Week 10 - Tech Trends

Horizon Report Impressions

On one hand I was not surprised to see coding in the New Media Consortium’s report.  However, on the other hand, it is always funny to me how we group educational technology with computer science.  I guess it has to do with the fact that people who are tech savvy and an education usually have an interest in both areas. I was very excited to read about the "Wicked Challenges" because they align with my work. The challenges are: scaling teaching innovations and teaching complex thinking. I think the later intertwines with the former. If you think of teaching computer science for all K12 as a solution to teaching complex thinking, the problem is: how do you scale the sporadic classes throughout the US up to complete coverage? These are exactly the challenges I work with everyday.

However, I am a little wary about NMC's predictions for wearable tech. I think education will use it eventually, but 4-5 years isn't that far away to bring costs down and use cases up. This summer I went to conference session claiming wearables were outstanding tools for education. Nothing that was said during the presentation was better than available alternatives. For wearables to be a disruptive innovation in our schools, it needs to be cheaper and simpler than the alternative.  (Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma, 2011 or watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDrMAzCHFUU) It just bugs me when we get excited about new tools in education just because they are "cool" and disregard what is best for students.

Project

For my project I decided to add a new page and content to my AllKidsCode website. The website is dedicated to helping educators and education administrators learn more about scaling up coding classes so that all students have an opportunity to learn these 21st century skill. I took this opportunity to complete a project I have been wanting to do for a while. As the project requires us to conduct additional research, I decided to make another annotated bibliography (http://codingresearch.blogspot.com/). However, I used my own style by making the annotated bibliography resemble a Pinterest page. I found many journal articles, books, and resources regarding computer science education.  It was somewhat difficult finding resources that focused on computer science at the primary level. The resources I found included case studies, models, and research about many computer science education topics.

After  curating a Google folder full of research, I used the Google Drive connected app, Kami,  to annotate the resources.  I then wrote summaries and organized the resources on my website.  I rated the resources based on their usefulness and relevancy for implementing coding classes and curriculum at the primary level. I also tagged each resource by grade level, main idea, rating, and type.  I hope this sorting, annotation, and summary of each resource makes it easier for other educators to find research that will help improve their ability to effectively teach coding classes.

As part of the project, I also added new resources to an existing page on my website (http://codingresources.blogspot.com/). This page with many resources that educators can use to help their students learn computer programming. Each resource is rated and sorted to help visitors find what they are looking for. This is a work in progress.  I have a list of 100 resources, however I have only reviewed and posted the third of them. This week I added three more resources: Pencil Code, LearnToMod, and Daisy the dinosaur.

I hope my  summaries and reviews will help educators to desire to bring coding lessons to more students.  This project is not over for me. I plan on continuing my work, especially on the research and models page.  I am grateful for this opportunity to read research and gain a greater knowledge what other educators are doing. This assignment has also helped me clarify what type of research I  can do to help contribute to my field.

View my screencast explaining my project here: