Can problem-solving be taught? September 27, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , 4commentsThe National Curriculum for ICT requires the development of independent thinking and problem solving skills, but I see very little of this happening in practise. Prescriptive teaching, which is sometimes necessary, is over deployed in my opinion. Do this, do that, click here, then click there. Last week I introduced a year 6 ICT lesson on spreadsheet modelling. I know that this class have had good teaching all about spreadsheets and the use of formulae in year 5 so I thought they ought to be capable of doing a little bit of thinking for themselves. So as an experiment, instead of spending 10 minutes showing them what to do, followed by a period in which they try, with assistance, to reproduce the same results, finishing up with a hasty plenary if you’re lucky - I negotiated with the class teacher to abandon that standard lesson structure and instead set them a simple task. I wrote on the whiteboard:
TASK 1: Design a spreadsheet which will calculate the 4 times table, showing results for 1 to 10.
You have 10 minutes to do this.
Result: Initially a lot of complaints, “what do we have to do?” “aren’t you going to help us?”
Then eventually they settled down and started trying to get the work done. I pointed out that the word calculate was emphasised, then after about 8 minutes, some children were claiming to have done it. I went around the room and uncovered that without exception they all “cheated” by laboriously typing in a completed times table rather than using a simple formula.
Thinking on my feet……
“Time is up. Now I want you change it into a seven times table”
They seemed to think they could do that
“You have 1 minute”
uproar!
I left them to it for a bit and then started the countdown.
“Right, nobody has managed to complete the task so I’ll show you some techniques which you could have used.”
The difference being that they actually watched and listened and learned for once. Then they went away and worked hard at trying to use the techniques they’d been shown.
I called this article “can problem-solving be taught” and I’m a long way off that yet, but I feel it’s a start.
Bridge Revisited September 27, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : soundvideo, transport, movie clips, learning , 3commentsReturning from Cornwall means crossing the Tamar in the opposite direction over Brunel’s bridge again. I think the twin ferry ports of Torpoint and Saltash look quite pretty from above. ( Note the genuine accent from the train manager, not much like the people on Doc Martin )
<< view brunel-m.mov quicktime movie >>
The picture quality is an improvement on “stepping stones” through using the following process:
*DVcam records onto DV tape
*Capture to ‘Image mixer’ software which comes with camera. - rough edit to retain only usable footage
*Exports only as mpeg ( mixed sound and video )
*input to Cleaner, export as .dv ( takes hours, but only way to retain the synchronous sound )
*import to iMovie - further editing
*export as quicktime movie in DV quality ( big file )
*open in Quicktime Pro - tiny edits for finishing
*compress and export using setting “DSL medium quality”
Final copy is 4Mb+ , 2 minutes video with sound at size 320X240 without much pixellation or blocky compression patches.
The process involves 4 pieces of software, which is one more than would normally be necessary if using more compatible kit such as a camcorder which can be captured straight into iMovie or Final Cut.
Swansea September 23, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , comments closedLast weekend, like many other parents, I drove hundreds of miles and back again to deliver a slightly nervous 18yr old to begin a new independent life at University. But what could have been a slightly sad time for myself, brought nothing but proud joy at the situation which Evan has landed himslef in. Swansea is a wonderful location, the campus is between the sea and parks, and his course is an impressive 4 yr Master of Engineering degree. It was very much a last-minute enrolment and I think Evan was as relieved as I was when it all actually came true.
Well done Evan!
Below is a small album of snaps I took during the short time I was there, the lovely big airy room in the central campus halls, the view of the Union Building, the Mumbles, view from “salt” restaurant and a couple of low quality pics of Port Enyon and Oxwich bay, Gower.
Now that Evan finally has his Linux box connected to a decent wireless Internet service it won’t be long before he starts up his own blog - then again he may be too busy playing football and all those other things……
Computer Operator September 23, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Uncategorized , comments closed
I used to work with mainframe computers, just like the one in the photo except ICL instead of IBM. See those huge reel-to-reel magnetic tape decks, I think we had 12 of them and a bank of 8 exchangeable multi-platter disk drives, each one the size of a washing machine and able to provide a massive 30K of online storage capacity after about 3 minutes getting up to speed.
Jobs were initialised by feeding a short piece of paper tape with punched holes in it into a reader. The main console would then report the status of the job queue by printing it out on a teletype, and you could watch the flashing lights as well. With practise you could get to know what was going in the main processing unit ( next door ) by listening to the console speaker, which buzzed and crackled as the sophisticated GEORGE3 operating system swapped processes in out of the incredibly expensive 128k solid state memory ( sort of like a fridge/freezer, but blue).
There were two such machines in the whole county, one at the County Council and one at the big china clay mining company. That 128k, by way, is 128kwords not bytes. A word, in ICL’s terminology, was deemed to be four characters, and a character was made up of only six bits - not eight. Binary is very simple, and 6 binary digits together can hold a largest number of 111111 - which is 1+2+4+8+16+32 = 63.
