Mixed Bag of Technology

At a recent pro-d day workshop on the iPad, during the question and answer session I was asked twice by different administrators, "which technology should I buy for a class set?"  I could only ask a question in response to their question - "What do you want to do with this technology?"

I explained that perhaps what people need is not just one class set of the same technology, but different technologies.  What if there was a projector in every classroom (very important in my opinion), and then the teacher had a document camera, a couple iPod touches, 5 tablets, a teacher laptop, 5 desktop stations in the room, and a teacher website with online folders for both staff and students.  This might offer more capability than just one kind of technology, but it would mean putting some things in place before hand:

1.) A Pro-D plan.  No hardware or software without a plan to ensure teachers can learn about the tool in a supportive environment.  Whether it is through screecasts, workshops, or some form of coaching, having a pro-d plan means the money you invest in a tool does not go underutilized.

2.) A shift in thinking that all students have to do assignments the same way, or even at the same time. 

One of the teachers I hope to work with has a mixed bag of technologies in his room.  He is in a middle school class, with a portable SMART board, projector, a laptop, and 2 desktop computer stations for kids.  The students bring laptops, tablets, and iPod touches to school; Whatever they have, they bring. 

My goal is to get together with him, and find where the different technologies intersect.  Perhaps he could be screencasting math lessons on the SMART board, and posting it to his website.  Perhaps his students could be using their iPads to project their work, and lead a discussion in class.  I am sure he is doing some of these things, as he is a masterful teacher.  At the very least I will come away with great ideas one how a mixed bag of technologies can come together to create something greater than the sum of their parts.

As Exciting as New Boxing Gloves

I run an informal bootcamp for myself and any other teachers who want to work out on Friday's after school is out. We use the wrestling room, and I bring some exercise equipment for everyone to use, including some martial arts and boxing gear. We don't hit each other, but we do hit some focus mits and muay thai pads. My friend Jarod has been coming quite often, and I suggested he buy his own boxing gloves, as he doesn't like wearing the pink boxing gloves I use as loaners. Strange.

Well, after a quick look on craigslist, he found some. Jarod was very excited - he fully intended to use them on Friday. He put them on and began wearing them around his house. I think he probably began lightly punching walls and pieces of furniture. Then he tried some shadow boxing. Then he threw his shoulder out. I guess he wasn't ready for the extra pound of weight on the ends of his hands. Live and learn.

Wouldn't it be great if we could teach so that kids felt as if the knowledge they had learned were like new tools in a tool belt. Or a new set of boxing gloves. And then kids would be waiting, wanting, itching for a chance to use this new skill. Nothing feels as gratifying as using a new skill successfully - it's a feeling of transformation. You couldn't before, and now you can.

But, without putting their shoulders out I hope.

Preparing for OMG

I was thinking back on my teaching career so far. I thought back to a time when I was in my first classroom teaching a class of grade 3 and 4 students. I was reading the words out for a spelling test, one of the first of the year, and I kept checking my watch. I was wondering when the "real" teacher was going to be back. Then it hit me.

OMG-I am the real teacher now.

Some of what I studied in university was helpful in preparing me for my career. Some was not. What I want students to think about is the feeling they would have when a customer or client looks at them after asking them a question, and then they realize that this person is now depending on them to know what to do.

This is the "Oh My Goodness" moment.

Students need to shift their thinking from learning things that teachers and parents tell them to learn, to thinking about how everything they learn changes them, or how it might equip them for their own OMG moment.

Because you never know when it will happen to you.

Talk like you Tweet

I have been trying to save energy in my classroom. I don't mean by turning off lights, or changing the power settings on my computer monitor. I mean I have been trying to save my own energy so I have more energy to be a good dad and husband when I come home for the day. So, now I am trying to talk less during some classes.

The approach has been thus - talk like I tweet. When I post a thought on twitter, I get 140 characters to get my message across. It forces me to be succinct, and choose my words carefully.

When I make a jing, I get five minutes for my video, and that is it. Is this a sign of the times that people are developing shorter attention spans. Perhaps, but I think it is also equally likely that some people who like to talk have always been not quite as interesting to listen to as they think, and that now there are more options for people's attention.

Be brief, and set more realistic goals for communication. Talk for less time than people expect; they will appreciate it. Repeat yourself - students often need that . Eventually the message gets through.

CUEBC 2010 - Saving Time, Effort, and Money

Hi and Welcome to CUEBC! My name is James Gill, and I am a teacher with SD43, Coquitlam School district. Today, I would like to share with you some of the ways that I have been saving time and effort in the classroom by using a classroom website.


