PyCon UK 2015

Finally it's time for Pycon! After weeks of avidly watching the website for tickets to go on sale and then weeks of waiting for September to arrive it's finally here!

Day One...
8.45am BREAKFAST!!! Bacon and egg bap thank you very much! 

9.30am and time for the opening ceremony which involved Zeth throwing fruit at teachers and Raspberry's at the Raspberry Pi team.

10.30 and it was off to my first session  led by Alan O'Donaghue. A great discussion about what Python is and how we can use it in the classroom.

11.20 Quick cuppa and then on to Minecraft in Education with my Picademy graduatee Sarah Zaman. Using Python and Minecraft Pi Sarah let us work through some fantastic resources she's developing with Geocraft - I built a rainbow bridge!

Side note: the most fantastic thing today is that Pycon have started their "adopt a developer" initiative where they've invited developers to attend the education track  and adopt us teachers while we're working through stuff. This has been amazing for me - I've learnt so much about how to make my code more concise and organised and why we do things certain ways. Big thanks to the Luke and Natasha from The Bank of America who spent most of the women hours helping me figure out some more stuff in Minecraft!!!

16.00 - TeachMeet time! Awesome news about micro:bit, coding evening updates and a whole host of other discussions!

18:00 time for free beer and canapés before the charity function at 19:30 - a chance to hang out with other education specialists, relax and kick back!
Another aside- I won in the raffle!!! I never win!

Day Two...
10.00 a slightly later start today. It's kids day so we're all mucking in to support in various workshops. Lot's on offer here - Astro Pi, Code Club, Physical Computing with Sense Hats and of course I had to help out in the Minecraft workshop! A great workshop run by Martin O'Hanlon programming his Lava Trap game on Minecraft Pi and Python. The kids were really engaged and I found I was pretty confident helping them with their code after yesterday's sessions! Whoop Whoop! 

12.30 lunch time and then back to the mornings stations for an afternoon of free for all activities. It's been great to see the things kids are coming up with independently and how well they grasp and understand the concepts and rules of the Python language. 

Onto the evening 7.30 and we're all seated for the Conference Meal- posh grub, wine and beer and great conversation.  I was a little bit anxious about this as they separate everyone on to random tables but the guys I was sat with were lovely and we had some great chats from dating sites to programming in java to how traumatic the 80's ewok film caravan of hope was!  After the meal we all hung around finishing off more fuzzy duck brewed beer and catching up with friends/Introducing new friends to the old.

I found the conference really useful, it's given me a lot more confidence in my classroom practice and I feel ready to delve into the world of Python with my learners which before the conference I was terrified of mainly because of their special needs. It's definitely going to be an annual outing for me and part of my development plan for my department and I would recommend that those of you who haven't been do the same! 

Peterborough's First Coding Evening!

July 7th 2015.... #CodingEvening

In the year since we graduated #Picademy my fellow graduate @CatLamin has been super busy. Amongst all the amazing stuff she does in our community Cat organises the Twickenham Coding Evening. Cat's initiative was to set up a relaxed, informal environment in which educators and local community members interested in programming and the new Computing curriculum could come together for a pint and some food, support, networking and resource sharing. as you can imagine the evening was a huge hit. Cat has now organised four events since January 2015 and other members of the Coding and Education communities are starting to contact her about setting up their own (follow the link above if you're interested) including me!

Peterborough's first Coding Evening took place on July 7th 2015. I reserved out an area of a local pub and we turned it into Geekdom! Our gathering included local teachers, TA's, potential school volunteers and members of the local community.

We were also extremely lucky to have the lovely @Geeky_Tim who is one of orgaisers of @CambridgeJam and also the wonderful @WhaleyGeek who co-authored Adventures in Minecraft and had spent all day with the BBC releasing the BBCMicrobit. We were also lucky enough that he brought along a flip the egg frying pan game that used the Microbit (except I kept calling it a MicroBOT because I've been studying Big Hero 6 with my English class).

