Circles and Symmetry

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Graham Brown-Martin Chomsky discusses the impact and value of digital technologies within an educational context. Chomsky argues “You can’t pursue any kind of inquiry without a pretty relatively clear framework that’s directing your search and helping you choose what’s significant and what isn’t, what can be put aside, what are to be pursued, what are to be challenged, what are to be developed, and so on.” This is an excerpt from interviews as part of the Learning {RE}imagined book & digital resource project that will be published later in 2014 (http://learning-reimagined.com) Graham Brown-Martin (http://about.me/grahambrownmartin)

My students were way ahead of me, working on programming lumber turtles and making viruses to crash the virtual computer. This also underlines my role as an educator using technology: I have to accept that I most often won’t master many of the things I’m teaching with and in. But my function will be to open the door for my students and point the direction , joining them in their quests for knowledge. 

Some weeks ago I facilitated an elective course where students designed games in Unity3d. The course was designed as a crashcourse in the Unity editor where learning how to work with the editor was the primary goal, thereby inspiring students to continue working on projects in their own time.

See my reflections in the following post.

A little self digital self indulgence…

Here’s the literacy session that I delivered at BETT2014. It’s pitched somewhere between year6 and year8. Hopefully there is something for both Primary and Secondary teachers. Most of the apps used here are free.

The Minecraft team have been playing “Survival Island - Stranded”. They have been analyzing their play, and working out how to optimize their gameplay through experiments, calculation and visualization. The aim is to adjust this map so it can be used for teaching maths.