Now if you add together the minimum number of punctuation and control characters, and the numerical characters 0-9, there weren’t enough codes left to have the entire alphabet duplicated in both upper and lower case - so THAT MEANT THAT EVERYBODY HAD TO GO AROUND SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. WELL, THE NOISE OF THE PRINTERS WAS DEAFENING ANYWAY, BUT YOU KNOW SOMETHING? THEY WORKED TIRELESSLY DAY AND NIGHT PRINTING OUT BOXES AND BOXES OF MULTI-PART CARBON COPY CONTINUOUS PRE-PRINTED STATIONERY REPORTS WHICH WERE THEN CARRIED INTO THE VARIOUS OFFICES AND DUMPED IN A BIG PILE IN A CORNER WHERE NOBODY WOULD EVER READ THEM. TELL THAT TO THE POOPED OUT COLOUR INK-JETS AND CRASHED LASERS OF TODAY AND THEY WOULDN’T BELIEVE YOU!
Stepping Stones September 19, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : soundvideo, movie clips, wildlife , 3commentsThis is a short film I made last holidays, in Penpol creek, Cornwall. It has taken ages to find a way of producing a compressed film with sound in quicktime format from the original muxed mpeg with the equipment available to me. The final result has poor quality video for the file size, and the sound drops in one or two places but I’m publishing it anyway because I feel it demonstrates progress in other ways.
I decided to experiment with this technique of talking through the camera after viewing Linda Hartley’s “the tasting garden”
( For those on dialup, there’s a slightly smaller version here )
Canterbury Cathederal September 19, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art , 3comments** View Canterbury Cathederal Picture Album **
A small album of photographs taken with the low evening sun shining directly onto this famous old building. You may note that pictures “Cathedral 3″ and “Cathedral 2″ are identical in composition, but with different lighting, so which do you prefer?
Trackbacks September 17, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning, meta-blog, internet , 5commentsThis blog has trackbacks enabled. For those who use blogger, blogdrive, and so on this may be an unfamiliar concept, and it’s fairly new to me so I shall attempt an explanation.
comments
Comments added to blog entries help to give the blog author a sense of audience, and motivation. They also build community links, because if I comment on your blog, you can usually click on my name in your comments list and that will redirect you to my blog and vice versa. But how can you follow which people’s blogs I may have left a comment on ? - you can’t. So If I spend a lot of my time writing comments on other people’s blogs, then my writing is dissipated all over the place with no easy way of tracking it.
blogs
So some people write blog entries which refer to other people’s blogs instead of writing comments. Nancy White’s blog, for example, has a lot of these type of blog entries, linking to a wide network of individuals and resources.
But how do you know if somebody has blogged about you?
trackbacks
This is where trackbacks come in, to complete the circuit and connect related blogs in both directions. It’s easiest to give an example: Two weeks ago, I finally published a little video and discussion starter about waste incineration. There are no comments on that entry, but if you look underneath the entry where it says “comments (0)” it also says “Trackback(2)” Click there, and you will see that two people have decided to write something related. Adam Timworth’s is just a quick comment and link really, but it’s quite likely that Cllr Andrew Brown came across my article as a result of reading “one man and his blog” and then decided to supply quite a lot of useful information on the subject, including a timely notice about the London open house event this Sunday.
pings
I lament the dilution of useful, precise technical jargon ( on Contentious Weblog ) and “ping” used to have a specific meaning on the Internet, to do with testing the connectivity time between nodes. The Blogging world has developed it’s own specific meaning, where a ‘ping’ is a notification to a blog server to let it know that a blog entry has been made on another. That’s how these two people managed to get my blog to link to their own articles, they ‘pinged’ my blog so they appear as trackback entries on it. This is done by scooping up the trackback URL for the entry, which appears underneath “Continuing the discussion…..” and in this case is http://slartibartfast.ultralab.net/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/150 , and then pasting this into the ‘ping’ box in their own blog software when making their entries. In some cases I understand, the software can be set to automatically check all of the links within an entry and set up the appropriate pings.
South Bermondsey September 17, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : London , add a commentTwo views from South Bermondsey station last night.
Millwall were 1:0 up at the time..
And
There is an outbreak of Canary Wharf cloning on the isle of Dogs.
Canterbury September 16, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art , 1 comment so farI went to Canterbury last Saturday, and while I was there I had a chance to take one or two photos. Here’s the first :
Alliterative addiction September 10, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Uncategorized , 2commentsChelmsford chapter champions chew choice chances.
Wanting wonderful writing, wishing ways with words
But busy brains bear banale basics
Tempting technical training to trace two tracts
So students sorrow seldom seems scarce
Alternative adherants ask for answers and actions
Having helical hassiendas hinders helpful hearts
Quietly querying quixotic quirks.
( I haven’t got a clue what this is all for, but I thought i’d join in anyway )
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