Tim brought along Raspberry Pi's and HDMI-Pi's and we had people involved in Minecraft and trying to program RGB LED's through Scratch. A couple of people went away with a lent out Pi kit on the proviso that they have to come back with it and show us something cool they have managed to do. Discussion was flowing around the new curriculum and what resources people are using and having started at 4.30 those of us that were still going strong at 8pm sat down to get some food. The evening was a great success and as a result I will be running one every two months which seemed to be a regularity that everyone agreed on. So if you're in or around the Peterborough area please contact me @digitaldivageek (Twitter) or digitaldivageek@geektools.com and come along!

"Really well organised amnd resourced - I had wondered whether we might be sitting around in a circle saying "Errrr...", but it wasfar too well planned for that to happen!....Re-inspired to play with the RPi!"

MineCon2015

MineCon 2015

On Saturday 4th July 2015 10,000 people came together from 73 countries around the world for MineCon. The official Minecraft Convention which was held at the ExCel Centre in London broke the Guinness World record for the largest convention ever for a single video game.

The opening ceremony kicked off with a bang and a 10,000 strong audience of VERY excited Minecraft lovers were clearly very excited and impressed. Stampy was there to set out the rules for us and then it was on to demoing some new and upcoming products…

The Hololens

This piece of kit is just unbelievable - you basically put on the headset and you can view the your Minecraft world in 3D on a tabletop or a wall.

The Hololens allows the gamer to view a 3D augmented reality version of their Minecraft world. Players can move the world around, zoom in and out and even put their heads inside the buildings to see the interior or lightning strike the floor and even zoom in to look around inside the mines! The scrolling and zooming features are controlled by voice or by arm motions and the view can be set to “follow player.” Pretty awesome!

Stop-motion animation

Another upcoming release is the stop motion animation kit. This lovely little set includes a little film set and mini characters (you can then buy more of the different creatures, blocks and characters) and you then just need a tablet or iPhone and you can create your own animations! The example we were shown in the opening ceremony was a really nice little film that could easily be created at home or in the classroom - there's a strong possibility I will be replacing my Lego animation unit with a Minecraft animation unit!!!

So on to my own experience....

Obviously I was mega excited to be able to attend MineCon, it's in a different country each year so it was a once in a long time opportunity. However, I had no idea what to expect..maybe 300-400 people geeking out and gaming? Maybe some merchandise stalls? Hopefully an abundance of stickers!?

What I got was 10,000 people from age 5 to 75 and the entire Expo hall of London ExCel Centre literally turned into Minecraft! The centre point was a giant big Ben built from blocks with an immense Ender Dragon encircling it. There were trees and pens with animals in and the aforementioned merchandise stalls. There were also display stands featuring the animation kits, the card game and the Gameband amongst others. Everyone in my group
bought a super cool diamond limited edition Gameband which is a neat bit of wearable tech - the band itself is a digital watch, with date and time plus an animation of your choice (the animations can be hacked so for example mine now has my twitter handle scrolling round it). But that's not the main aim of the Gameband; to unclip it you pull it apart at the diamond block and it's actually a high speed USB stick which has Minecraft on it. You can then plug this into any PC or Mac and open up your saved worlds. The band has Minecraft installed so you don't need to be on a machine that has Minecraft on it either! If you do play a lot at home every time you plug the band in it will update the worlds saved on your band. So what if you lose your band?! Easy! You just ring them up and they will send you a new band at a reduced price, everything you've saved is backed up to a cloud so as long as you know your account login and password you can just plug in the new band and login and it will download everything up to your last update!!! Amazingness!!!!

Fun could also be had in the huge tournament area where players were involved in all different kinds of tournaments, in the indie gaming section where there were some really cool little games (and badges!) (I got thrashed at a Tron style football game) and in MinePark Row where there were lots of free arcade games that you could win velcro character rings on - I was great at this!!

