innovative school curriculum reform

SUBJECTS for CURRICULUM INNOVATION

As a teacher I have developed some innovative pathways to introduce students to the three digital revolutions: computation, communication, fabrication.

1) Turtle art, including the Turtle Art tile project
Turtle art is software which produces beautiful patterns with a simplified coding interface.

This can be a standalone or lead into the Turtle Art tile project which involves some significant transformations from Turtle Art design to Tinkercad to 3D prints and then to a painted clay product.

2) Scratch multimedia story telling
Scratch multimedia coding is for telling stories in an interesting and entertaining way. I have developed several iterations of an 18 lesson course I have taught to Year 7s. Any story can be told.

3) Fabulous Fabrication
Students cycle through the learning of some basics, design, making, collaboration, reflection, debugging and presentation using these materials: microbits, neopixel strips, servos, cardboard, building materials and tools, 3D printers. When I trialled this approach recently with year 8s the sort of things they decided to build with moving parts were a complete exo skeleton, a submarine made from geodesic domes, a sword and scythe weapon set, a mini computer, a dancing cactus and a couple of others.

4) AI pathways
This is the latest big thing. I have found and developed a variety of resources suitable for secondary students. Dale Lane, an IBM developer, has integrated Machine Learning with a Scratch User Interface. Ken Kahn has developed materials using Large Language Models to make web apps, games and more. This can also serve as an introduction to web site design with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Google’s Teachable Machine is another resource accessible to school students.

5) Chess
I have worked as a chess coach. Chess can promote a variety of sought after skills such as complex decision making, logical, rational thinking, time management, mental toughness, resilience, will power, determination and persistence.

6) Drones
I am familiar with the Tello drone and have also built a drone (the Air:bit) from a kit which uses microbits developed by WonderKit Technology, a company in Norway. There are a variety of options here in a rapidly developing field.

7) Python coding
PyGame as an engaging way for students to learn python. Python can also offer a pathway to data science through Jupyter, numpy, pandas and matplotlib.

8) Website design with HTML, CSS and JavaScript

9) App Inventor provides block code (easier to learn) for making apps for any phone

integrating the digital technology curriculum with indigenous knowledge systems

This is a draft overview of exemplars some of which are being developed and others being project ideas in embryo. Please get in touch if you want to help develop these ideas further, or, alternatively, just do it!

It assists teachers in implementing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures cross-curriculum priority from the Australian Curriculum, further integrating ideas from Science, Maths, Art etc. into the Digital Technologies curriculum.

The method employed here is to identify powerful ideas, usually from indigenous culture and express them using Digital Technologies. Initially this is done using Scratch coding to develop algorithmic thinking. I anticipate that this can be further extended into physical computing utilising such devices as the micro:bit, drones, Hummingbird:bit or programs that run on android phones (QR codes, app inventor). I have identified a substantial number of project ideas here but far more could be done.

Some ideas have been adapted from the Melbourne University Indigenous Knowledge site, whilst other ideas have been culled from various media reports or developed by this author.

A note about indigenous icons, animations and sounds: Scratch 3.0 comes with its own prepackaged icons, animations and sounds / music, which makes it easy for new users to quickly develop multimedia applications. What I have done / am doing is compiling a set of indigenous icons, gif animations and sounds / music more suited to indigenous cultural expression. Indigenous icons have been obtained from the web and tidied up (transparent backgrounds) using GIMP. Animated gifs can be imported into Scratch and utilised frame by frame. In this way a library of animations suitable for indigenous themes can be developed. Free sounds is a great source for sounds.

The words identifying the functions of Scratch tiles (move, turn etc.) have been translated into many different languages. I’m making inquiries as to what process would be involved in developing an indigenous language version of Scratch. It would be a tremendous boost to encourage indigenous multimedia coding if this could be achieved.

The Project themes include Navigating Through Country, Fire, Dotted Circle Art Work, Kinship Systems, Indigenous Languages, Drones, Phases Of The Moon, Seven Sisters, Rainbow Serpent and Photography.

