Brian Sharland

I was originally thinking of calling this post 'Dude, where's my curriculum?' in honour of that seminal stoner movie starring Ashton Kutcher and the guy from American Pie however I came up with two immediate problems. One I wouldn't be able to find any CC images related to the movie and two it would imply that anyone coming to #digitalstudies and not finding a traditional curriculum is on the same intellectual level as the characters in that movie. Not true obviously!

But the movie does serve as a useful starting point for understanding why #digitalstudies does not contain a curriculum or programme of study like you might be expecting. Teachers may come to our subject expecting something normal to be there and it's not so how does one find the 'curriculum' in #digitalstudies?

A key theme I have been repeating for a while for the subject is flexibility. It is being built in from the basics upwards to allow for teachers to customise what their pupils do in class. A programme of study or curriculum I feel is the opposite of flexibility. It proscribes all the learning paths which pupils must take and as a result I feel that the truly innovative ICT teachers I have come across in the last few years have been the ones who have ignored the programme of study and developed their own approach to the subject.

So how would #digitalstudies answer this situation? We have our four strands: digital literacy, technology, authoring and society. These may be taken as the basis for a curriculum certainly but I see them simply as a way to 'anchor' the entire subject. They encapsulate what we want to prepare, teach and assess at a basic level.

Projects are the next big thing to consider in #digitalstudies and it's through these that we can start to find our curriculum. At the moment @infernaldepart is working on building our moodle where many of our projects will be based and our wiki does have some initial indications of projects. As these develop I would like to see each project come with their own mini-curriculum built into that project so if you do a term project, two term project or a year project you know what the 'curriculum' is for that project.

So a teacher planning out what their pupils are going to do for lets say the three years of key stage 3 would choose a selection of projects which can be done over that time. Each project coming with their own mini-curriculum would then allow the teacher to see what their pupils entire curriculum would be over three years.

The obvious advantage is flexibility. The teacher could then design a course which suits them and their pupils. All #digitalstudies projects should be challenging and in depth and therefore quality would be assured. Progression would be possible to show through effective choice of projects as well as the level of challenge applied in each project.

There may very well be some issues which need attending to when developing this approach. Certainly its quite a radical approach and getting teachers or more accurately SLT at schools on board is going to be tough.

But I like a challenge :-)

Today saw a fast and fantastic discussion take place on twitter between a number of people on the topic of how to assess work within #digitalstudies. It began with @misterel asking how we would be showing progress by pupils - a very reasonable question. To answer it though I will be taking a sidetrack down my recent computer games playing experience.

Two of the last major computer games I have played have been the original Mass Effect and Modern Warfare 2 (I know I am slightly behind ... I blame parenting and Minecraft :-) ). Modern Warfare 2 firstly is a classic example of an on the rails shooter. Yes you can run from one side of the path to another side and do a teensy amount of sight seeing but if you don't follow Captain British Stereotype the next story trigger won't trigger and nothing happens. You exist in a very strictly designed world where you need to progress through the levels and options as set out for you by the game designers. I know for those who are reading this I am probably stating the obvious but hear me out.

Mass Effect on the other hand is less of an on the rails shooter. You are presented with some degree of freedom in the choices you make and can see some effect of those choices. Choose to ask someone nicely and they might offer you something out of kindness or be horrible and they respond out of fear. Once you are on a mission there may be some form of 'rails' but some freedom persists and once out of a mission you can choose to sidestep optional missions and focus only on the most important ones. You are still following what the game designers have decreed but there is a lot more flexibility in the order of choices you can make.

Having mentioned Minecraft as an aside perhaps I can also bring that back in as well and say that even though it's a classic open sandbox game where you are free to make your own choices you are still bound by certain rails and rules. In survival mode youcan't break through the adminium blocks at the bottom of the level and you can't build higher than a certain level.

So how do games like MW2 on the one hand and Mass Effect and Minecraft on the other hand apply to assessment and learning in education. I think that MW2 is an analogy for National Curriculum levels and Mass Effect and Minecraft are an analogy for badges as an assessment method.

As in a game pupils need to make progress through the tasks they have been set and they and the teachers should be able to show that progress. Levels as a concept can work as it allows a pupil to see where they are, what skills they have gained so far and be able to see where they should go next. However the definitions for the levels (and I am thinking just for ICT here) were so arcane i can remember spending forever translating them into pupil speak (and wondering why they weren't in pupil speak in the first place).

Like an on the rails shooter I also thought that levels were restrictive of a pupils progress and ensured that even with separate strands of levels a pupil was in essence working through the same levels as everyone else. As I think @mberry put it today - pupils may be climbing different mountains (but sometimes the same foothills). As soon as a pupils is wanting to leapfrog aspects of the levelling criteria it becomes very hard to pin them down to a number which shows the 'progress' the levelling system is meant to show.