My weekend then ended with two 90 minute teacher training sessions led by the education team - we started of with a basic day one how to led by @ImmersiveMind- I got excited that I had lots of pigs but then died almost instantly at night as I was immediately attacked by about seven zombies!

The second section was on STEM projects using Minecraft - We were given examples and a great intro by @sarahguthals we then looked at Redstone and how it can be used and were given the task of building something with Redstone... I started off with my pig catcher (after having fun blowing holes in the floor and then deciding I should probably build something a bit more sensible) however, my pigs kept jumping out so I had to then modify it adding a roof....

Pig Catcher #1

Pig Catcher #2

Both sessions were incredibly useful and I am now confident I'm going to be hooked... once I finally have a chance to sit down an play it...role on the holidays!!! 

Now all I need is for Microsoft to run an official CPD for a couple of days that ends with us being Minecraft Certified Educators!! 

June Update...

It’s been a few months since I’ve posted and things are rolling along nicely...

In School...

Since my last post I’ve passed my Google Educator exams and have delivered whole school training on Google Apps for Education, several people are picking this up and we look set to roll out across most subjects. Win!

We’ve now student tested our Raspberry Pi’s with the giant LED’s (buy from @pimoroni) and the Pi-Stops (buy here) which were really successful! We were having problems with getting our Pi’s on the school network but thank to the support of @jrobinson_uk from the Raspberry Pi Foundation we now have PiNet installed on a laptop ready to test out this week.

Some of my students caught a budgie on the playground last week and so I am now the proud owner of a very pretty little bird called Nip. We have set her up with her own Twitter (@budgiecam) and my Y10 group are being tasked with programming a Raspberry Pi with a motion detector and Pi camera board to take a picture when the motion sensor is triggered and then upload this to Twitter with a randomised comment. The Pi will then go home with me to be attached to Nip’s cage. Watch this space….

CamJam (@CambridgeJam) 06.06.2015…

As always Mike and Tim had a jam packed schedule of talks from PiWars to CannyBots and a host of show and tell stands - my favourite being the giant space invaders!!! It was great to catch up with @MissPhilbin and the gang from the Foundation and there was a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator meet up which was a great opportunity for us to catch up with our other Picademy graduates!

 Coding Evening…

The wonderful @CatLamin has started up a Coding Evening (website here https://codingevening.wordpress.com/) in her area (Putney) which is an informal meet up in a local pub for Teachers and other interested coders to talk about coding in he new curriculum and share resources and ideas. Some people bring along their projects and demo them to the group and it’s just a good all round evening for like minded people. I’m now starting a Peterborough Coding Evening event and details can be found here. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/coding-evening-peterborough-tickets-17304832219

New Website…

My latest personal project is to set up a website on which I can incorporate a place to share my resources (these are covered by Creative Commons licenses so can be adapted in school but not then shared by the user), host my blog, post helpful articles, websites and events and set up a monthly newsletter. The address for the site is www.geektools.biz and the business is called Geek Tools for Schools. Please visit and have a nosy, there is a suggestions form at the bottom of the home page for people to feedback or suggest resources they could use. You can also sign up for the blog and join the mailing list for the newsletter. The resources on the site are currently free, I will be starting to upload them over the next few weeks.

Post half-term blues... onwards and upwards!

Week off? What week off?...

It goes so quickly you barely have time to blink and it's gone. (and now at time of posting another two weeks have gone by!!!)

So what delights are install for the next five weeks? (That's right just five weeks and another holiday will blink by!)

Last year I switched our qualification to the TLM Ingots IT Users qualifications due to the flexibility of it, the scope of what we could teach under it and the massive amount of support we would receive as a special school. And we have benefited from all of the above. My year 9 cohort last year all gained either Bronze Level 3 (equiv. Entry 3) or the Silver Certificate (equiv. D-G GCSE with league table points). I now have a small group of five lads who are studying in Year 10 for their Gold Award and then hopefully will sit the exam next year to gain the Gold Certificate (equiv. A*-C GCSE with league table points). For a school in which when I started had Y11 doing Entry Level OCR we've come a long way.

