TACCLE 3 Coding is a new research project which looks at Teachers’ Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments in the field of coding. It is funded (from 9/2015 to 8/2017) under the European Commission’s Erasmus+ program, key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices.

The project’s aims are:

• To encourage and support teachers to introduce coding, programming and / or computational thinking as part of the curriculum in the 4 – 14 classroom to better equip pupils to develop the skills needed by the European labor market.
• To broaden teachers’ digital skills base and enhance their professional competence
• To show how entrepreneurial skills can be developed and integrated with programming skills The project objectives are:
• To produce an on-line support package of ideas, activities, materials and downloadable resources for teachers who are teaching coding or programming or who want to.
• To provide CPD courses in a variety of formats and a template and materials for local delivery.
• To establish a dialogue between teachers and programmers, teachers and resource producers, teachers and organizations involved in teaching coding and to act as an agency for exchanges of curricula, ideas and practice.

The demand for ICT professionals continues to grow. The European Commission estimates there will be 700, 000 unfilled vacancies for ICT practitioners in the EU by the year 2016. Of all job vacancies in ICT, computer programmers are the most in demand outnumbering the demand for other IT professionals by a factor of 5 to 1. The greatest demand is in UK, Germany, Estonia and other Northern European countries, which reflects the make up of the project partnership.

Despite this skills shortage, there has been limited response from the European education system. Estonia has already introduced computer programming for all ages across the school curriculum, Denmark partially so. Others are about to introduce it (such as England in 2014) and others are considering it (e.g. Finland, Ireland). Some German Länder such as Bavaria are well advanced; others are not. In other countries, whilst not part of the compulsory curriculum, there are agencies and individual teachers who are trying to introduce programming into the classroom. What seems inevitable is that all member states must surely move in this direction if they are to meet the skills demands of the European economy. The biggest problem we face is a desperate shortage of teachers. Mathematics and computer-science graduates generally choose more lucrative trades; the humanities and social-science graduates who will find themselves teaching coding will need plenty of support as will the primary teachers. In addition the OECD reports that more and more computer programmers prefer to be self-employed or working in micro-SME partnerships and not committed to one particular long-term employer and the vacancy market is beginning to reflect the increase in a new form of employment in the ICT sector. For this reason the project is looking to produce resources for developing entrepreneurship skills alongside programming skills.

The project will:

· Develop a website of activities and ideas that teachers can use in the classroom to teach children about coding and programming. These will support diverse curricula across member states and, where there is no formal curriculum, support individual schools and teachers who want to introduce computing / informatics / programming etc. in their own practice
· Develop some affordable resource kits that can be downloaded or for which instructions for making them can be provided on-line. This could result in selling the resource kits after the project as part of the exploitation and sustainability.
· Design and pilot some staff development opportunities and learning resources for teachers who are total newcomers to programming.
· Stimulate a positive attitude towards STEM with young children
· Test and evaluate existing resources such as the range of software currently available to help children develop programming skills.
· Explore and follow up existing research and projects addressing this issue (e.g. work on Tangible User Interface for children.)
· Enter into policy dialogue and inform policy in countries around issues concerning the teaching and learning of programming in schools” (source: project proposal).

Co-ordinator: Jens Vermeersch, adjunct van de directeur, GO! Onderwijs van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, afdeling Beleid & Strategie, Internationalisation, Brussels

Project partners:
IBP/KIT, Germany
Pontydysgu, Wales, U.K.,
SGR Antigon Schoöengroep 1, Antwerpen, Belgium
HITSA HariDUE INFOTHHNOLOGIA SIHTASUTUS, Research centre, Tallinn, Estonia
TALLINN University, Tallinn, Estonia
UNIVERSiDAD DE SALAMANCA, Spain
AALTO UNIVERSITY, Helsinki, Finland
University of Eastern Finland, School of Computing, KUOPIO, Finland