Mass Effect and Minecraft are therefore analogies of a better approach to learning and assessment. Pupils remain within a semi-walled garden as even with freedom of choice in learning paths teachers must still provide the guidance and structure to make sure that pupils are continuing to learn in a good way. But pupils are presented (like the missions in a game) with a choice of things they wish to proceed with. There may still be some order to it as i can think of a situation in Starcraft 2 where I was unable to proceed to a next mission unless I had completed a specific previous mission bit there is still some flexibility.

Badges to me reward a pupils choice, naturally promote flexibility, provide encouragement to proceed down a learning path but also allow pupils to choose a different path from some of their peers. I have always believed that the goal with this new focus on programming is not to turn every pupil into a programmer but give every pupil the chance and option to take that path and then provide other alternate paths such as digital law or digital authoring.

#digitalstudies is a portfolio based subject. At the beginning of a year I feel that pupils should be shown what they should ideally be producing by the end of the year. However in a portfolio such as the multimedia one I am working on pupils could either be focussing on using digital tools to design and create beautiful digital works of art in imagery, audio or video but doing less on the programming side or they could be doing a small amount of digital creativity but focussing more on coding an awesome multimedia website. This approach I think is a reflection of a typical startup where each person has a particular strength and focusses on that strength but is able to work with others. Badges suit this type of work approach as it allows each pupil to work towards their own path which may be independent to someone else even in their same group. Levels I think are highly individualistic and don't adapt naturally to work done in a group whereas a badge I think could be easier to assign. Pupils then show their progress through an accumulation of badges which could start to indicate both to the pupil and the teacher what their natural 'discipline' within #digitalstudies is.

Although I had a go at MW2 earlier I do remember spending quite a bit of time trying to nail 3 stars in as many specops missions as I could. Even though I knew that others were also working towards it it was a badge for me and I really wanted it. I think this could also apply to how a pupil could feel motivated in class.

How does APP and AfL come into this? Although I have focussed on badges I do believe strongly in formative assessment. Badges although summative as well are I think a better summative assessment method than levels. Pupils would read a number or grade and ignore the comments so often my feedback is only formative and includes no summative grades. From my own understanding of AfL I think that formative assessment is a necessary part of AfL and therefore if you are doing the formative assessment properly you are naturally driving AfL forward as well.

APP though although I have never used it being at an independent school I think is too bureaucratic and too structured. It contains a pupil too much within a top down methodology and therefore lacks the flxibility of badge based assessment.

Badges therefore in conclusion provides the flexibility, gives the pupil a measure of independent choice in what they wish to learn and show progress in and ultimately provides a learning and assessment experience which I think comes closest to what exists in the workplace which is ultimately what we are preparing the pupils for.

After last nights blog about how to put everything together for #digitalstudies I think the next logical step is to thrash out a structure for an iBooks textbook focussing on a task which pupils have to do. I am developing a list of tasks on http://digitalstudieswiki.pbworks.com/w/page/51407927/Multimedia%20Portfolio%3A%20Animating%20Beowulfshowing what pupils will do throughout the year. Each task will have their own iBook.

The resources which go into each iBook will be available separately for anyone else to use in creating their own resources or digital textbooks under the appropriate CC licence.

So what should an iBook structure consist of? I am a novice to creating iBooks but this should be fairly logical.

Let's take one of the tasks for the first multimedia portfolio 'Create a script and a storyboard' and look at what an iBook for this would entail.

Title page showing

#digitalstudies
portfolio and task
author

Over the last month it has been fantastic to see how the initial idea has grown and matured and become a serious possibility for use in schools. The work of people like Nic (@teachesict) and Chris (@infernaldepart) has been invaluable and far more than even I have been able to contribute.

With about a term until the subject goes live in possibly three schools some concrete things need to be decided. For one Nic has been putting together an insane amount of resources and with the moodle site Chris has put together the question is how do we turn the resources into a structure which can be taught.

A key principle of #digitalstudies is that for a year pupils are working on a series of tasks which revolve around the production of work for a single portfolio on a set topic. The first portfolio I am developing is a multimedia portfolio on animating images which will contain work for an entire year.

I have been struggling to put together a way of presenting this to my pupils but now I think I am beginning to see a way forward. Based on a discussion I had at school about differentiation and particularly differentiation by outcome I have come up with a way of possibly doing it.

In the accompanying image I have shown two examples of tasks which pupils would do with the multimedia portfolio. As you can see the use of the word 'task' is fairly broad and encompases work which will take place over a couple of weeks of 1 hour lessons each week. Each task will have an entry, mid and high level description to allow for differentiation and scope. Pupils are presented with all levels at the beginning of a task and can choose which level they wish to go for.

Each task's resources are drawn from the resource bank developed by Nic which in turn is based on the four strands. This means that every task can be traced back to the strands.

So how will each task be presented to the pupils? Although I know that not many schools will have access to iPads I will probably begin building simple small ibooks for each task describing the levels, the resources and giving some idea as to what pupils could be producing. As I know that schools will use other methods to teach but may want to use the same resources I will try and release the exact same content e.g. images, text and videos and release that as a package for others to use in building #digitalstudies resources.

This plan I hope will start to yield good quality resources and structure for the progression of #digitalstudies. Lots more to come ...