Last year we worked through a budgeting spreadsheet for Hogwarts and also saving Hagrids "MagiZoo" (Yes, I made that up it's not a word) from bankruptcy, created animations of sports using lego figures and stop motion equipment and created websites using Google Sites. We had a carousel system last year so each class was only with me for a term which obviously limited what we could cover time-wise. However, this year I have them all year and thank God because we needed to accommodate a new curriculum with the word everyone seems to fear.. PROGRAMMING and the other one... "COMPUTER SCIENCE" (cue dramatic music). 

So what have we done and how have I stopped myself going insane? My first move was to get my backside to a Raspberry Pi Jam - I'm extra lucky as my local one is CamJam in Cambridge where Pi Towers are also based and the first one I attended happened to be a focus on education. From there I applied for Picademy - do it! It will change how you think about Computing AND teaching!! A fantastic two days but I won't lie it was hard going - however this was simply down to the amount that Carrie Anne Philbin and the team had packed in to this amazing FREE CPD course.  We covered GPIO and Scratch, Sonic Pi, Minecraft Pi (which can be controlled using python programming!) and GitHub. 

So this term it's time to work towards our Raspberry Pi projects and knock off the Specialist Software unit for the Ingots qualification! Exciting times! 

Right, Years 7 and 8 are currently using the Code.org  course 1 to begin problem solving and starting to understand key concepts such as algorithm, program, bug and debug. These courses are aimed at younger children but are pitched just perfectly for the children I teach in my school (SEN school don't forget! And we do work through three activities that they recommend as one lesson in one of our 1 hour 20 lessons). The kids had never heard the words bug, debug, loop... And so on. I did manage to drill in the word algorithm last year but it was all a bit rushed and for those who, in September, hadn't seen me since last CHRISTMAS... Well, I don't think I need to finish that sentence!!

At this point I feel a bit of a school profile might help put into perspective why I'm pitching the content and teaching at the level I am, so... 

We're a small special school (170ish cohort) for children with moderate learning difficulties. Our students have very low literacy and numeracy levels, and we have kids with autism, ADHD, Down's syndrome, aspergers, dyslexia as well as some physically disabled, VI/HI, dyspraxic students. And
they are all amazing. They also have no idea that through programming I'm sneakily teaching them literacy and numeracy.. Just like they don't realise that "that zombie game" they all love is teaching them to type.. Mwahahahahaha *evil laugh*

Seriously though, my main two challenges are recall and accessing the curriculum for students who's reading and writing in secondary school is more what you would expect from early/middle years primary. Logical reasoning and problem solving are also a huge issue although when they don't realise they're doing it they are much better at it (they're all really good at the "rabbit in headlights" pose!!)

Back to the point- the code.org course is going great - they particularly enjoyed planting cress, although pretty much every form tutor wanted to know what the hell that had to do with ICT (they are weirdly resistant in some cases to the idea that ICT isn't the same as Computing and ICT doesn't exist anymore!)... After being asked ten times the eleventh person who asked I just smiled sweetly at and said "algorithms of course!?" And carried on my raid of the chocolate cupboard then had a giggle to myself when I returned to my classroom. 

Year 9- Oh we've had some crazy fun... I say with a smile that anyone looking closely will see for the rictus of pain it is... One group doing Google Sites - relatively painless except for my class consists of students for whom reading the information, putting information into their own words and typing are all HUGE challenges for them. They're doing well though and I'm immensely proud of their refusal to give up - some of this is because they've seen how good child x'a website is (child x is high functioning autistic and absolutely LOVES computing to the point his form tutor always shakes her fist at me because he behaves for me haha- his website last year was a five page Minecraft how-to which all the information was directly typed from his head to the page, it was pretty impressive and is a great motivator for others!) 

The other group are doing animation and it is CRAZY!!!! Equipment, lego, operating equipment (alert: fine motor skills required!), set building! It's a completely manic first few lessons but they love the project and we get some really nice films, which they can then take home too. This is the one and only project I kept from the OCR entry level the kids were doing when I first started (the rest of the qualification was atrocious - required silly amounts of paperwork and the kids HATED the tasks! Except this one!). I turned it from a visual to a multimedia unit- so we now have soundtracks and commentary's and we have titles and credits. It's great for getting them to pay attention to detail and think in logical "storylines". I've also found that some of my more artistic students who aren't necessarily great with computers (I do have arty kids who ARE great with computers of course) were really hooked by this project, they were pretty hot at it too! It gives them success in a lesson they perhaps find frustrating most of the time and that engagement carries through with them into the next project, they go in  with a positive attitude on the back of that success and find that maybe this isn't as frustrating as they thought!

That leaves just my Year 10's- love this class- on a phased return from illness my senior leadership took the decision that on the day that I'd been having off they would trial a new KS4 pathway in Computing (they'd taken it off the timetable in Sept 2013). YEY!!! I thought instantly! So I was allowed to approach the five lads I'd eyeballed for KS4 (there are very few girls in that year, my current year 9's however I have my eyes on a few girls!). I was told I could give them the choice of staying where they were or trying out some new computing stuff with me. They all said yes instantly which was fantastic and hopefully sent a strong message to SLT about what our students want to be doing!! They're a great group- they're a lively bunch, and there were a few raised eyebrows (is she crazy?!) when I issued my list but they spend four lessons with me on a Thursday morning and they then inhale their lunch as fast as they can and leg it back to my room until afternoon registration, they're also in most other lunch times and I can honestly say, Thursday is my absolute favourite day of the week.

So far we've been using Minecraft EDU to complete a drawing unit so we've done pixel art, building houses for specific places/people and now we're onto building and defending a fortress in teams (PVP enabled!)

We've also used  Code.org to introduce coding (pre-Pi work!! exciting!) and we've used the awesome (and incredibly cheap to schools) GameStar Mechanic to learn about how to design computer games (note: This is not programming it is the designing and iteration processes) and their games are now published on Game Alley on the Gamestar website!

We had some fun with spreadsheets (I know those two words should never be in a sentence together but hang in there with me for this one!) - they had to budget for Gru to undertake four "dastardly plots" to take over the world. This involved which minions to use, which helpers (the girls and Lucy) and which weapons (fart gun, squid launcher etc.) and extras (antidote-jam, inflatable pyramid) to hire for the days the plot took and also to take into account each lesson a randomiser generated amount of money for Cookie Sales by the girls. If this is making no sense to you then you really need to watch Despicable Me 1 & 2!! The lads loved it - one ended up with £6k ish and another £5k in the red to their great amusement. Comment if you'd like a copy of the resource!

And that's us! The awesome Raspberry Pi folks are coming in on Friday to assist with setting up our Pi's as we're having issues so look out for Raspberry Pi projects on here which I'm hoping to start in the next two weeks!!!!!

Raspberry Pi 3rd Birthday Bash!

Happy Birthday Raspberry Pi!!!!!! 

@Raspberry_Pi

I've been looking forward to this weekend for a good two months and it's finally here! Yesterday I travelled down to Cambridge for a big CamJam/Raspberry Pi birthday bash... And as expected it was an amazing day. 

The Education Team Panel

Eben Upton (Raspberry Pi Foundation foundering CEO) kicked us off with the journey so far, what he has learned travelling it and a few reminders of recent announcements (Raspberry Pi 2!!!!) following on from him were a series of talks in two lecture theatres from members of the Pi community. The Education Team from the foundation were on hand to answer questions from educators and parents alike, along with us Certified Educators doing our best to share our experiences and offer support where needed/wanted. David Honess was there sharing the amazing Astro Pi project/competition- check out the link! 