Screencasting:

I teach computer education at Moody Middle school, and have for 3 years. Part of my job involves teaching the same lesson to different groups of kids. Also, I find that some of my students would like to be able to get help, or review the instructions, but don’t always follow written instructions well.

I use a free program called Jing (pro version is $15 dollars) and I create screencasts:



1.) I save myself effort by playing the video 4 times in a row, instead of talking 4 times in a row.
2.) Jing forces me to be brief, and no one listens after 5 minutes – I have a tendency to talk if left to my own devices
3.) Kids don’t wait for help with their arm going numb in the air- they can review at their own pace
4.) Parents can support their kids at home – when was the last time your parents did 8th grade math? Probably in the 8th grade!

But what if you have a student that forgets their homework....often!

By putting your lessons and your worksheets on your website, you can tweak your lessons on the fly from anywhere there is an internet connection. I have had students go home, and realize they have forgotten their homework. If there is a worksheet or template they are writing their responses on, they can download them from the website (or rather their parents can ;-)). While students are never thrilled to re-start an assignment, it prevents them from possibly losing marks for turning in late work. I re-use my lessons often, and re-invent them often.


I use this with my middle school classes, but I first used it with a class of Grade 3 students. It saved me a lot of time waiting for a kid to re-do lost assignments, or having to mark after they have handed it in late.


Hand In Bin – Easy Peasy Paperless:

In my first term in my position, I had students hitting print on their first assignment. Then I realized that this created organizational problems, kids not printing on time. So using our SharePoint websites, we created a list where students can hand their work in:




I see everyone’s work, they see their own. I can mark them here, or at home, or anywhere I have an internet connection. I don’t carry my marking home with me. Perhaps not all of your students will do their work on computer, but I bet a lot of them are doing it on a computer and hitting print. If you even take some of your work electronically, it could speed up your marking. Kids can hand in from anywhere there is a computer with an internet connection, which sometimes increases your chances of getting their assignments in when you are ready to mark them.

Giving Feedback that Motivates Kids to Listen:

Another problem I have wrestled with in the past is that kids don’t read my feedback. Students are only interested in the mark. I can ask a student what mark they got, and usually they will know the answer to that question. But when I ask a student what I had to say about their work, hardly any students were able to tell me. I am not alone in this struggle. Apparently, students will not read your comments unless they are surprised in a negative way about their mark.

One of the ways I have found around this issue has been to have students turn in their work to my classroom website. We currently use MS Word on all our school computers, and many students have this program at home too. Rather than write on their work, I will record a comment on their work. By embedding a voice recording in their work:


1.) I can save myself time and energy by “talking” my comments into their work- I can say in 35 seconds more than I can write
2.) Students listen to my comments- listening comprehension is higher in my middle school students than is reading comprehension
3.) There is no way to fast forward the comments – as long as I say their grades last, they have to listen to all my feedback first.



Improving Student Writing:

I thought that using the Document Libraries on SharePoint would create a great way for students to share their work with each other . Basically kids upload their work to a common folder on my website. Then, they sign out the document, read it, and post comments in the margin.



After teaching the class about how to give useful feedback, and what are some ways to phrase it to not offend others, I asked kids to then read, and make use of any feedback they felt would help when writing good copies. I decided to do an informal poll which is something built in to our SharePoint websites. You can also survey your students on SurveyMonkey. The results were quite telling:




I hope you have enjoyed my workshop on using the virtual classroom to save time, and money. I would like to leave you with a final thought. Sir Ken Robinson, a college professor and internationally renowned speaker and writer on the topic of education said recently that schools are at their most elemental an interaction between student and teacher, and so we must only make changes to school that improve this dynamic (sic). My two bits - use technology, but not because it is shiny, new, or trending on twitter. Only use it if it makes your life better.

Rewarding Initiatve and Bending the Rules

Today, a young lady in my class named Samantha turned in an altnerate assignment. She had not taken home the correct homework assignment, but fulfilled the spirit of the assignment with an essay. How often do teachers mark according to the criteria, and not the spirit of the assignment. While not exactly what I was looking for, I like initiative, and think it ought to be rewarded. By rewarding her efforts in front of the class, I hope that the other students will realize that the world is looking for people with initiative. If you don't know what to do, sometimes the most dangerous thing is to do nothing, and give up. Samantha didn't give up.

This is why I gave her an A on the assignment.

