Device for specific needs

When I first learned about linux OS and how it can extend the life of older machines, I tried to refurb my sister's ancient laptop that weighed more than a desktop by cleaning it out and booting it on Mint OS.

It worked out surprisingly well. The computer that used to refuse to get past the login screen on Windows xp, was now running quite smoothly. I could browse the web, watch videos, type of documents using the Open source office software.

Then I realised it had a video out port. So I thought, let's see if I can plug it into the TV and watch some YouTube. Sure enough, it worked. There was the odd stutter here and there, but it was watchable.

My thought would move on to seeing if this thing could run any games. I installed Steam and downloaded Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO. It barely ran and I needed to put everything to low settings and even scale down the resolution, making it look like I was playing from a POV of a person with bad eyesight who lost their glasses.

After this, I realised that I spent a lot of time trying to research and figure out how to get games running optimally on an old rig - even though I knew there would rarely be a time I would use it to do so. I didn't really have a purpose for refurbing the machine, just wanted to try.

I remembered doing something similar with those eePCs that were all the rage back in late 2000s, early 2010s. I got one on a super sale (shop misadvertised price, but had to sell them at that since it was on print) and at first I would use it for work (worked at an office at the time), something portable but could run some word processors and spreadsheets. Eventually I started to try and run some games on this thinking it could be a portable games thing. I ended up only being able to run a 90s game - Fallout 2 off GOG (Good Old Games) and I played it probably twice - once on a flight from Sydney to Tokyo and once on a bullet train from Tokyo to Hiroshima. 

So fast forward to today and I got an early birthday present in the form of the ASUS ROG Ally. It is supposed to be like a Steam deck but running Windows 11 so I can play games not just from Steam. 

The first thing I did with this? I uninstalled ALL productivity software. 

I learnt my lesson. The ROG Ally is going to be a machine just for games on the go (and the odd streaming videos via a dock). To be honest, there were tempations while setting up a dock with keyboard and mouse - thoughts of doing work on it, maybe some emergency video editing, etc... It all came down to "maybe if x happened..." or "what if..."

Kind of like trying to build the ultimate robot but you try to make it have no weaknesses and give it protection to everything while making it have the deadliest weapons. In the end it would probably just become a stationary metal cube.

I have a laptop for working on the go. An iPad for consuming media and producing media (Garageband and Adobe Sketch). A desktop for high end gaming and video editing. And now my ROG Ally to play some PC games on the road, or even to stream games via Xbox Ultimate Gamepass or Chiaki (PS Remote Play).

In education, I feel like companies are trying to create these all-in-one solutions. But I always feel these feel bloated and sluggish to run. It also lacks a lot of options to customise because I'm guessing that allowing this could break parts of the software if the wrong options were touched. Some educators want these all-in-one solutions too. "Too many different tools to remember", "Why can't x do y as well?", "It's all just too much" - are some common statements I hear.

However, I think having multiple, purpose-specific tools makes more sense for our profession. If we could learn everything with one approach then everything would be doing it. If we could teach everyone at 100% success rate with one approach, then a computer would be doing it. But we haven't figured these out yet...

Yes it might be more convenient to have everything in one spot. But usually these come at a cost of sacrificing other functions in order to streamline it all. 

Basically, it ends up being a stationary cube. 

Minecraft Education Edition!

So, I am officially a 2018 Global Minecraft Mentor (for Minecraft Education Edition) now. It's really odd because I didn't get it last year and I gave pretty much the same reasons for this year, but I got in!

We had our first conference call today. I was overwhelmed with the amount of work the Microsoft team put in to this. There's so many resources and everyone seemed super helpful and enthusiastic.

I feel like I'm a student again, learning about something new, and being really excited about it. I know I haven't posted in this at all in 2017, (and I've always been meaning to) but this year I will be working harder at finding, no, make that, making time to share my thoughts and experiences.

I started off going through the starter kits they prepared for us on OneNote, and playing through the Tutorial World set up. At first, it was pretty standard FPS fare - W,A,S,D, Space, left click, right click, you know the usual. I've played Minecraft before, but mainly on Creative mode with my 5 year old son, trying to create weird creations. We like to do that with LEGO, so I thought why not try it in Minecraft. But this Tutorial World very quickly covered aspects I had no idea about because it's something you'd need in Survival, like crafting, repairing, smelting, cooking, redstone, etc... It absolutely blew my mind. To think that I completely missed all this - mainly because almost all the tasks I've set in class that allowed Minecraft submissions were done via Creative mode, as they were design tasks. (design a classroom, recreate a scene from the play, etc) But also because most of the material I've watched or read online about Minecraft in the classroom seemed to disregard the whole Survival aspect.