And in between talks there was the foyer of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory jam packed with awesomeness! There was the talking throne... Fill your board with the three words of who you want to be and take a seat: 

David Whale and Martin O'Hanlon were on hand to promote their new book Adventures in Minecraft Pi. Pimoroni and The PiHut were amongst the vendors there offering bargains on all sorts of cool stuff. And Pimoroni were packaging there wares in an exceptionally cool bag. 

There were bunnies pooping chocolate mini eggs, a stall with lots of cool retro games (I got very excited as they had Chuckie Egg which was my favourite on our old Amstrad 64 when I was a kid):

For those interested in robotics and Pi there was an obstacle course, and stalls featuring different ideas/designs/equipment. Check out PiWars for more super cool robotics stuff! 

And then at four thirty all those with party tickets mucked in setting up for some fun and games (literally!).

We were provided with Dominos pizza, some delicious cakes and free Raspberry Pi Beer from Fuzzy Duck Brewery - Check out there website for how they use Python programming and Raspberry Pi's to brew their ale! 

We played pass the parcel for a goody bag full of freebies - I still haven't forgiven Ben Nutall for making me give up a cool GitHub t-shirt but I did end up with a Drawdio Bausatz -the instructions are in German but look out for a short blog post once I've figured it out... 

I also managed to wangle a GitHub mug to ease the pain of losing the T-Shirt! 

Finally, it was time to chill with my Picademy friends and the guys from the education team... A nice relaxing end to an informative and inspiring day, I'm just gutted I couldn't make Sunday's second innings of all cool things Pi!! 

Who to follow:

Rapberry Pi & CamJam: @raspberry_pi @EbenUpton @CambridgeJam @recantha @Geeky_Tim @RachelRaynes @asbradbury

Raspberry Pi Education team: @MissPhilbin @ben_nutall @dave_spice @clivebeale @jrobinson_uk @martinohanlon @samaaron

Raspberry Pi Certified Educators: @digitaldivageek (me!) @CatLamin @Swaygrantham @Fabteachertips @monkeymademe (Look out for more in future posts as there are too many to list here!!) 

Other great Raspbians: @whaleygeek @ModMyPi @pi_weekly @RasPiTV @JarJarGeek @charwarz @pimoroni @mypifi @ThePiHut @TheMagP1 

Being a 21st Century Teacher (a post I wrote some time ago!)...

When I first sat down to write this I was faces with one HUGE question... Where do I start??!!
So, in true 21st century style, I posted a status on facebook asking my fellow teachers for their first reactions if I said "21st century teaching". As I expected I got a lot of "passionate" responses. I set out looking for honest opinions and so this blog is my "musings", explorations and thoughts around some of the responses I received...

Google.
"Kids can use Google! I suspect that means they can know everything already! Or at least think they do!"
"Students are more accountable for their learning" 
"Teachers and students haven't ever had it so good. How amazing is it to type something into your search engine and find knowledge at the click of a button? Downside is everyone Googles and that means only one thing, students are becoming lazy as a generation, impatient if they have to research or do anything manually."

Personally, I love Google simply for the level of accessibility to information and skills but I do see the validity of the downsides presented in the above responses. I've recently implemented Google Apps for Education in my ICT classroom with my year 9's, they LOVE it! I LOVE it! I'm seeing a whole new side to my students as they exchange spellings via chat, use comments to leave constructive criticism and watch each other typing on their shared documents... it's been amazing to watch some of my students come out of their shells through the medium of Google. I should mention at this point that I teach students with special educational needs and this means not only low literacy and numeracy levels but also low CONFIDENCE in their ability in the classroom. To see them then offer up spellings and corrections with absolute confidence is really something to see. Are my students becoming lazy, impatient know-it-alls? I don't feel mine are as our school focuses so much on improving literacy and numeracy that they are doing things "manually" all the time and a large number of my students are at a low level using computers and technology. However, I confess that I don't have mainstream experience in this! If anything, we are improving DIGITAL literacy (and therefore literacy in general) through the use of word processed learning logs, email and Google. And this is soon to become more of a focus in the ICT classroom as the new curriculum for ICT and Computing brings in a focus on programming languages in September and the use of Raspberry Pi in many classrooms is helping students step out of their comfort zones and think "outside the box." As for accountability for their learning - DEFINITELY! A student came to my lesson on Tuesday this week having gone home, logged into her Google Apps account and carried on with her Google Slides presentation without being asked. It was their first lesson and she'd remembered all her details and shown it to her parents. Isn't this the type of learner we strive to make of all our students? Making it enjoyable and accessible but constantly extending their learning, pushing them to seek out more knowledge independently? And in the 21st century teachers have never had so much equipment available to support learning, deliver exciting, interactive lessons and cater to EVERY style of learner who crosses their classroom threshold.