Screencasting Worked - Just Not How I Planned

Yesterday I created a screencast to help students in a math tutorial class designed for kids who are struggling with math. The topic was integers. Turns out the student who planted the seed of this idea became confused with her schedule, or chose not to show up. But for the kids who did show up, I created this screencast as support for them to use at home and at school:




When I ran into Susan later that day, I showed her the video. She was surprised and pleased that I had taken an interest in her academics, but I don't know yet if she checked out the video. But someone did.

Jeffrey, another student from the class caught up to me in the hall. He told me he watched the video last night.

1. I asked if he thought it was helpful, and he said yes.
2. I asked if his homework was complete - another yes.
3. I asked him if he always completes his homework, and he replied no
4. Finally I asked if he would like to see more screencasts about his homework - definitely yes.

I guess the question remains, with other staff adopt the idea of screencasting their lessons? I went around and informally shared my screencast with other staff, and told them what it was for. Most were hesitant, perhaps dreading an awful learning curve associated with learning how to screencast with Jing. Or, perhaps they don't believe that students will go to the video.

It is my goal this week to support one person who is interested in learning how to screencast their lessons.

Susan Don't Tell Me Your Lies!

20 minutes ago, a student in my class named Susan (not her real name) told me she was stupid and that's why she couldn't do math, but that it didn't matter. Holy cow - I told her that she lied to me and herself 2x in the same sentence.

1.) I don't believe she is stupid (but I do believe she finds math hard)

2.) It does matter if she doesn't do well at math.

Currently students are creating their own designs for the school that will eventually replace this school here at Moody Middle in 2014. We discussed it in class, then on a discussion forum, and now we are taking these ideas and using them in sketchup. Susan was having trouble coming up with a concrete idea that she could create, and I think she was close to giving up and just looking for a way to go and talk to her friends out of my line of sight. Unfortunately for her, there is no such place in my room.

I asked Susan what she was doing in Math right now. She told me she is learning about integers. She finds her math class distracting because her friends are talking about other stuff around her. She also told me that she only understands some of what the teacher says, but none of what she reads in textbooks.

I showed her this video:



I then said if the front of her "futuristic" desk had a computer screen in it, and all the instructors lessons were on youtube, and her desk had privacy screens on the sides, then she could watch the videos, pause them, do one step at a time, and review them as many times as she would like.

Susan asked if you don't have to practice math to get good at it. I asked her if you could practice something when you don't understand it. If the lessons were on youtube, she could watch it at home, and practice it there. She would be getting some support at home. She said that these ideas made sense to her, and that she would be more likely to learn math skills, and to do her homework.

I wonder if she would go home today, and watch a youtube video on math? This week?

Stay tuned.

Light bulb went off at McDonalds

My grade 6 and 7 Computer Class students are doing research about fast food by using the nutrition calculator on the McDonalds website. We are learning about calories, fat, protien, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. But this is only the activity that keeps them interested. What I have been trying to get them to do is to be able to read charts, and find information. Of the 10 questions I have asked the student, it has been about reading and recording information from the Nutrition Calculator.

But the last 2 questions are what really interest me. I have asked very broad questions for them to tell me "what have you learned from playing with your food?" Then I asked the kids to compare two fast food chains with similar items, and to draw conclusions based on data.

I asked them do you know who looks at information and then makes sense of it in words? Scientists! Engineers! Financial Analysts!

This sounded good to them. I pointed out that while memorizing that the capital of Alberta is Edmonton is somewhat useful, this is something they could just google. Their education should focus on being able to demonstrate the thinking they can do with the facts that they learn.

Cell Phones and iPods in Education

This Friday I will be brainstorming with a middle school principal the ways and howto's of using iPod touch's in their education. She is buying a class set, and going to use these as a mobile lab. Accordingly I have given this assignment to my Grade 8's.

Cell Phones and iPods in Education

The purpose of this assignment is to figure out ways to use Personally Owned Devices (POD's) in education. They are a powerful tool, many students have them already, and they are becoming more common as time goes by.


Step 1 - Identify all the things you can do with your cell phone / iPod / SmartPhone / Netbook / Laptop

Step 2 - Choose 3 features of your device and figure out a way to use them in education. At least one of these should be a well detailed paragraph that really showcases the cell phone's ability as an educational tool.

Step 3 - Identify and clearly explain ways that students can mis-use with a POD in class. Be prepared if questioned to justify why you consider some acts to be cheating /mis-use, and some are not.

Step 4 - Model one positive way in which a POD can be used in an educational setting. This can be done with a video / audio recording / interpretive dance.