RAINBOW SERPENT

The rainbow serpent creates springs, creeks, wetlands. It can also be associated with extreme weather, lightning, thunder and destruction. Either of these themes could be developed in Scratch.

Book reading story link: ‘Warnayarra: the rainbow snake’ by Pamela Lofts

For the images / gifs I’ve been looking for scary serpents or fascinating rainbow effects rather than cute and friendly snake images. Some scary serpent sounds have been downloaded.

NAVIGATING THROUGH COUNTRY

A schematic map is available from the Indigenous Knowledge site. A good starting task would be to duplicate this map in Scratch using the indigenous icons.

I’d encourage students here to then incorporate bilingual features into the project, their preferred native language plus English, using the Scratch pop up messages and text to voice features.

The picture shows some of the indigenous icons (not the map).

FIRE

Smoking out a kangaroo or emu is one of the many uses of fire used by aboriginal people.

Other uses of fire (as well as smoking out animals) include promotion of plant growth, reduction of fuel loads, social (campfire), cooking, communication, funerals, warding off evil spirits, insect repellant and burning spinifex to make glue

A story from the Martu, a central West Australian tribe is how, initially, the blue tongue lizard kept fire to himself. The chicken hawk stole fire from the lizard and gave it to the Martu. The Martu carried a fire stick from camp to camp.

A burn area makes it easier for hunting. New food grows after fire and rain (desert raisins, bush potatoes). Different burns are used for different foods. A small burn for skink, a long burn for a hill kangaroo and a round burn for a mala.

Some Martu art works show patches of fire

Reference to this section: Burning, bushfoods and biodiversity (film, 41 min)

PHASES OF THE MOON

There are dreamtime stories connecting the spotted quoll with the phases of the moon. The moon spirit loses its breath, dies and is reborn.

Mityan’s earthly counterpart is the Quoll or native cat which used to inhabit parts of Victoria and New South Wales. Its white-spotted brown coat is clearly reminiscent of the various phases of the moon, from the slim crescent through to the full moon.

The Scratch cloning feature could be used effectively here, for dramatic effects of the moon.

ASTRONOMY

The Seven Sisters song series stretches across Australia. The videos at the National Museum page Tracking the Seven Sisters are incredibly good

Some features of the 7 sisters video could be emulated in Scratch: metamorphosis of sisters to different forms; art work (circles); background music etc.

DOTTED CIRCLE ART WORK

Culturally Situated Design Tools is an approach pioneered by Ron Eglash et al and adapted for aboriginal central desert art motifs (dotted circles with textured backgrounds) by this author. The picture below shows one variation of a myriad of possibilities (developed with Scratch):

Using Scratch or Snap! we can code the circle in various ways. The code enhances our understanding of the circle and how it can be represented in this medium. This can be done with dots or an unbroken line. To build tools that will do justice to the indigenous art work does take a lot of thought, research, collaboration and design effort. The tools also have to be usable initially by a novice to computer coding. To design all of this becomes complex, so the designer needs to be a good coder with a good understanding of the cultural form too.

KINSHIP SYSTEMS

Taking Arrernte people as an example. All Arrernte have skin names. There are 8 skin names: Kemarre, Perrurle, Penangke, Pengarte, Ampetyane, Angale, Kngwarraye, Peltharre. They get their skin name at birth based on the skin name of their parents. But they get a different skin name from both of their parents. For example, if a woman is Peltharre then, according to culture, she should marry a Kemarre man and their children will be Perrurle.

Using Scratch or SNAP this can be coded using lists, conditionals, input and outputs. It’s a good way to introduce data structures and conditionals to anyone interested interested in this feature of indigenous culture.

LANGUAGE AND QR CODES

An ABC report, Aboriginal Gathang language brought to life for Taree school students, from May 2018 describes how a NSW indigeneous teacher, Jaycent Davis, has installed Gathang language signs throughout the Taree High school and primary school

He has embraced digital technology, using QR codes on the signs, so students can scan them with their smart phones and hear the Aboriginal word spoken aloud.