And it's not just students - parents don't have the the 
skills and knowledge to support their children's learning 
when it comes to technology.

Social Media.
"Twitter and social media is slowly but surely creeping into schools and classrooms..."

And what a minefield it is!! The main walls I've personally come up against in this respect are the issues surrounding child protection and cyber safety. But surely by not allowing them to use these now integral parts of their social lives in a secure and teacher-monitored environment we miss out on a huge opportunity to teach responsibility and  cyber safety? Use of sites/apps such as Blogger, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and more recently SnapChat is a daily part of life now and is used by millions to document and share lives and memories and to keep in touch with friends and family. Students are far too oblivious (or know the risks and ignore them!) to the dangers of adding strangers, sending pictures or becoming embroiled in Cyber-bullying and it is spilling over into the school day. Teachers are dealing with horrific cases of cyber-bullying and child abuse. The  security issues surrounding setting up blog accounts for pupils to share work and log their learning are myriad yet aren't we trying our hardest to engage pupils in improving their literacy and this yet another tool for us to utilise? But how do we keep our pupils safe yet still allow them the freedom to grow, socialise and learn online? How do we monitor"vulnerable" students' activities online outside the classroom? And how do we make sure that ALL teachers, no matter their subject specialisms are equipped to deal with, and feel comfortable with teaching about, issues of cyber safety? Too many teachers don't want to even approach the minefield because they are not confident enough in their own skills both online and with technology in general. I will never forget a fellow teacher who borrowed my ICT suite for a lesson and walked out with the statement "Well that was a nightmare, I'm never using the computers for this lesson again." #gobsmacked!
Of course the other "issue" teachers are raising (and there were too many of these to quote) is that of face to face social skills. Are the next generation losing the ability to interact with each other on a social level in person? Do they grow up to quickly online? Do they know how to play when faced with the playground at school? When I'm on break duty watching them hare around, playing football and climbing on play equipment it certainly doesn't look that way to me.

Technology in general
"With new technology it's so easy and helpful to share ideas with other teachers around the country."
"Fascinating when IT goes down for prolonged period as to which teachers are too reliant on technology."
"Technology is so fast growing now teachers have to keep up with everything going on in the world"
"Many children have great ICT skills, probably better than mine!"

The last of these is possibly my favourite and one of the biggest issues we face teaching in the 21st century. The students we teach have access to EVERYTHING. Many non-ICT specialist teachers are faced with the daunting dilemma of what do you teach a child with better know-how and skills than you? How do you keep up with it all AND manage to write all the reports, carry out data analysis, plan lessons, mark work in a reflective and constructive way, make sure al your pupils know their levels and targets, attend parents evenings, CPD, training and meetings, make resources AND actually teach whilst trying to make sure you have down-time for yourself and a healthy work/life balance? Are schools providing the training on new technology that teachers need to be confident embedding technology into their lessons (I refer you back at this point to the English teacher I mentioned!)? And are some teachers missing out on the wonders of sites like Google Apps and the TES because they're only just comfortable with email and Microsoft Word? I watched a PowerPoint presentation shown in an assembly about two years ago where the teacher was clicking on each slide in the preview pane because they didn't know how to make it come up as a presentation... #gobsmackedagain

And then on the flip-side we have those teachers who having never been without an interactive whiteboard who sink at the first sign of a technological blip... I was quite lucky when training to have an observed lesson go HORRIBLY wrong due to a problem with my PowerPoint... The lesson here? ALWAYS have a backup plan!!