We just managed to tranfer the idea of enabling young unemployed people to visualize their vocational experience and biography using digital media to the European level. The research project “Show Your Own Gold (Acronym) develops, tests and evaluates „a European Concept to Visualize and Reflect One’s Vocational Biography Using Digital Media”. It is funded under the ERASMUS+ Key Action 2, Strategic Partnerships programm for 3 years (2014-2017), co-ordinated by IBP/KIT

Aims and objectives
The project aims to develop a European concept for consultancy, including course design, to enable young, unemployed people to display their vocational biography. This is realized by producing media available on a multimedia-based online environment to visualise informally and formally acquired skills. The letter is realized by introducing media-based competence portfolios. Within the framework of the project, both the Internet-based competence portfolio as well as consultancy offered for the participants of vocational preparation courses will be developed in the form of an scientifically accompanied course. The course will be developed, realized with young people in the 6 countries and evaluated.

Project partners:
• Instituto Politécnico de Beja, Art and Multimedia Laboratory, Education Faculty, Beja, Portugal (Prof. Dr. Aldo Passarinho, Prof. Ana Sofia Velhinhu Sousa), Website

• PONTYDYSGU LTD, The Bridge To Learning, Wales, U.K. (director: Graham Attwell) Website

• SC AxA Consulting 99 SRL, a consultancy and training company providing high quality skills training programmes for corporate and industrial clients. (Liliana Voicu), Bucarest, Romania, Website

• UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA, Cultural Pedagogies, Faculty of Fine Arts, Esbrina Research Group – Subjectivitats i Entorns Educatius Contemporan“, dedicated to the study of the conditions and current changes in education in a world mediated by digital technologies and visual culture. (Prof. Dr. Fenando Hernandez, Prof. Dr. Juana Sancho-Gill, Rachel Fendler), Website

• Zavod NEFIKS Institut za promocijo in belezenje neformalno pridobljenega znanja/ aims to educate young people in different fields, persuading employers to consider non-formal education as a reference when getting a job.
Ljubljana, Slovenia (Alenka Blazinšek) Website

• Co-ordinator: Institute of Vocational and General Education at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT (Dr. Daniela Reimann, Prof. Dr. Martin Fischer, M.A. Kerstin Huber, M.A. Kristina Stoewe, Nadine Görg)

Summary
The project intends to make young unemployed people set up, reflect and visualize their individual vocational and educational biography, actively producing media available on a Web-based multimedia environment. Formally and informally acquired skills and competencies are visualized using a particular type of online portfolio developed in the project (by the partner PONTYDYSGU LTD). Within the framework of the project, both the Web-based multimedia environment as well as the consultancy of young people will be developed in the form of an accompanying course offered in each of the participating countries.

In the project, a consultancy concept with a specific scope of courses offered for the generation and reflection of appropriate media formats, such as video clips showing the young participants at the workplace, in work processes, at the company, during internships. Further interviews with the trainees and skilled workers of a branch, including images of their own work pieces and projects are to be provided.

The research design is based on several distinct research strategies:

1. A desk study (analysis, literature review) of the situation of vocational preparation organised and embedded in the VET system and the employment situation of young people in the partner countries. This is necessary in that no studies are at present available on the analysis of the integration of the concept of vocational biography design in vocational preparation in the participating countries;
2. The development of the course (curriculum design) and
3. Its’ application in vocational preparation, followed by
4. a set of in-depth group interviews and surveys with the social actors involved, such as trainees and trainers, accompanied by a series of transnational work meetings.

Dissemination
The results of the project will be clearly spelled out to be easily circulated and disseminated via an International Youth Panel, including the BIBB the German Federal Institute of Vocational Education and Training, as well as social media in order to enhance their usability within the policy making process. The project aims to support EU and national policy makers for what concerns the development & implementation of new VET related policies towards a European concept of successful vocational biography design.