I'm not surprised though. Survival is more like a "game". It could be seen as a distraction to the curriculum they are trying to deliver. But the more I went through all this, the more I thought how this could fit in with the whole gamification I've been trying to do in my classroom the past few years. I've always felt that when you say "Okay children, today we're going to LEARN...", that straight away, I've lost half of them. They've been hardwired to see the words "learn" and "work" as negative things. Why do you think they play all these games? Because it's the opposite of work (to them anyway) and we, as adults, tell them that it's not good for them. Thus they see the value in it!

There's also a lot of STEM possibilities here as well. Our school has been approved to be a part of NSW's Minecraft Education Edition Early Access, so I've asked a few of our STEM class teachers to participate. From just the Tutorial World, the things you can do with redstone, switches, levers and buttons, it's like playing with littleBits and Makey Makeys. On top of that, you have all the crafting and smelting elements - computational thinking, maths and science again. You can grow crops, requiring sunlight, water and dirt, the list goes on. Also, with additional tools like the slates, camera, book/portfolios, I can see how it can integrate so many different Key Learning Areas (KLAs - RE: Subjects). Instead of asking students to submit task reflections separately on Google Docs, I can get them to do it via Minecraft. Instead of typing up progress journal entries, they can do it with the book or just do a visual diary using the camera of the progress.

And the more I went on the more awesome features I found. Like Classroom Mode, I could envision myself being the Gamemaster like in Hunger Games, though I can't spawn monsters, I can still teleport people around the place, change rulesets and send messages to the server. Or Code Connection, where you can connect the game to one of 6 or so different coding applications like Scratch, and the game spawns a little bot that you can use the code to do stuff. I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface here - there's bound to be things on the internet people have figured out with this stuff that is way beyond me - but as you can see, lots of exciting learning opportunities.

Personally, I'd really like to explore the Survival aspect more, and try something related to the Tragedies of the Commons. I've done something like this in class with our fictional world, but I'd like to see if the same thing happens inside the game. I know for a fact there are some students who will be very experienced in this game and would like to see how they use this upper hand.... and if things go south, get them back together and see if they can figure this tragedy out. Is it really the survival of the fittest? Maybe the fittest doesn't mean an individual?

Of course, I'll need to start with simpler projects first. I'll get the new cohort to design the classroom, get accustomed to the login system and controls for the newbies, and also steal an idea I read from a blog post here, challenging students to survive one night and write about it.

Still 3 weeks away until school restarts, so plenty of time to plan, play and test things out... As long as I spend that time wisely!

Stay tuned :)

Some random thoughts

I was watching a video on the Genius of Tyrion, and one of the points they made was how he always tries to empathise with his adversaries and find out what they WANT. He'll do this either by asking directly, "What do you want?" or by other means.

Anyway, it got me thinking, how would I respond if Tyrion asked me that question? I guess I have the same desires as most people; wealth, health, knowledge, power, respect, etc... As a teacher, I've realised that I've been getting my students to ask themselves this, but never really asked it to myself.

So after some thought, I've come to the conclusion that I want to be the best teacher ever. (Very humble, I know) And as many people who set big goals in these terms (eg, best football player, best speller, etc...), it mostly comes down to dedication, persistence and hard work. But to be the best teacher... How would you do that? I guess it depends on one's perspective on what being a "good teacher" is.

For me, having a class score well in tests isn't the ultimate goal. For me, to be the best teacher, it would mean that any students you have will be the best students (in terms of whatever the goal you want them to accomplish is). But then, to have the best students, they would need to have had great teachers along the way to get them there. So in the end, to be the best teacher, you'd need to be in a school with all the best teachers who work together for a common goal - the students.

I think I read an article that elaborated on this (in a much more easy to follow way!) during university, and it really rings true. You can't really be the "best teacher" alone. If you were, then you would be lying to yourself because if you had the "best class", that'd be the accumulation of all the hard work teachers before you, the foundations they laid for you in order for them to be where they are. It really is a heavily team-based task. One weak link/wrong turn along the way and you can lose a handful of students for the rest of their school lives. Or worse, for the rest of their living lives.

I've come to realise that I've been looking at it wrong the whole time. To be the best teacher, we need to work as a team. But then you have to jump over the hurdles of politics, red tape, and the other usual office obstacles.

Hmm.

I guess on the bright side, I have something to work with. A more refined goal. Now, just like I do with Starcraft, basketball, CS:GO, working out, etc... I just need to think of the mini goals to take me in the right direction and checkpoints to measure progress.

Though, I feel that to do this, we'll need to dramatically change the way we look at schools, teachers, students, learning and teaching. Just a hunch. (Just kidding, there's plenty of TEDTalks that address this and lots of various articles if you Google it too I'm sure!)

Anyway, random thoughts of the day, over and out.

Robot domiNATION?! and the notion of CONTROL.

