Books and articles I am reading 2024

The list will include some significant online articles too:

Benton, Laura; Hoyles, Celia; Kalas, Ivan; Noss, Richard. Building mathematical knowledge with programming: insights from the ScratchMaths Project. (2016)
Dehaene, Stanislas. How We Learn: The New Science of Education and the Brain (2020)
Dennett, Daniel. Intuition Pumps and other Tools for Thinking (2013)
Gee, James Paul. Teaching, Learning, Literacy in our high risk, high tech world: A framework for becoming human (2017)
Gershenfeld, Neil. Self-Replicating Robots and the Future of Fabrication. Lex Fridman Podcast #380
Laurillard, Diana. Teaching as a Design Science: Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology (2012). I really want to read this but too expensive at $219! link, actually found her books at anna's archive
Laurillard, Diana. The significance of Constructionism as a distinctive pedagogy. Proceedings of the 2020 Constructionism Conference. The University of Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, IRELAND
Noss, Richard & Hoyles, Celia. Windows on Mathematical Meanings: Learning Cultures and Computers (1996)
Papert, Seymour. Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas (1980)
Papert, Seymour. The Children's Machine (1992)
Resnick, Mitchel. Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity Through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play (2018)
Taleb, Nassim, Nicholas. Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder (2013)
Wolfram, Conrad. The Maths Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age (2020)

Previous: Books 2023

21stC Maker Education: The Big Picture

These are my more substantial, big picture, publications, gathered in one place (there are many other more detailed descriptions of particular apps or hardware toys I have made not listed here):

My Skinner Moment (April 2024)

Seymour Papert: The Gears of my Childhood (April 2024)

Bits and Atoms, part one (April 2024)

Educational Software: Designed by Kids for Kids (December 2023)

Turtle Art Tile Project: Series of articles (July-November 2023)
learning and teaching Turtle Art
Turtle Art Tile Project Conclusion
Turtle Art Tiles Project

The tower of AI babel (October 2023)

Children are not hackers (October 2023)

Student engagement is a variable (September 2023)

Papert's ideas: Mainly from Mindstorms (September 2023)

The Inevitable: Introduction (August 2022)

Innovative 21stC Maker Education Pathway (April 2022)
an innovative 21stC maker ed pathway (part two)
an innovative 21stC maker ed pathway (part one)

Whittlesea Tech School (April 2022)

innovation meets resistance: the war between ancients and moderns (April 2022)

Own your own factory, that makes more factories (March 2022)

Organising a 3D printer building activity (January 2022)

the 3 game changers: high level overview of the possibilities (September 2021)

21st Century Curriculum (September 2021)

Thoughts on reading Paulo Blikstein, the founder of the Fab Learn Schools Movement (August 2021)

dotted circles revisited (July 2021)

The Wider Walls in a book commemorating the 50th anniversary of the seminal paper by Cynthia Solomon and Seymour Papert, “Twenty Things to Do with a Computer.” (April 2021)

Self sufficient production (brief update of the Fab Lab proposal: April 2023)
Your town need a community Fab Lab (July 2021)

Maker Space and Middle School Curriculum Reform (June 2021)

don't separate the what from the how (January 2021)

Culturally Situated Design Tools: Dotted Circles Exemplar (December 2019)

The three game changers and disadvantaged youth (Nov 2019): presented to and discussed with Leon Tripp, Regional Youth Programs Coordinator, Southern Region, Department of the Chief Minister and Cabinet

integrating the digital technology curriculum with indigenous knowledge systems (October 2019)

how to evaluate construction kits: ten design principles (July 2019)

my evolving mangle -> ethnocomputing (July 2019)

Digital Innovation in Secondary Schools (July 2019) Submission to The Education and Health Standing Committee (a committee of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly) inquiry into Digital Innovation in Secondary Education

The teaching of coding (Jan 2019)

an old quote from Hal Abelson (December 2018)

technology as trickster, revisited (April 2018)

why software might be superior knowledge (April 2018)

ClimateTheMovie

ClimateTheMovie is good. Look it up. It is being banned on vimeo so I won't provide a link. The version I saw was put up on X by Tom Nelson.

Some new ideas (for me) in there too, eg. that supernova increase cloud cover on earth (climate is complicated).

As I watched it I wrote down the names of all the sceptics and looked them up. I've listed them below. Over 20 well informed people, some of them top scientists. Some of them are very interesting people, eg. Matthew Wielicki runs a substack called "Irrational Fear". I haven't read Stephen Koonin's book, 'Unsettled' but he was very good. Some of the interviewees had experienced being socially shunned, had their careers terminated. Lots of scientists around who can't tolerate differences of opinion. Not scientific.

My favourite sceptics were not even mentioned (Judith Curry, MIchael Shellenberger, Roger Pielke jnr and snr). There are LOTS of sceptics out there. I read Pielke jnrs book "The Climate Fix" years ago. But that was more about renewables not being able to do the job.

The "scientific" narrative that there is one major factor (CO2) controlling the climate is wrong but mainstream media has been pushing that for decades. Don't challenge the narrative, you will be cast out. Is global warming (annoying how the anthropenic is left out) an existential threat? I don't think so.

Why do they do it, the alarmists? The film's political narrative is that it's a money spinner (renewable energy) plus the Greens / IPCC have tapped into people's fear about growth, capitalism, environment with some pseudo scientific half truths. They want big government to control sensible pro growth people. Do I buy that? Yes and No. Middle class virtue signalling politics, tread lightly on the fragile Earth. How did it become so strong? Hard to figure. Stephen Koonin points out that even the IPCC is not as alarmist as it used to be. (also Judith Curry, but not in this movie)

Here's my list of thinking people from the movie:
Stephen Koonin, author 'Unsettled'
Dick Linzen, atmospheric physicist
Will Happer physicist
John Clauser, Nobel Prize winner
Ross McKitrick
Stephen McIntyre
Willie Soon
Patrick Moore
Nir Shaviv
Henrik Svensmark
Mathew Wielicki, "Irrational Fear" Substack
Roy Spencer
Sallie Baliunes
Claire Fox
Tony Heller
Austin Williams
Benny Peiser
Stephen Davies
Tom Nelson