The interim project Web site can be accessed here

I seem to have spent most of the last month in project meetings. Besides the ongoing Learning Layers project, Pontydysgu are partners in a new European Research Framework project, Employ-ID. I will write more on this in another post but in brief Employ-ID is looking to support online professional development, including e-coaching, for workers in European Public Employment Services. As with Learning Layers, Employ-ID is a relatively large scale project, with some twelve or so partners drawn from countries throughout Europe. The project will run over four years.

Pontydysgu have participated in a number of such projects. And it seems to me that despite the hard work of most partners, the problems of project organisation and management are almost insuperable. Its not the lack of communication – far from it. Some days the volume of group emails and the sheer number of online meetings seems overwealming. A big problem is the complexity of the projects. There are huge difficulties in achieving a common understanding of what we are doing, particularly as the projects involve specialists from many different disciplines. Even more problematic is the form of plans the EU insists on. The work programme is outlined in something called a Description of Work or DOW. This tends to be written in EU project speak and can run as long as 150 or so pages. And the work is divided up into work packages, most of which run over the full four years of the project. In truth the division of work is often somewhat arbitrary. But given the number of people working on the projects, the work packages tend to form semi autonomous mini projects themselves with their own methods of working, momentum and practices. Communication between work packages then becomes an issue.

Employ0ID has adopted a different structure. Despite being compelled to have separate work packages for the point of administration, the project is being organised through a sort of SCRUM process. Thus at three or six monthly intervals the project will form work reams, drawn from across the work packages with aims and milestones set out for the next work period. The members will organise sprints to achieve those goals, reporting back to the next face to face meeting where the outcomes will be reviewed and new goals and teams set up. This process seems to me a much better way of working, so much so that I think it deserves some research in itself. Anyway I will report back on this blog how the process evolves.

The Pontydysgu website is always full of news about the big projects we are involved in, like FP7 Learning Layers or Taccle2.  This is pretty inevitable as they take up the majority of our time and budget.  However, there are lots of other, smaller Pontydysgu projects running in the background that we rarely post anything about.  This is a bit of an oversight because although we often use these projects as test beds for trying out new ideas or as vehicles for piloting specific bits of technology that we then roll together in a much bigger package, they are also successful in their own right.

All of them are running in Pontypridd, (known locally as “Ponty”) which is where the Wales half of Pontydysgu is based. Some are part funded through the LLL Partnerships programme; some are funded in-house. We thought we might write a series of posts on what these projects are all about….

First up is Dysgu Ponty, which translates to Learning Ponty.  We chose this name because apart from the play on Pontydysgu (meaning approximately Bridge to Learning), we wanted to convey the idea that the whole community of Ponty was learning and that the town called Ponty was a learning resource.

The project is based on a very simple concept – let’s cover the town with QR codes linked to a learning resource.   The codes are being printed on decals (for shop windows), enamel (for the exteriors of building) and on varnished wooden plaques for hanging around trees in the park.  Codes come in three colours – red for Welsh, green for the English translation and black for careers.

So far we have 200 and our target is at least another hundred.  The town has a population of 30,000 but this covers all of the outlying villages as well.  It also has a great sense of community, which means that the level of support has been brilliant. The whole community is involved – schools, the Town Council, shops, businesses, the local newspaper

The link from each QR code goes to a website page on which there is a question that relates to the location.  The level is approximately 8 -12 yrs olds. Following the title question is some simple information using a range of multi media.   The location of the codes will be on Google Maps and we are currently sorting them out into a ‘Maths trail’, ‘Language trail’, ‘History trail’ etc so that children can choose whether to follow a subject trail or focus on the codes in one part of the town.

The purpose of the project is really to provide a bridge between formal and informal learning and to improve home school links.

We are currently working of a way of  ‘rewarding’ children for completing a number of questions – not sure Mozilla badges quite fits.  Also thinking about how we can get kids to be able to upload pictures as well as comments. May rethink the platform.