So I went to an IT course last week (it's been a long time, but I am now the IT Coordinator for the primary school that I work at!), and I mainly went because it was about WiFi optimisation, troubleshooting and other setups to help your school's BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) program. Unfortunately, a lot of the things I actually went there to learn were not explained as they were told by the big wigs upstairs- that they were not to disclose that information. So to make a long story short, the course ended up going through various online classroom tools (such as OneNote, Google Classroom, Google Forms), which I am already familiar with, so it ended up being a rather disappointing two days.

I did learn a lot of information about how WiFi actually works, about the different frequencies and channels, etc, but I could've learnt all this online.. and for free.

However, they did show some cool videos at the start to get the motivational juices flowing. One of which was very interesting! I couldn't find the exact video, but the theme is similar to this:

In the video they showed us at the course, the actual figure was that in "15 years time, out of the current 4 billion jobs available worldwide, 2 billion of them will become obsolete as robotics/AI will replace humans to do those tasks."

I started doing some rough searches around the web (since I knew most of the tools they were covering at the course) and it lead me to some great tangential learning experiences! Most of the things I found online made links with the Industrial Revolution, and then I started looking up about Luddites and then about the impact the IR actually had on the entire world. And it really does seem like this rise in technology will be the next IR. There's no way around it, we will all need to adjust, retrain and relearn to be a part of it. Otherwise, we'll just be left behind.

This lead me to thinking about my son and also the year 6 class I'm currently teaching. All this stuff isn't just wishy washy scifi stuff. It will directly affect them. In 15 years they will be 26. If they decide to go through tertiary education (if it even exists in 15 years..), it'd be around the time they just graduated with their degrees and possibly a few years of work experience under their belts. So, it begs the question: "What are we preparing these kids for? Are we preparing them for this big global change?" 

Jobs that are highly regarded such as doctors, are even predicted to be one of the first to be replaced. They also showed us a TEDTalk by Sugata Mitra where he gave primary school students the equivalent of the British university entrance exam and a computer. They were able to score an average of 75%. If a computer can help an 11 year old take a university entrance exam, why are we testing our kids on this knowledge? The great Kevin Honeycutt once said, "If you can Google it, then it shouldn't be in an exam," and I thoroughly agree. We need to start looking at ways to facilitate the students' learning so that they know how to utilise it to their advantage. They all know how to consume it. Probably (most definitely), they know how to do it better than us. But instead of guiding them on how to use it enhance and extend their learning, we're just trying to control it.

Which brings me to the next point. Control. Many teachers have told me their concerns for devices in the classroom. Main concern being, students goofing off and/or being off task. The main message I get from this is, they want total control of the class at all times. Teachers still want to be the director of learning - the what, the when and sometimes even the how. This must be widespread, as in this very course, they also showed us a few tools to "control" what the students can see on their device. Even ways for teachers to see what students are doing on their device. They might as well just scrap devices from their school and go back to pen and paper. There's an abundance of wonderful resources (and of course some not-so-wonderful and some just downright shady) on the world wide web, yet here we were, being shown on how we could force them to only use a particular site! Such a wasted opportunity of wonderful learning possibilities!

Control can also be debated about for all other industries, I mean the current model of education was created due to the demands of the Industrial Revolution, right? Keep workers in check, obedient and follow instructions to a tee. And we all know that in modern times, none of these "worker bees" ended up being a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Gabe Newell (sorry too much CS:GO these days!) Even Thomas Edison was told by his teacher that he should "look for a job where he can use the virtues of his pleasant personality"! Maybe this robot revolution will force a new model of education as well then?

We live in a world where, through technology, the line between work and leisure have become very much blurred. We are able to take work home or even on the road. It enables productivity, when an individual suddenly gets a burst of inspiration, instead of during certain set timeframes. It has even enabled more and more people to make their leisure, their work! But with our current linear approach to education, I find it difficult to see how this will help the students to prepare for, even this current trend of work culture, let alone the upcoming 'revolution'!

One final note about this future of robots and AI world domination. There have been a few characteristics mentioned that humans still possess where robots/AI do not or can not replicate accurately just yet. The four mentioned are:

1. Creativity (Lateral thinking)
2. Empathy
3. Super dexterity (for labour requiring high amount of precision)
4. Entrepreneurship (Risk taking)

So it's not all doom and gloom. Just get ready to embrace the change and be excited to learn new things. We, as humans, still have traits that can benefit the world. I don't claim to have a solution as to how we can prepare the students of today for the world of tomorrow. But I do know that education will need to change in a big way, as it is a crucial element for a child's survival.

