It has been a whirlwind couple of months with bid writing and project work and I’m slowly getting back on top of it all, which means I can finally announce a new media literacy project – Social Media Resilience Toolkit or SMaRT-eu which seems particularly timely in this age of conflicting and confusing health advice,…
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Integrating STEAM and Computational Thinking Development by using Robotics and Physical Devices (Acronym: RoboSTEAM) is a new project funded under the European Erasmus+-program, Key Action ‘Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices’: Strategic partnerships for school innovation.
The project aims to integrate what is called STEM, explicitly adding the subject of arts – towards STEAM: Science Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics. Physical computing environments for school use (pre-university level) are identified in the countries. At KIT’s Institute of Vocational and general Education we will look at more playful, visual and art-based processes for teaching and learning about computational modeling and thinking by bridging technology, art and design processes. For example, haptic materials such as smart textile and wearable projects will be developed by pupils supported by students of engineering pedagogy.
The project will define a methodology and a set of tools that will help learners to develop computational thinking by using/programming PD&R in pre-university education stages. The project will also improve teacher education, providing them with a framework for easy STEAM integration in different educational contexts by providing guidelines for good practices and lessons learned adapted to different contexts. All these products will have been tested in different countries and cross-validated in different higher education institutions.
RoboSTEAM’s innovation is based on the following items: It defines a framework and a set of instruments for integrating STEAM and develop computational thinking in a replicable, effective and measurable way. The framework is based on a Challenge Based Learning approach which implies dealing with general and social problems. It applies Policy Development and Research (PD&R) to do this, which aims to attract students to study scientific disciplines.
Co-ordinator is Miguel Ángel Conde González, PhD,
Universidad de León, Área de Arquitectura y Tecnología de Computadores
Dpto. Ingenierías Mecánica, Informática y Aeroespacial.
Escuela de Ingenierías Industrial e Informática, ES
Partners are
• University of Eastern Finland, School of Computing, KUOPIO, Finland
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Vocational and General Education KIT
• University of Salamanca
• Instituto Polytecnico de Braganca, Pt
• IES ERAS De ReNUEVA, ES
• Colegio Internato dos Carvvalhos, Pt
The Media in Action project has published its resource bank of hand-picked, tried and tested tools, literature, how-to guides, articles, videos and inspiration. The resources are split into our 7Ws; What – with resources on historical context, the definition and concepts of convergence literacies, pedagogy, and the era of prosumerism. Why – on media citizenship,…
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The Media in Action project has published its resource bank of hand-picked, tried and tested tools, literature, how-to guides, articles, videos and inspiration. The resources are split into our 7Ws; What – with resources on historical context, the definition and concepts of convergence literacies, pedagogy, and the era of prosumerism. Why – on media citizenship,…
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Exciting things are always happening at Pontydysgu but this one I’m particularly looking forward to. From January 2018 I will be working with, COFAC in Portugal, Cooperativa Nuova Dimensione in Italy, Grupo Comunicar Andalusia and KIC Malta on a Media Literacy for all pilot project funded by DG Connect Media in Action is a project in […]
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The Erasmus+ TACCLE3 coding project is organising an in-service training course in 2018 on how to start with teaching coding at primary school. All costs are covered by an Erasmus+ KA1 grant. But your school should apply for a grant with your own national agency for Erasmus+ before February 2nd.
Contact jens.vermeersch atnospam g-o. be, if you have any questions.
Join us on the Taccle3 coding training course in Dillingen in March 2018.
TACCLE 3 Coding is a new research project which looks at Teachers’ Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments in the field of coding. It is funded (from 9/2015 to 8/2017) under the European Commission’s Erasmus+ program, key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices.
The project’s aims are:
• To encourage and support teachers to introduce coding, programming and / or computational thinking as part of the curriculum in the 4 – 14 classroom to better equip pupils to develop the skills needed by the European labor market.
• To broaden teachers’ digital skills base and enhance their professional competence
• To show how entrepreneurial skills can be developed and integrated with programming skills The project objectives are:
• To produce an on-line support package of ideas, activities, materials and downloadable resources for teachers who are teaching coding or programming or who want to.
• To provide CPD courses in a variety of formats and a template and materials for local delivery.
• To establish a dialogue between teachers and programmers, teachers and resource producers, teachers and organizations involved in teaching coding and to act as an agency for exchanges of curricula, ideas and practice.