Just kidding about the dance part...

Accountability has Never Been Easier

I love the Internet. I love teaching my students the importance of being accountable. But using one to facilitate the other? That's like a bowl of "awesome" covered with "awesome sauce!"

I have been using my computer to email parents directly from class, and as so many parents are working with computers as part of their daily routine, they get the update on their child's progress, (or lack thereof) really quickly. I find parents are more likely to respond using email than they are by phone, or at the very least, respond the same day.

Taking it a step further, one of the teachers on my campus has installed skype. I have skype. When I was teaching his class, and I needed to discuss with him about students that had not completed work for my class, I skyped him. Good idea too, as we have six buildings on our campus, and he and I are about as far apart as you can get and still be on campus. It takes about 3-4 minutes to walk across campus.

Not every teacher wishes to be disturbed on their prep period, but we work quite closely together, and he addressed the class over my speakers. I was able to get work turned in to me the next day, instead of spending a week chasing stragglers.

I wonder if I can get other teachers on skype? I wonder if I could set up a conference call between teachers and parents over skype and cell phones? It would save time and effort, and have a much more immediate effect on the students who are....reluctant, to get their work in on time. I will propose it to other teachers, and see what they say.

What Kids Think about Sharing their Writing

This week I had my students share their writing assignments with each other over the Internet. Our purpose was to improve the quality of our writing through peer editing. I created a document library on our SharePoint website for the class, and taught the kids how to check documents in and out of the website. This is not unlike what the teachers at our school do for our report cards. Here is the result of a survey I asked the kids to take. It was an anonymous survey, and 39 of 57 students answered:




The results may be a bit hard to see, but if you enlarge the image you can read the results of the 3 questions I asked the kids.

97% of the students in my class who responded to a short survey feel that using a SharePoint document library to share their work for peer editing improved the quality of their own written work.

About half of them feel it improved the length of their written work.

97% of them feel that they had something to offer their peers in the form of editing advice that would make a measureable improvement in their work “some of the time” to “almost all of the time.”

I also felt that interest was high during the days we were editing each others' work, and that behaviour problems were virtually non-existent. I feel that the students were interested and engaged in their work.

When I showed these results to one class' homeroom teacher, she said "Ok, but now where do we get a class set of computers for my class?" While I admit we don't have the class of computers on wheels, I think we know that kids enjoy and benefit from peer editing, and that perhaps other classes will book our second computer lab 1 period a day, for a week. Perhaps a teacher will assign it as a homework project. Like that old baseball movie says "If you build it, they will come."

Paying Kids to Think Makes them Dumber!

Do you pay your kids to go to school? Of course you do! We pay our kids in grades. This I think creates a problem though. According to Dan Pink's presentation at TED on motivation, a number of universities (London School of Economics for one) a "Pay for Performance Plan" actually decreases performance on tasks that involve creative problem solving. The only time the "carrot and stick" model of motivation increases student performance is when a person is only given very simple tasks where very little creative thinking is involved. I guess in this case it is only a matter of a person deciding how much effort to put in, as effort is the only ingredient required for success.



But is effort the be all end all for improving student performance? No. Instead I think we need to focus on improving student performance with more intrinsic rewards when teaching upper level thinking.

1.) Autononmy - the feeling that "I am in charge of my learning". But, our job as teachers might then be to find a way to prove that kids need to look after their own education.

2.) Mastery - self esteem doesn't come from people patting you on the back. It comes from applying yourself to a difficult task and being successful. Mastery is a form of reward.

3.) Purpose - the ultimate job of the 21st century teacher. My latest focus - connecting what students are learning to their lives in such a way that the student uses the knowledge TODAY. And, to use this knowledge for something that serves a higher purpose than ourselves.

Keep talking about the intrinsic rewards of learning to your students. It's a tough sell at first, but its the only currency worth paying them.

Our Unsung Heroes

SEA's in our district is the term for Special Education Assistant. They work with the most vulnerable students on a small group or 1 to 1 basis. They work with students with autism, students with global deficits, and students with physical impairments. They make less money than a teacher, perhaps because there is less formal education required to qualify for this position, and they officially work fewer hours. Yet in practice they have very demanding jobs requiring a vast set of skills to meet the needs of each kid.

Sometimes their students lash out at them, spit at them or cause them harm accidentally or on purpose. They wear brave smiles, laugh, and continue to do their duty with little or no complaint that I have heard.