Meanwhile here are some examples of the sorts of things we are talking about

Location:  on the bandstand in the park

• Links to… Question:  Have you ever heard brass band music?
• Additional ‘information’ – mp3 of Colliery Brass Band with one line of text explaining that most all the pits had their own band

Location: Outside Costa Coffee

• Links to… Question: Do you know where coffee comes from?
• Additional information: You Tube video of coffee being harvested and processed

Location: Outside travel agent underneath exchange rates

• Links to… Question:  How much is it worth?
• Additional info:  Text and image – If you had £37.50 to take on holiday, how many Euros would you get?  Which travel agent in town has the best exchange rate today?

Location:  On the river bank adjacent to the confluence

• Links to…mQuestion:  What rivers are these and where is their source?
• Additional info:  The place where two rivers merge is called a ‘confluence’.  Use Google Earth to trace the two rivers back as far as you can, find out their names and where the river enters the sea.

 Location:  On the war memorial

• Links to… Question:  How many died?
• Additional info: Look at the names on the Great War memorial and then the names on the Worls War 2 memorial.  In which war were the greatest number of people from Pontypridd killed? How many times more people?  Why do you think this was?

 Location: Market Street

• Links to…Question:  What has changed?
• Additional Info: Picture of the street taken 100 years ago from same spot. Text – List all the things that are different between Market Street in 1910 and the same street today.

I seem to have spent the last two weeks in meetings. Breakfast meetings, slype meetings, FlashMeeting, pub meetings (my favourite). Anyway one of the best of the meetings was with a team of students at HsKa – the technical university of Karlsruhe in Germany. The students have been working with us over the last five months on a project to develop a new platform called Serennu ar sgeip for school teachers to manage virtual presentations form people in different occupations to students in their class.

Today we had the final review presentation with the students and their teachers. And it was awesomely good – both the presentation and the platform. This is a teaser post. Both the teachers and members of the team have promised ot right up their experiences of the project to post on this blog. We will also talk about our perceptions of the project in a mini series which we will be running here. And of course we will tell you more about the platform based on wordpress and available under an open source license.

Congratulations to the HsKa team. We are looking forward to your reflections.

Pontydysgu is happy to be involved in two new projects which have been approved by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning programme. L2T, coordinated by the Sozialforschungsstelle (sfs) at the Technische Universität Dortmund, aims to meet the increasing need for well developed ICT skills  in the field of “social media” for teachers as well as students.  It also contributes to spreading the use of the added pedagogical value of social media for teaching purposes and therefore the adoption of innovative teaching methods in schools.

RadioActive Europe will work with different groups of young people and adults to develop internet radio and will set up a European Internet Radio hub.

The projects are expected to start in November, 2012.

For those of you interested in smart textile and low cost wearables as an artistic context to engage young women in technology and engineering in education, feel free to check the International Journal of Art, Culture and Design Technologies (IJACDT), ISSUE ON CREATIVITY, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGIES CULTURES edited by Gianluca Mura (2011), p. 12-21. You can access the abstract here, or view a sample PDF here. The Guest Editorial Preface by Gianluca Mura, Politecnico di Milano University, Italy can be accessed here. You might as well like to refer the Journal (IJACDT) to a Librarian via this link.

“The International Journal of Art, Culture and Design Technologies (IJACDT) links art, design, science, and culture with emerging technologies. IJACDT provides a forum for exchanging ideas and findings from researchers across the design, arts, and technology disciplines. This journal covers theoretical and practice experiences among industrial design fields, architecture, art, computer science, psychology, cognitive sciences, humanities, cultural heritage, and related fields. IJACDT presents different arguments within project culture from the historical, critical, philosophical, rhetorical, creative, pedagogic, and professional points of view.”

I ran across this interdisciplinary symposium disseminated via Yasmin:

The Universe Resounds: Kandinsky, Synesthesia, and Art Symposium
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
2–7 pm

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Peter B. Lewis Theater
1071 Fifth Avenue
(entrance on 88th Street)
New York City

http://www.guggenheim.org/universe-resounds

In conjunction with the final days of the Kandinsky exhibition on view through January 13, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is pleased to announce The Universe Resounds: Kandinsky, Synesthesia, and Art, an
interdisciplinary examination of painting, synesthesia, and abstraction from modern to contemporary times, including from the perspectives of art history, neuroscience, music, film, physics, and performance. A reception and exhibition viewing follows the symposium.