The demand for ICT professionals continues to grow. The European Commission estimates there will be 700, 000 unfilled vacancies for ICT practitioners in the EU by the year 2016. Of all job vacancies in ICT, computer programmers are the most in demand outnumbering the demand for other IT professionals by a factor of 5 to 1. The greatest demand is in UK, Germany, Estonia and other Northern European countries, which reflects the make up of the project partnership.
Despite this skills shortage, there has been limited response from the European education system. Estonia has already introduced computer programming for all ages across the school curriculum, Denmark partially so. Others are about to introduce it (such as England in 2014) and others are considering it (e.g. Finland, Ireland). Some German Länder such as Bavaria are well advanced; others are not. In other countries, whilst not part of the compulsory curriculum, there are agencies and individual teachers who are trying to introduce programming into the classroom. What seems inevitable is that all member states must surely move in this direction if they are to meet the skills demands of the European economy. The biggest problem we face is a desperate shortage of teachers. Mathematics and computer-science graduates generally choose more lucrative trades; the humanities and social-science graduates who will find themselves teaching coding will need plenty of support as will the primary teachers. In addition the OECD reports that more and more computer programmers prefer to be self-employed or working in micro-SME partnerships and not committed to one particular long-term employer and the vacancy market is beginning to reflect the increase in a new form of employment in the ICT sector. For this reason the project is looking to produce resources for developing entrepreneurship skills alongside programming skills.
The project will:
· Develop a website of activities and ideas that teachers can use in the classroom to teach children about coding and programming. These will support diverse curricula across member states and, where there is no formal curriculum, support individual schools and teachers who want to introduce computing / informatics / programming etc. in their own practice
· Develop some affordable resource kits that can be downloaded or for which instructions for making them can be provided on-line. This could result in selling the resource kits after the project as part of the exploitation and sustainability.
· Design and pilot some staff development opportunities and learning resources for teachers who are total newcomers to programming.
· Stimulate a positive attitude towards STEM with young children
· Test and evaluate existing resources such as the range of software currently available to help children develop programming skills.
· Explore and follow up existing research and projects addressing this issue (e.g. work on Tangible User Interface for children.)
· Enter into policy dialogue and inform policy in countries around issues concerning the teaching and learning of programming in schools” (source: project proposal).
Co-ordinator: Jens Vermeersch, adjunct van de directeur, GO! Onderwijs van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, afdeling Beleid & Strategie, Internationalisation, Brussels
Project partners:
IBP/KIT, Germany
Pontydysgu, Wales, U.K.,
SGR Antigon Schoöengroep 1, Antwerpen, Belgium
HITSA HariDUE INFOTHHNOLOGIA SIHTASUTUS, Research centre, Tallinn, Estonia
TALLINN University, Tallinn, Estonia
UNIVERSiDAD DE SALAMANCA, Spain
AALTO UNIVERSITY, Helsinki, Finland
University of Eastern Finland, School of Computing, KUOPIO, Finland
First the official stuff (from the press release).
“Talented UK students have won three out of four prizes in a worldwide competition to create a new app to help people develop their career.
The CareerHack open data contest was launched in November last year by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), and asked developers around the globe to build an app based on the UK Commission’s “LMI for All” open data, which contains information on the UK labour market, including employment, skills and future job market predictions.
First prize winner for the competition was Tomasz Florczak from Logtomobile in Poland, who won £10,000 for his innovative Career Advisor app, while 16-year-old school student Harry Jones, from Bath, took home a £5,000 prize for his Job Happy entry.
The contest also had a special prize specifically for entrants aged 16-24 in Further Education. In this category 22-year-old IT apprentice Phillip Hardwick won the £5,000 prize for his entry, Career Path. And judges were so impressed with the quality of entrants from the category that they introduced an additional runner-up prize of £2,500, which went to a team effort from students at Barking and Dagenham College in London.
Competition judge Dr Deirdre Hughes OBE, Chair of National Careers Council and a Commissioner for UKCES, said:
“As judges we were all highly impressed at the outstanding contributions made by our winners, and of the talent and ability being displayed by the next generation of up-and-coming developers and programmers.
“The quality of the submissions was so high we felt the need to introduce an additional prize, but all those that entered should be extremely proud of their efforts.”
The judging panel was made up of technology experts from Google, Ubuntu and HP, alongside representatives from the UK Commission and John Lewis. Judges made their decision based on how innovative the entry was, how viable it was as a working app, the potential it had for making an impact on society and the overall quality of the packaged app.