This great idea could be adapted to any indigeneous language.

MULTIMEDIA TINY DICTIONARY

I have used Scratch to make a tiny multimedia dictionary (voice, pictures / animation, words) for the Australian indigenous Alyawarre language. See the Scratch project here.

Peter Ruwolt had the idea of making template programs using Scratch to support teachers in teaching reading and writing of Pitjantjatjara.

For example: Unmarked object on screen which when you click on it plays a sound of a Pitjantjatjara word, eg. Punu (tree). Another object on screen which contains the word spelt out, punu. The user drags the spelt out word icon onto the sound playing icon and the program generates a reward of some type. Students could then proceed to making their own sound and word objects, creating their own word – sound dictionary

LANGUAGE AND APP INVENTOR

With App Inventor students can develop phone apps for android phones. For example, I have developed an Arrernte Language app, with the help of a friend in Adelaide, to help those learning the language to pronounce the words. With this app someone learning the language can sit with a fluent speaker and if they mispronounce the words the fluent speaker can record a better version.

DRONES

IDX Manager Grant Cameron was invited to present at the World of Drones Congress to talk about IDX's work in regional and remote communities across Australia ...

Grant spoke about the importance of skilling up mob across the country in using technology, and how communities are benefiting from using drones to map and monitor their own country and keep sacred sites, cultural and intellectual property safe.
- from IDX Facebook site, September 27

PHOTOGRAPHY OF INDIGENOUS ART

Overhead time lapse photography as indigenous artists make a painting (Kim Mahood, Mapping and minding shared lands, The Monthly, July 2017 )

“Wallworth used overhead time-lapse photography to film the making of the painting, and the immersive multi-screen result shows the painters materialising, disappearing and reappearing as they create the landscape, dot by dot, on the canvas”

digital innovation in secondary education

The Education and Health Standing Committee (a committee of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly) is conducting an inquiry into Digital Innovation in Secondary Education. (link)

The inquiry will consider:

1. How digital innovation can assist secondary students to learn anything, anywhere, anytime
2. The role of digital technology in addressing secondary student engagement and retention
3. How digital innovation can increase equity of opportunity in secondary education
4. The potential for digital technology to cater to the needs of high performers and at-risk learners in secondary education
5. Challenges to implementation, including provision of digital infrastructure, resources and technical support

In July this year I roughed out some notes addressing these criteria.

Overarching statement:
Computers can be both instrumental and epistemological vehicles for certain powerful ideas / dispositions and hands on practices which can be delivered to those who have missed out (aka the digital divide)

1) Rapid but twisted evolution of the computer revolution

Although computers are everywhere, the hardware, software, applications, programming languages and the practices and theories of educational computing continue to evolve rapidly which makes it hard to keep up to date.

Experts and movements (the new Coding Movement, the Maker Movement) do exist and are very helpful but they don’t always agree. The existence of the vigorous Coding and Maker Movements outside of schools indicates that often schools are not doing the job and also that these movement are highly engaging for many students.

2) The powerful ideas and dispositions

Seymour Papert’s original concept (1) was about using computers to transform the way knowledge developed in the learner’s mind. The subject domain of geometry could be restructured to make it more accessible, meaningful and fun for the learner (aka “hard fun”).

Some powerful ideas can be clearly identified:
eg. debugging of code or working to improve a prototype through repeated iterations requires persistence and is a form of looking at mistakes. There is general agreement of the educational importance of that.

Other powerful ideas arising from computer science can be identified and ways found for them to be taught. However, what history has shown is that the most important thing here is setting up learning environments where an invitation to develop powerful ideas will emerge naturally, rather than being forced. See next section.

Although there has been exaggeration, historically by some, of what can be achieved with computer based learning environments, nevertheless, the practices in most schools falls well short of what could be achieved.

ACARA’s Digital Technology curriculum (2) does outline some of the powerful ideas (as outcomes) but doesn’t explain how to achieve them. Effective teacher training exists through the CSER MOOCs site (3).