I don't propose paying SEA's more, but I would like to see these SEA's get more professional development time. The relatively small cost of training SEA's to work with computers and new technology, perhaps some adaptive technology (speech recognition software for instance) if schools have the budget, would pay high dividends.

This would mean that even if a teacher was not aware of some of the technology options available to help a student with special needs - using speech recognition software, recording a student's voice using a computer and microphone, using interactive websites to teach math concepts - the SEA would know of a variety of technology strategies to help their students.

I think its time we gave these "unsung heroes of the school" tools that may save them time and effort. Everyone wins in the end when all members of the team have good technology skill sets.

Tell Kids They are Smart Enough

When kids come to me and say their computer is broken, and I ask them to tell me more I think of a person going to a doctor and saying "Something hurts, somewhere....can you fix it?"

I told some kids today that very smart people make it their jobs to write out error messages describing a complex problem in a language that non-engineers can understand. I demonstrated an error by creating a bad file name, and then trying to upload it to our classroom website's "editing room" (an online folder where kids share work). We read the error message, and not surprisingly we figured out what was wrong with the file name.

In an informal poll, more than half of my students feel they are smarter than their parents when it comes to operating a computer. Therefore I have concluded that they have been told by the adults who have taught them about computers thus far that they are not smart enough to figure out what an error message means, and that they as students are not to be trusted to read this message and attempt to troubleshoot the problem themselves?

What's the worst that could happen? They lose their work? Possibly, but not learning about computers and not learning how to troubleshoot problems would be a greater loss than a few paragraphs of typing.

Empower kids to troubleshoot. Initially they feel nervous or a bit overwhelmed, but we don't let them keep their training wheels on their bikes forever. Why should computer use be different?

Embedding the best of the Web - CUEBC 2009

I am off to CUEBC later this month! I will be presenting on using "embed codes" in education. What is embedding? Why is it important in education?

How about starting your math lesson off with a laugh:

Embed codes are ways to bring great videos, podcasts, maps, projects, slideshows and more - right to your own classroom website.




I decided to embed a map to CUEBC 2009 - being hosted at Sullivan Heights in Surrey, BC. That way, all my friends could know where to meet me. I went to google maps, and googled the address. I got a map, and in the upper right corner of the map box I found a button labelled "Link". When I clicked it I got an embed code. I then came here to my blog, and when I clicked on the "edit html" tab -


View Larger Map

I hit paste, and now I have a scrollable google map in my site! How could you use this in the classroom? Where would you take your students?

What if you wanted to share a story plan with your students:




This is an online mind map site, called bubbl.us. You or your students can create accounts here (with teacher and parent permission) for free. There are other sites like it that also support embedding. I created this story web to help parents support their grade 3 student at home plan and write their story about "My Life in BC." By providing parents and students with the story bubble diagrams via your classroom website, you might get fewer late assignments, or even better quality assignments.


Sometimes I need to support other kinds of learning at home. What about demonstrating how to do something like a math problem? How long has it been since your student's parents did math? Do they know the new "partial product method"?




I find making a screencast to be really helpful. I use a free program called Jing, and a free account at Screencast.com. I capture my voice and the action on my screen. Then I just use a program like MS Paint to do my math on. Forgive my messy handwriting; I am sure you would be neater.


What about presentations and slideshows? You can embed them from different sites, such as google docs.



Google docs offers you an online office suite of programs that works with Microsoft Office. I made this presentation for the Learning Disabilities Association of BC. Using the embed code allows me to bring my presentation to my audience, rather than having them try to search for it.

Remember the YouTube video we used before? Here is a great alternative for when you want to host private videos - Vimeo.com. Vimeo allows you to embed password protected videos. This way, you can shoot video with your students in it (again with permission and understanding between all parties) and embed the video in your website. Then just tell your students / email your parents what the password is. In the Coquitlam School District, we use SharePoint websites which are password protected. I put the password on the same page as the video, and then only people with access to my site can access the video.

Password is: star

Guitar Lesson from James Gill on Vimeo.

Finally there is Voicethread. I have used voicethread a with a number of students and across a variety of subjects. Its an online slideshow that you can narrate, and other people can comment on your voicethread when you invite them in.



What if you want to record your kids. Podcasts are a great way kids can show what they know, and if you control the podcasting account and are careful they don't reveal their names and addresses, I feel it is a safe and fun educational experience. And once again, you can embed their podcasts so you can rotate the content throughout the year. I use podbean.com. After making a podcast (audio recording on the net) I did a little digging and found that when I click on the "embeddable player"...you guessed it...you get your choice of code to embed your podcast. It comes with its own player!

