Circles and Symmetry

A Jagdish Sohal Production

[jagsohal]

https://soundcloud.com/jagsohal/latte-demo

[jagsohal]

No Sax Before The Fight (V2)

[jagsohal]

No Sax Before The Fight

[jagsohal]

[jagsohal]

[jagsohal]

[jagsohal]

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)

[gamebased]

Coding with a purpose

Today I entered the world of Computercraft with my students, working with different youtube tutorials.  The good thing about this tutorial was that I didn’t have to work for a long time before I actually saw the code “doing stuff”. I got to try the If - then - else command in a securiy program that protected my house. And seeing the code do stuff is what gave the learning experience meaning. I think letting our students see that they can use code to manipulate their surroundings is the best way to learn. And what better place to do that than in Minecraft?

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. 

[gamebased]

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.

[gamebased]

Gamedesign as a learning environment

Here are some samples of the games students built during our one week Unity crash course. 

See my reflections in the following post.

[digitalroadtrip]

Korg Gadget

At £20 it might seem expensive in “app land” -  but for music makers, it’s a cliche to say this… but this is a game changer.  There is a real sense with Korg that they have a plan and pathway. If you are involved in music tech you will be wanting to use this in class/studio :-)

A little self digital self indulgence…

[digitalroadtrip]

Supporting Computing from Digital Roadtrip on Vimeo.

[digitalroadtrip]

Literacy and the iPad BETT2014 from Digital Roadtrip on Vimeo.

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.

[jagsohal]

[gamebased]

Playing to learn: Screenshots from our sessions of play. The Portal team are working on designs with a different approach to the testchambers. Can they create a new game within the game?

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.

[jagsohal]

Questions for Higher Education

Are many of our institutions become stalled, merely tinkering with institutional VLEs, rather than moving forward? Have we made our institutions' physical spaces more informal and accessible whilst making their cyber spaces more complex and impenetrable? Are our institutions keeping up with our students' experiences and expectations of the capacity and diversity of digital technology? Should we be making a distinction between those technologies institutions use to manage institutional assets and activities, such as teaching materials, student enrolments, computer aided assessment, plagiarism, library books and room bookings, and those technologies that we could use to connect, share and discuss ideas and issues with our students, such social networks, mobiles and instant messaging? Should learners learn on their own devices, with which they're confident and familiar, and on the software and network technologies that go with them, whilst institutions stop taking the responsibility for IT provision and divert IT budgets to address any equity and quality issues?

[jagsohal]

Google Apps - Why don't teachers make use of this free technology?