CareerHack judge Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager at Google UK said:
“At Google we’re well aware of the importance of making data open and encouraging young, creative talent. CareerHack was a fantastic example of this and we were very impressed by the high standard of entries from everyone who entered – the fact that three of the four winners are young people at the start of their careers is fantastic news. We hope these prizes will enable them to get a head start down whichever career path they choose to follow.”
Fellow CareerHack judge Cristian Parrino, Vice President of Mobile and Online Services at Ubuntu, added:
“The CareerHack competition demonstrated how an set of open data can be used to cater to the needs of people at different stages of their career paths. It was wonderful to see the different flavours of high quality applications and services built on UKCES’s data.”
LMI for All has been developed by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, working with a consortium led by the Institute for Employment Research at Warwick University and including Pontydysgu, RayCom and Rewired State.”
Pontydysgu’s bit in all this is managing the technical side. I have to say I was a bit sceptical of producing an APi and then opening it up and encouraging contributions through a competition, but having looked at the videos I am gobsmacked by the inventiveness of teh programmers who entered. We will be looking in more depth at what has been produced. We are also seeking feedback from all those who participated and planning more events later in the year. If you would like to know more (and particularly we would be interested in similar approaches to Open data for Labour Market Information in other countries) please contact me at graham10 [at] mac [dot] com.
The RadioActive project is ramping up fast over the summer.
Here is the latest press release from Dragon Hall youth club in London.
Dragon Hall, in association with UEL, presents its latest broadcast on RadioActive 101, airing live from 7pm (BST) on Thursday 15th August 2013.
Hosted by resident presenters Sam & Danni, this broadcast sees Education put in the spotlight.
Contributions on this topic come from show regulars The Squad, Young People for Inclusion & Dragon Hall, joined this month by young people from The Chinese Community Centre in Soho and special guests Ecolonias, all the way from Buenos Aires in Argentina.
In addition to our main theme, there is the usual focus on music made by young people, as well as inner city life with The Urban Show.
Highlights for this show include-
http://www.radioactive101.org.uk/audio/details/broadcast-15th-august-2013/
So, if you want to hear the voice, interests, needs and concerns of young people from across London, then tune in this Thursday from 7pm BST-
http://uk2.internet-radio.com:30432/live.m3u
or check us out-
website- www.radioactive101.org
facebook- https://www.facebook.com/RadioActive101
twitter- @radioactive101
It has been silent here for a while, which has to do with the ongoing research and teaching activities related to new projects such as the research project „MediaArt@Edu“ (ACRONYM), which looks at artistic approaches to support media literacy of young people in vocational preparation and vocational orientation programs.
It aims to develop new concepts to enhance digital media skills of young people. The project is co-ordinated by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’s Institute of Vocational and General Education and realised in collaboration with the Center for Art and Media ZKM’s department of Museum Communication, the German Federal Agency of Employment Karlsruhe as well as the Hardtstiftung e.V. Karlsruhe, a youth welfare service for young women.
The project is funded for 3 years under the German research programme entitled „strengthening media skills for sustainable media education in vocational qualification” of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
It aims to scrutinize artistic approaches and new mentoring and portfolio concepts to be applied in media technology education with young participants of vocational preparation and vocational orientation programs. In vocational preparation measures outside of vocational schools, young people are prepared for work or to take up a formal vocational training place. They are placed in a transit situation, hoping to get employed in the future.
However, in the project, a new concept to support digital media literacy of young people is developed, tested and evaluated. It brings together concepts of art, technology and vocational education as well as a specific mentoring model including portfolio research books to improve processes of self-reflexion of the learners.
In the project students of pedagogy, vocational education, engineering pedagogy as well as art and technology education accompany the young participants of vocational preparation programs. We intend to realize an education-through-art approach to technology by means of introducing artistic processes with digital media as well as didactic concepts of art education to vocational preparation. By improving media literacy of the young participants, the project aims to motivate them imagining and shaping pathways towards their own vocational biography and a perspective of future employment.
For further information, the (German) Web site can be accessed at http://www.ibp.kit.edu/berufspaedagogik/media-art-edu.php
English information will be available soon as well.
Cyborg patented?
Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.
Racial bias in algorithms
From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter
This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.
Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years
Via The Canary.
The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).
Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.
The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.
Quality Training
From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.
Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.
We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.