Powered by Podbean.com

Here is an example of how we can do some cool storytelling online, using voicethread



Putting your voicethreads into your classroom website is another great way to showcase what kids know.

So to summarize, you can embed video, password protected video, maps, screencasts, podcasts, mind maps, and Voicethreads. There are more things you can embed, such as photo albums from Flickr.com, and this feature is becoming standard on almost all sites that host other people's content. Think about bringing the best of Web 2.0 to your class. Use embed codes - they make for a safe, reliable, and educational web classroom.

Helping Your ESL students

This year I will be teaching all the students in my school. 780+ students. I only get 7.5 weeks with the grade 6 and 7 students. A student teacher dropped by my class yesterday, visiting from another teacher's classroom, and she made a great observation. During my introduction to the class, she picked out an ESL student who has some real difficulties with the english language. She had trouble understanding what I was saying. How could she do her work?

I went to Google Translate. I then cut and paste my assignment into the text box and translated my assignment from English to Simplified Chinese. My student could read it! That and pairing her with another student who speaks Cantonese (not Mandarin which would have been ideal) will enable her to do her work.

I bet ESL students could use this site, or one of the many other sites like it in conjunction with a netbook to do their work in class. They still will be learning english. It just supports their learning while they are learning a new language.

Don't most of us as teachers type our work up on computers already? Stop hitting print so often I say, and start giving our ESL kids the digital copies to work with.

Student Created Content - Better and Cheaper

One of my students has created a video. It is modelled after the educational video website, brainpop.com. This student has used some pretty basic animation skills I taught using pivot (a free stick figure animation program).

Unfortunately I have temporarily removed this video from my site as I think some of the music used was copyrighted. I will post it as soon as I am able. But I think it this student project represents a valuable idea: A subscription to brainpop.com can be costly, but possibly worth it. But, what if we gave our kids the ability to create content that was very exciting to watch and informative too? Then our students would be showing what they know in an authentic way, it would be engaging more areas of their thinking, and we as teacher might be able to use this kind of multimedia work year after year. Multimedia reaches more kinds of learners, and I have always found that kids really do a good job communicating their ideas to other kids.

Next September - Multimedia projects for global causes.

How am I supposed to know what I need to know?

Yesterday my students and I were using sketchup. This is a free 3d architecture program that I really enjoy. But, we ran into a problem. We thought we knew how to do something with the program (for those of you who know sketchup we were trying to create "groups" and "components", but it doesn't really matter what we were having problems with). I had taught the basics of sketchup using video tutorials from the Sketchup YouTube Channel.

I knew the answer was in this one video tutorial that I embedded in our classroom website. I told three students at the end of the period to review this video (approximately 7 minutes long). I reviewed the video myself and found out what I was doing wrong. When I asked my three students the next day who reviewed the video to solve their problem, here is what I found. None of the students had reviewed the video. Only 1 student went home and did some experimentation to see if he could solve the problem, but didn't review.

This tells me either:

A) My students are used to being told to find answers but have realized that if they wait someone will find the answers for them and tell them.

B) They don't understand review is an active process where you seek out what you need to know because you don't know it yet! They view review as a passive process, like waiting in line at the grocery store.

Either way, this is not good. 21st Century learners have to figure out what they don't know yet, and how to go and find the knowledge they need.


I reviewed and I learned. I have to teach them to figure out what they need to learn. I have to teach them to review. That is the real lesson I am teaching.




Drives me nuts that people think I am teaching "computers."

EA - Electronic Arts and Careers for Kids

I just had the most interesting conversation with a guy who make games for a living. Computer games. He was a programmer who helped create the FIFA series of video games. He recently left EA, and I asked him why leave Electronic Arts? They are among the biggest and best in game design. They make NHL, NFL and FIFA video games just to name a few of their big titles. He replied "to start a new company."

I asked him what advice he would give to younger kids looking to get into game design. While he didn't specify any particular school subject, he said math was a strength of his, and there is lots of math in programming.

What he emphasized was that kids who want to make games should take some programming courses, and then complete a project. It doesn't have to be fancy. They have to start something and take it to completion; The ability to finish what you started.

Also he said you need to have communication skills. These games are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the team for FIFA had about 150 people working on it. Communication skills and teamwork are key.

Finally when I asked how he felt about the future of programming and he thought it was really good. Games are semi-recession proof. They provide a lot of entertainment for only a little money, and people are always buying games.

Food for thought.