The history since computers entered schools shows there are widely different claims and approaches about the best way for them to be used. Some authors have done a good job of sorting through this. To do a thorough review of this literature is an arduous but possible task.

Three game changers have been identified by Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager: coding, physical computing and fabrication. (4)

Collaboration has been identified as part of the desirable culture (Yasmin Kafai/ Quinn Burke (5)) and some software and learning sites have built that into their workings (eg. Collabrify software (6), Scratch3.0 website with their Remix feature(7))

Various names have been assigned to summarise the powerful ideas. These include computational thinking, computer science, computational literacy, computational participation. This theorising is an ongoing process in a relatively new curriculum area. Consensus has not yet been achieved. It is an important discussion which does need to be further analysed and understood.

3) Learning environments

Experience shows that for most students powerful ideas are not learned by force. A more effective approach is to make them conspicuous in the learning environment (by good choice of hardware, software and learning environment) so that their development is encouraged.

For most students, the powerful ideas will only arise from thoughtfully constructed learning environments, a powerful curriculum delivered by teachers who understand the issues.

Such environments have been developed and trialled in the past (eg. Turtle geomety, “Instructional Software Design Project” (8)) and this is ongoing.

Some excellent modern curricula have been developed, eg. Scratch 3.0 curriculum by the Harvard School of Education (9). Some general principles of what works and what should be encouraged can be stated, eg. collaborative work, project work which is personally and socially meaningful with long time slots.

Whole school change / integrated curriculum (STEM / STEAM) is difficult for a variety of reasons:
(a) School leadership may not understand the issues deeply
(b) Teacher training has not kept up with the computer revolution.

Nevertheless, focused change based on teacher enthusiasts is possible. The structural reform which works well involves personally and socially meaningful projects (preferably an integrated STEAM curriculum), sufficient time to develop them with teachers trained who understand the issues (learning environment, hardware, software, child psychology and cultural issues for indigenous students)

4) Cultural focus

Learning environment can be enhanced meaningfully for indigenous learners using Culturally Situated Design Tools. Some exemplary work has been done by the group led by Ron Eglash in the USA over a long time frame (10)

I have developed a few exemplars along similar lines (11)

Much more could be done along these lines. The conditions for success have been outlined in the publications of Eglash et al.(12)

5) Hardware and software

The growing list of hardware to choose from highlights the need for informed evaluation: includes Makey Makey, Arduino, Little Bits, Ozobot, Micro:bit, Chibi Chip, Circuit Playground Express, Lilypad, Bee-Bot, Dash and Dot, Sphero, Edison, Drones, etc.

Some of the important principles have been articulated by those who have developed the best construction kits (13). They include:

• Design for designers – use kits that encourage building and tinkering (iterate, iterate and iterate again)
• Low floor (easy to begin use), wide walls (diversity of possible projects including multimedia) and open windows (collaboration)
• Make powerful ideas obvious but not forced
• Minimalism often works better than feature creep
• You can do quite a lot with a little bit of programming
• Eat your own dogfood (don’t ask students to use software and hardware you don’t like using yourself)

With these principles in mind some of the hardware and software I recommend are Scratch3.0, Turtle Art, Makey Makey, the micro:bit, MakeCode, the Hummingbird:bit and App Inventor (not a prescriptive list)

6) Nuts and bolts

Computers in schools and related hardware is a significant budget item. Many schools have difficulty acquiring sufficient network managers / maintenance staff. Teacher training lags behind the potential of what can be achieved.

REFERENCE
(1) Papert, Seymour. Mindstorms
(2) ACARA Digital Technologies
(3) CSER MOOCs
(4) Martinez, Sylvia and Stager, Gary. Invent to Learn
(5) Kafai, Yasmin and Burke, Quinn. Connected Code
(6) Collabrify apps
(7) Scratch 3.0
(8) ISDP
(9) Scratch 3.0 curriculum
(10) Eglash, Ron et al site
(11) Kerr, Bill
a) Turtle Art design
b) Indigenous icons
c) Arrernte language app
(12) Eglash, Ron et al publications
(13) Construction kits article