Maria Knobelsdorf, University of Dortmund, Germany - Didaktik der ...

projects.
Other: There are several other miscellaneous engagements:
these include after-school ‘Technoclubs’, Science week [2],
Home Schoolers, and other sundry public engagements such
as the Aberystwyth ‘Beachlab’.
3. EXPERIENCES
Attempting to engage the schools is challenging; the country
is sparsely populated with few top-quality roads – reaching
parts of the population can be very time-consuming, and
schools are reluctant to give up staff and pupil time to extracurricular
activity. Schools prefer to devote time directly before
or after holiday periods (to minimise disruption) which
provokes serious congestion for university resource.
One-day engagements are held either in the university or a
school, and often present transport or scheduling difficulties.
Subject matter is not hard to generate: programming, computer
applications of music, robotics, AI are just some examples.
We learn in delivery what may be obvious to trained
schoolteachers: we have to take care to schedule breaks and
variation into what is otherwise a very long experience.
Bootcamps differ inasmuch as children have volunteered
for the event and so the level of motivation is much higher.
Not only is length of time appreciably greater, but the intensity
and depth of the exercise allows an immersion that
would be difficult to reproduce in the classroom. These activities
have been ambitious and very successful: young participants
have mastered programming for calibration and
navigation (in C), full bottom-up construction, basic electronics,
circuitry, and sewing.
Miscellaneous engagements have productively exposed many
hundreds of passers-by to robots, AI, UAVs, wearables, etc.,
and were introduced to the project and its aims.
4. OBSERVATIONS
Resourcing: European funding has made it possible to focus
on issues of logistics and liaison that are often victims
of underfunded or volunteer outreach activity. There is no
expectation of continuation resource and it is incumbent on
the project to leave some lasting impact. We see lasting
influence on teachers’ understanding and enthusiasm as the
best aim.
Challenge of materials: We are delighted to witness that
our workshops are all accessible, and that perhaps we can
be more ambitious. We do not suggest that 100% of the
class walk away with perfect understanding, but are convinced
that the great majority are having some aspect of
their understanding of CS improved.
Targets: The primary metric of the funding authority is
pupil contact numbers; with hindsight, the numbers are not
ambitious; all schools have been co-educational and it has
not been difficult to engage with a good number of girls. We
consider it more fruitful to engage with the 11-14, rather
than the 15-19 bracket. Geographic coverage has been uneven
– many areas of the country are very rural with very
small schools
Evaluation: Short term evaluation has been achieved by
crude questionnaires before and after formal engagements.
While these are of questionable value, we can see a clear
shift in view of science and technology toward the positive.
Portability: Materials are routinely packaged for delivery
across all sites, and in due course more generally. Complete
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‘bundles’ are posted as freely web-available resource.
Staffing: Very few university staff have the training or skills
that go with full-time teaching and from time to time this
has been an issue. Teachers will know classes well and will
defuse both the over-eager or disruptive, and will have techniques
to motivate the bored. Often, Technocamps staff
had to learn quickly how to ‘crowd manage’, for example by
having ready a repertoire of illustrative practical activities
or videos that provide relevant variety.
Welsh: Serious students of CS in most countries would benefit
from working at least partly in English, and pursuing it
in a minority language such as Welsh would be eccentric.
Nevertheless, many of the target group operate in Welsh as
a first language. It has not been easy to meet this need
from the project personnel, and a solution has to be found
by full engagement of Welsh speaking teachers who share
the project aims.
The project has been a success by all measurements: pupil
and teacher reaction is positive and the targets are being hit
with ease. It will continue to develop for the next 21 months,
improving what we do, particularly in devising techniques
for longitudinal monitoring. We aim to leave in place a suite
of web-readable materials most of which will be applicable
anywhere and would permit anyone so minded to bring ‘real
CS’ into schools of their choice. Generally, we are accruing
a range of first-hand experience of putting challenging CS in
front of children much younger than those who normally see
it, and doing so often in unusual and sometimes challenging
environments (and languages!). We are developing conclusions
on what represents best practice in these endeavours,
some of which we have presented here. At project end, we
will collate and publish these as a guide to efficient HE intervention
in high school Informatics.
5. REFERENCES
[1] Arduino. 2012. http://www.arduino.cc/.
[2] British Science Association. National Science and
Engineering Week, 2012. http:
//www.britishscienceassociation.org/web/nsew/.
[3] Computing at School. Computing For the Next
Generation . . . , 2012.
http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/.
[4] M. Gove MP. Speech given to BETT, January 11 th ,
2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/
jan/11/digital-literacy-michael-gove-speech.
[5] Royal Society. Shut down or restart?, January 2012.
Final report of the Computing in UK Schools group
http://royalsociety.org/education/policy/
computing-in-schools/report/.
[6] Technocamps. Creating the Next Generation of
Technologists, 2012. http://www.technocamps.com/.
[7] Wikipedia. History of the Welsh language, 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_
Welsh_language.