF document.

In addition to these there is the US "CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards" from the ACM. CSTA have also released mappings of the Computer science curriculum to US school education standards, but I could not find a mapping to the university curriculum.

The Australian School Technologies Curriculum Year 7 and 8 Content Descriptions are:

Digital Technologies knowledge and understanding

Investigate how data are transmitted and secured in wired, wireless and mobile networks, and how the specifications of hardware components impact on network activities (ACTDIK023)

Investigate how digital systems represent text, image and audio data in binary (ACTDIK024)

Digital Technologies processes and production skills

Acquire data from a range of sources and evaluate authenticity, accuracy and timeliness (ACTDIP025)

Analyse and visualise data using a range of software to create information, and use structured data to model objects or events (ACTDIP026)

Define and decompose real-world problems taking into account functional requirements and economic, environmental, social, technical and usability constraints (ACTDIP027)

Design the user experience of a digital system, generating, evaluating and communicating alternative designs (ACTDIP028)

Design algorithms represented diagrammatically and in English, and trace algorithms to predict output for a given input and to identify errors (ACTDIP029)

Implement and modify programs with user interfaces involving branching, iteration and functions in a general-purpose programming language (ACTDIP030)

Evaluate how well developed solutions and existing information systems meet needs, are innovative and take account of future risks and sustainability (ACTDIP031)

Create and communicate interactive ideas and information collaboratively online, taking into account social contexts (ACTDIP032)

Plan and manage projects, including tasks, time and other resources required, considering safety and sustainability (ACTDIP033)

References

Macpherson, K. (2013). Digital technology and Australian teenagers: consumption, study and careers. The Education Institute. Retrieved, 19. From http://www.canberra.edu.au/researchrepository/file/fde6c9c8-0f73-47a6-afb2-e476699be44b/1/full_text_final.pdf

Technology Projects for the Australian School Curriculum

At the "Byte Sized Digital Technologies", work-shop I am discussing aspects of the "Australian Curriculum: Technologies" with primary teachers from the public and private school sectors. We are in the TEAL room of the Inspire Centre of the University of Canberra. Steve Blackburn from ANU is describing the Angry Birds Bootcamp run at ANU, teaching programming to school students.

I will be demonstrating "How Green is My Computer?", a version of which has been run live at ANU for school students. After introducing students to concepts of energy use and e-waste, I got them to use a power meter to measure the energy use of different computers and calculate carbon emissions. This exercise would fit with the sustainability topic in the technology curriculum. Also as this is designed to be aligned with the skills framework used for designing university IT curriculum, this should fit in with universities.

Friday, May 2, 2014

First Year Student Expectations of University

An Office for Learning & Teaching funded project has reported some results on "First Year Student Expectations and Experiences". The results are much as I would expect: students have to do more work and get less help from lecturers than they were expecting. However, the researchers have phrased these results in terms of unrealistic expectations by students. But in other industries if you are not meeting your customer's expectations, then you are doing something wrong: you don't blame the customers. Perhaps universities should improve the service they provide so they meet the students expectations. As an example the research shows only 51.5% of students received their work back within three weeks of submitting it. That seems to me unacceptable performance by the university.

Religions Wars: Chrome-books versus iPads for Schools

At the "Byte Sized Digital Technologies", work-shop I am discussing aspects of the "Australian Curriculum: Technologies" with primary teachers from the public and private school sectors. One surprise for me was that students don't have ready access to computers. The computers handed out by the federal government are now obsolete and there is not the money to replace them. Some schools are implementing "Bring Your Own Device" with Apple iPads and others providing Google Chrome-books.

It seems to me that if teachers and students do not have reliable and available computers then a lot of money must be wasted in the school system on manual work. Implementing the technology curriculum would be a good way to start "flipping" Australian schools.

It is a waste and time and effort if each teacher in each school is teaching their class of students alone. As part of my studies in distance education I looked at the blended approach used in some remote Queensland and NT indigenous schools. The teachers at these schools teach students with the support of remote specialist teachers, using online materials. This blended approach would, I suggest, be a suitable model for all schools.