Sorry for the few readers that do visit for the lack of posts. I have been so busy trying to adjust to full time teaching the past few years (got my permanency, yay!) and finishing my accreditation (almost done!). I do plan to continue posting ideas/rants/commentary/learning experiences/etc... I always tell myself I'll post more regularly, then forget for a year or two, but I'll definitely try to remind myself more often this time! (I even made a Sticky Note on my second monitor that reads "anything worthy to post today?" Well not yet, but.. NOW I've done it! :))

In hindsight, that 2 day course wasn't really a waste of time, because without attending, I wouldn't have come up with all these thoughts!

I have given the task of creating a "future job" to my class as an end of year mini project. If I get some interesting ones (and I'm pretty sure I will... very interesting mob this year), I will share them here.

Question of the day: What drives you to teach everyday? (Please don't say something clever like "my car" or "my wife" or "my chauffeur" or.. you know what I mean)

Phwoar.. I just learnt Kung-Fu - Being plugged in

It has been a very long time since a proper post, but I have been busy trying to graduate, work and take care of the wifey. Now I will be busy working, taking care of wifey AND (drum roll) a new baby boy.
Yes that's right, this noobie just got himself a nublet.

I have been asked by a school I am working at, to help with using iPads in the classroom. Mainly this will be for stage 3 students (grades 5-6). So I went home and started looking up some useful apps and errm, uses, of the iPad in a classroom setting and of course whilst doing this, checking my emails, tweets, facebook, youtube and forums. In the background I had a playlist of podcats and songs chugging away as well. Suddenly, it dawned on me.
I am not getting ANYTHING done! (gasp/shock/really?!phwoar!!)

Well actually, I still was, but in my own multitasking ways. I had my Diigo bookmark bar saving every relevant page for me to check on my iPad in bed later. I made a playlist of the new videos from the channels I'm subscribed to in Youtube, also to view on my iPad in bed later. I had facebook Sims Social app open on my second monitor (because it is so depressingly slow, it is a good game to play whilst doing other things) whilst waiting for some of these iPad in classroom videos to load.

So I guess I lied. In the end, I did get a lot done, but the problem for me is, I'm not sure how much of this information will be digested by my memory. If I got rid of the so called 'distractions' and solely concentrated on one task, it may as well help with the amount of information retained afterwards, but is it more effective?

We have phones, tablets, computers and now even TVs that can display websites, videos, emails and more. Isn't it more effective then, to do it all at once, save/check for later, bookmark/tag for reference etc, all the while doing other menial digital tasks? I mean, sure, I won't retain or recall most of the information I find, but do I really need to memorise it all? I just need to pull out my phone, push the bookmark link, and voila! Instant information. (unless you have a bad mobile provider or terrible, terrible wifi)

This is of course all subjective and varies from person to person. But I was just thinking about it the other day, I wake up, wash, dress, eat and leave for work. During the drive to work I listen to various podcasts (usually on games that I currently play). I normally arrive early so I grab a coffee, and goto smh.com.au for morning news feeds. During breaks, I check facebook or twitter for any interesting posts and also address any important emails. After work, I listen to more podcasts on the way back, arrive at home, get changed, eat some food, depending on the day do some exercise, turn the computer on and prepare for any additional work. While doing this, as mentioned above, I will be multitasking with other 'leisurely tasks.' Normally when all this is done, I would play some games for an hour or two, go up to bed, flick the iPad on, and watch something before falling asleep.


-Some (kind of) random thoughts whilst I was thinking about this-

Come to think of it, I never watch TV anymore. Only reason I would turn the TV on, is to play the PS3...
or watch a blu ray.

But there are still times, where I feel like all this information is too much. Sometimes I step outside the house and leave the phone inside, so I can be 'unplugged' for five minutes or so.

I wonder how it is for students? Maybe they are more used to this because they grew up with it? Though at the same time, they go to school and in some cases, force fed even more information. And if this information feels irrelevant to them, their minds may put it at the back of the queue.

In most schools, there is no social bookmarking, there is no google or wikipedia. Mainly because these devices are prohibited. So the students who can absorb and recall the most info will be at an advantage.

I feel that we are at a stage it is not about what you know, but how you use that knowledge. Information is everywhere and most of it freely available. Information is no longer a skill, but a tool. The new age is about creation of content, rather than consumption of it.

Though not a direct connection, this video gives an example of just how YouTube is driving this innovation.

Sorry for the very scattered structure of this post. It is being written whilst (you guessed it) I am multitasking with other things! I've come to the conclusion that this is the only way I will be able to put any thoughts down in this blog because in the past I have always tried to 'make time' for it, but I never get around to it.

Will be experimenting with alternate ways to post in the future (try it via smartphone or tablet perhaps?) and see which way/s feels best to do so. I have been making notes in my phone for any ideas I have been getting for the blog since last year, so this page WILL be getting many more, frequent updates.

So to the few who do read it, what do you think about being plugged in? Do you feel it is too much? Do you think it is not enough? Let me know in the comments below.