Topics and Speakers

Kandinsky’s Synesthetic Vision: Color/Sound/Word/Image
Magdalena Dabrowski, Special Consultant, Department of
Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York

Notes on Kandinsky and Schönberg
James Leggio, Head of Publications, Brooklyn Museum, New York

Kandinsky’s Legacy in Film and Popular Culture
Kerry Brougher, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

Nonobjective Films
Courtesy the Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles

Neuroscience and Music
David Soldier, Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Pharmacology, Columbia University Medical School, New York, with Brad Garton, Director of the Columbia Computer Music Studio, Columbia University,
New York

Hypermusic Prologue
Matthew Ritchie, artist, New York

Moderated Discussion
Caroline Jones, Professor of Art History and Director, History Theory Criticism Section, Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston

For complete information, schedule, and tickets check online or call
the Box Office at 212 423 3587, Mon–Fri, 1–5 pm.

Eyetracking Forum
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
9 am
Martin Segal Theatre
The City University of New York Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street)
New York City

Science & the Arts at the CUNY Graduate Center and the Sackler Center for Arts Education are pleased to announce an Eyetracking Forum. This session for art and science professionals examines the science of
eyetracking from multiple perspectives, including filmmaking, interface technology, psychology, and data visualization, and concludes with an exhibition walkthrough.

Moderators: Adrienne Klein and Grahame Weinbren

Space is limited, RSVP required: publicprograms@guggenheim.org

Participants

Kenneth J. Ciuffreda, O.D., Ph.D., is the former Chairman of the Department of Vision Sciences at SUNY State College of Optometry, New York, whose current research involves normal and abnormal oculomotor
systems.

Isaac Dimitrovsky is a programmer who lives and works in New York.

Rebecca Shulman Herz is Senior Education Manager of the Learning Through Art program at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and author of Looking at Art in the Classroom: Art Investigations from the
Guggenheim Museum (Teachers College Press, 2010).

Bruce Homer is Associate Professor for the Ph.D. Program in Educational Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Adrienne Klein is Co-Director of Science & the Arts at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Ken Perlin is Professor of Computer Science at New York University, directing the NYU Games for Learning Institute.

John F. Simon, Jr. is a practicing new media artist who works with LCD screens and computer programming.

Paula Stuttman is an artist, independent art lecturer, and part-time Assistant Professor at the New School, New York.

Grahame Weinbren is an interactive filmmaker whose work is represented in the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum; he is also a member of the graduate faculty of the School of Visual Arts, New York.

George A. Zikos, O.D., M.S., directs the Manhattan Vision Associates/Institute Vision Research, New York.

via Yasmin, image via http://www.guggenheim.org

I am in Evora in Portugal at a two day meeting of the European funded ICONET project. ICONET builds on a previous project called Informal Competencies and their Validation (ICOVET) which developed an interview procedure for the validation of skills and competencies, a manual, and a programme for further training. ICONET is adapting and trying out the approach and tools in different sectors and different contexts in seven European countries.

The project has now only six months left to run and we have spent the afternoon discussing project dissemination. Mant of the discussions parallel recent talks in various Jisc programmes about how to ensure project sustainability and maximise the use of project outcomes following the end of external funding.

One measure is to design a range of dissemination products geared for different target audiences. New technologies can help gretaly – we havebeen looking at using video and audio as well as the more common brochures and flyers.

But the discussion today has also raised issues about what is realistic to expect from a modestly funded project. The ideas we have explored would require major changes to education systems if they were to be widely adopted. We do not have the infuence to do this. Probably the best that we can hope for is to show the possibilities of informal learning and hope that others will pick up and build on our ideas.