Personally, I love being a 21st century teacher, for me the rewards far out weigh the challenges and I love to learn new things so keeping up with technology as an ICT teacher, to be fair it's almost not really work as it's fun! Are we tired out and stressed? Yes. Could we work better with less pressure to make sure every child reaches a specified (often not by the teacher) level whether or not they've made fantastic progress for themselves? Yes. Should teaching be 100% child focused and not so data focused? Definitely. Do a large number of teachers need better training to help them deal with almost daily technological advancements? Yes.
Would I want to do any other job in the world? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Who am I? What is this blog?

First up, who am I?... I'm a thirty something Computing teacher in a special needs school. I have a
degree in Music and Philosophy and trained originally as a Music teacher... bit of a U-turn huh? Yep, definitely!!

After teaching Music for four years I realised I was losing my passion for it both inside and outside the classroom whilst those around me seemed to be getting more of an enrichment of what they did in their own time from being immersed in it all day? So I took a break, decided I would just have to lump being one of those statistics (you know, one in 4 leaving and all that). I was told in no uncertain terms by EVERY recruitment agency I went to that I had no employable skills or relevant experience for such a competitive job market. WHAAAAAAT?!!! I hear you screaming!! Yep, true that!

So I wound up spending the summer as a temping receptionist at the local probation offices... Not the busy, super organised, highly skilled reception/admin lady, just a receptionist who answers the phone and books in the offenders (through bullet proof glass - but I trained and taught in inner city London so apparently I DID have some relevant experience for this one!). Mostly, I twiddled my thumbs and thought of inventive ways to finish myself off if I didn't get some kind of mental stimulation and my brain turned to jelly leaving me a vegetable. Then the reality that £6.45 an hour wasn't going to pay my bills once my precious savings ran dry hit home. So I started doing supply work. Turns out I hate supply work and teaching a load of kids I don't know something I hadn't planned myself and it turns out a lot of teachers leave tests and exam practice as cover work so I had to sit and once again twiddle my thumbs (which by now were becoming quite muscular from all said twiddling) while they sat in silence. Then I did a days supply in a local special school and everything changed...

I wound up covering ICT for a couple of terms and then landed the job permanently. Suffice to say that coming from a music background this was an entirely different kettle of fish so I had to retrain with regards to my subject knowledge. I was pretty IT savy with regards to use of software but then it all changed in September to Computing and I'm not going to lie "programming" freaked me out (still does to some extent!), but not one to back down from a challenge and being someone who likes to learn I attended Picademy (which was amazing!) and got myself a load of books and some online courses. It's been a very big mountain and I'm still only about 2 meters up!

Jump to three years down the line and here I am, starting to slowly become more confident in my ability of teaching Computing as it's now called but still struggling with Python and screaming in my head that our school network won't allow me to download software or files onto my Pi's!!

She likes to help me with my marking! 

Outside work I'm a big fan of fantasy, horror and sci-fi books/films, I bake and (attempt to) do sugarcraft, I'm a bit of a gym junkie, a trained singer, addicted to Plants 'vs' Zombies and Clash of Clans and because I am such a geek I like to do courses on Coursera. I'm also mother to one crazy little blue furred fluff ball who's antics keep me sane and smiling through the most stressful of times (and as teachers we all know there are plenty of those!! Good job the rewards outweigh them!)

So that's me. What is this blog? Well, hopefully, it's not just an account of my experiences teaching computing inside and outside the classroom/school but also an account of my life as a bona fide geek and a place to share resources with readers and get feedback and ideas from like minded (possibly way more knowledgeable) people!