In order to organise for Sunday night I have created the below signup sheet as a Google form. Please remember there is a 10 person limit and you will need to probably add me on Google Plus.

Image: 'Meeting room stencil graffiti'

Just had excellent chat with @largerama re #digitalstudies - lots of good advice. Would like to therefore propose a move onto the next step to push this project on and that is the first in what will hopefully be a series of Google Hangout meetings on #digitalstudies.

Let's break this down into a set of points (prevent me from waffling)

First meeting will be this Sunday at 8:30pm. Can take suggestions for alternate times if enough people are willing to change.
Major purpose: Discuss route forward for #digitalstudies and if enough people are agreed to go ahead then we begin setting up resources.
Agenda could be developed if need be.
Task if you wish to join is to firstly read http://briansharland.com/tag/digitalstudies and secondly bring any ideas regarding how to move forward

Google calendar invite - button doesnt seem to be working so click the little white square

I think some make or break decisions need to be taken on Sunday. A lot of people have put a lot of work in and I do not want anyone to put anything more in unless this is going to work. If it goes well then perhaps sunday night could form the basis for creating almost a steering group to get this project fully up and running.

Hope to see you then

Step 1:

Attempt to register for new account. This proves that my email address is already known by eprintcenter as it is the same email address I use for snapfish.

Step 2:

Check that I can login to snapfish – which I can as you can see below

Step 3:

Go back to eprintcenter.com and use the EXACT same login details I have just used to login to snapfish to login to eprintcenter and I receive a login failed message

Finally – I have reset my snapfish password to see if that changes anything – still gives me login failed.

Rye St Antony School Ltd is a limited company registered in England No. 612426

Registered Office: Pullen's Lane, Headington Hill, Oxford OX3 0BY

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Ever since #digitalstudies started one of the issues has been what to
teach pupils. To begin with the strands were developed which give
good broad descriptions of 'themes' which could run through the
subject. Since then @teachesict has done an immense amount of work in
looking at what topics and technologies could be taught for each
strand.

I've been thinking about and working on the issue of how to structure
the teaching so that the approach is firstly flexible for different
schools but reaches defined aims. Years ago (2001) when I started
teaching ICT in the UK the modules of work were very much based around
the Microsoft Office Applications. So there was the spreadsheet unit,
the database unit, the word processing unit etc. Within each unit we
found a nice context we could work with and deliver a reasonably range
of skills. The following year we would perhaps do some different
units but would often just simply add more advanced skills in. There
was an overall plan but it does seem now like it was a bunch of
disparate units which although was part of a plan didn't have any
overall goals or objectives.

In an earlier blogpost I looked at the topic of hackdays as a form of
developing the #digitalstudies curriculum. I also think hackdays
where pupils have been preparing for a while can be used as a form of
assessment for pupils. A hackday where pupils present their work
after a final set of challenges is I think to prepare pupils for life
beyond school in an innovative tech startup culture (if they choose to
go down that route). Obviously someone looking to get into a
computing career may not be working for a startup but even a context
like hackdays can allow pupils to demonstrate skills in a multitude of
ways such as database development, network design and construction and
multimedia.

By giving #digitalstudies a central purpose - provide learning and
experiences which could prepare them for work in multiple areas of
industry this should in turn help teachers focus on what pupils should
be learning and doing in class.

So how could it work? For starters at the end of junior school and at
the end of year 9 I propose hackdays where pupils present their
portfolio of work and also undergo challenges. To prepare for these
hackdays pupils (or their teachers) will choose what they are going to
work on for their portfolio. This becomes a key body of work which is
returned to frequently throughout the last years of junior school and
year 7 to 9. Possible options for portfolio work could include
multimedia production, website design or app development. Depending
on the school and the teachers and pupils a pupil could have one major
portfolio piece of work or take on more. The aim is to allow
flexibility.

Once portfolio work is chosen pupils undertake skill building units
focussing on what they need to produce that portfolio work. So for
instance instead of doing a unit where databases is the major focus
and a context is tacked on the context such as websites is the major
focus and databases is taught from the point of view of supporting the
work pupils are doing on their portfolio.

After a lot of thought this still only a provisional idea as to how to
approach teaching #digitalstudies. I felt it would be necessary to at
least get this out there for those who are becoming quite interested
in the subject so that it can be thought over and hopefully tweaked.

Brian Sharland

Finding the #digitalstudies curriculum

Assessing pupils work for #digitalstudies - my examination of badges and levels

Creating an iBook for #digitalstudies

Update on #digitalstudies

@oakleyeurope where can I buy replacement rubber inserts for where the frame and the bars meet?

Signup sheet for #digitalstudies hangout Sunday night #ictcurric #rethinkingict

Google Hangout meeting to discuss #digitalstudies this Sun 8:30pm #ictcurric #rethinkingict

@hpsupport - I've blogged to show what happens when I try to get into eprintcenter [Scanned]

Figuring out teaching units for #digitalstudies

Tea with neighbour and found out her son is ace with #minecraft esp Lego builds

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