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I’ve been having a wee play with the p5.js web editor.

p5 .js is a JavaScript library that starts with the original goal of Processing, to make coding accessible for artists, designers, educators, and beginners, and reinterprets this for today’s web. Using the original metaphor of a software Sketchbook, p5 .js has a full set of drawing functionality. However, you’re not limited to your drawing canvas, you can think of your whole browser page as your sketch! For this, p5 .js has addon libraries that make it easy to interact with other HT ML5 objects, including text, input, video, webcam, and sound.

I’ve occasionally dipped my toe into processing and found it good fun.

Over the summer I’ve seen a stream of tweets and instagram posts from Tom Smith which got me interested in p5.js.

I don’t really have much of a clue but have had a bit of fun. Especially when I found you can use a library with p5.js to export gifs. The feature image on this post is one made by my sketch: Classy bramble skulls 4. This one has a background image, some animation, the mid-ground, the sleeper and computer and then the window frame which are drawn. If I had though I’d have used 3 image layers sandwiching 2 animation ones. Early days.

There seems to be a ton of learning material available and it is easy to duplicate interesting p5.js sketches to edit and play around with. (The school holidays are not long enough;-))

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Read On Switching from iPad to Chromebook in School by Fraser Speirs

This summer, my school is making a substantial change in our 1-to-1 programme. After nearly ten years, we are switching from iPad to Chromebook. I thought I would write a bit about why we are doing this.
We have refreshed our iPad deployment twice now. We started in 2010 with the original iPad, then…

Fraser ran the first whole-school 1:1 iPad deployment and the whole post has me thinking.

A couple of sections stood out for me:

When we started with iPad in 2010, I suppose I thought that we were heading into a new era in education with creativity at the forefront. Particularly, I thought that Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence was going to usher that in. We were led to believe that all different kinds of assessment materials would be considered appropriate for submission to our exam board. None of that happened, and we seem to be moving away from that idea at a steady clip.

Are we moving away from creativity is Scotland? Just for exams or across the board? Are iPadds more suited to creativity than chromebooks.

And:

It seems to me that, for a school, the choice is whether you’re a GSuite school or an Office 365 school and everything flows from that decision. It’s quite difficult to transition from one productivity cloud to another and nobody will do that without a compelling reason. Google and Microsoft are matching each other blow-for-blow in cloud features, partly for each to make sure that the other never develops such a compelling advantage.

I wonder how Fraser choose between 0365 & GSuite?

Personally last session I’ve moved away from the cloud in class for pupil use. I found OneNotes and OneDrive to be a bit unreliable, lost pupils work and sometime time. I suspect this is due to our rather slow internet connection. I do depend on OneDrive and iCloud for taking work home. OneDrive is pretty much where I keep any curricular material now.
I now put up with the poorer organisation of Apple Notes and use Airdrop because it is some much faster and reliable than the cloud for me. Given there have been a huge number of updates to the O365 suite on iOS. I’ll kick the tyres again in the coming session.

I’d like to have the network that would speed things up and the opportunity to try GSuite. Although the cloud may be future, it is not yet evenly distributed.

It was gratifying to see Apple put serious effort into getting the desktop version of Google Docs working in iPadOS 13. However, it’s too little too late for us at this stage in our development. We might come back to iPad in years to come but, for the next four years at least, we’re going to see what GSuite and Chromebooks can do for us.

It is going to be fascinating reading the next chapter.

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Replied to Reply: On Mobile Blogging by Aaron DavisAaron Davis

You provide an interesting reflection on workflows Ton.
Personally, I spend so much of my writing of late on my Nexus 6P. For longer posts, I still often start in Trello using Markdown, however for my collected posts I utilise the post editor. Although I have tinkered with Indigenous, I have become …

I’ve thought about mobile quite a lot of the years1, played with different types of postings.

My class post to their e-portfolio blogs and class blog using iPads, which give an ok but not great experience. We usually write in the notes app, paste over and add media. I am worried, still, about the transition to Gutenberg.

As an apple user lot of the friction, for me has been solved by micro.blog. I mostly posts photos on the go. It is harder to write IndieWeb replies, bookmarks etc. while mobile. Adding a footnote is easy on my laptop, but I wouldn’t want to try on my phone.

There is certainly room of an app or WordPress plugin that would give a very cutback experience. One of the great things about micro.blog is that posting images does not fill up your editor screen and make text harder to add in the way the WordPress editor does.

1. Since 2007 with my class on a 2g phone ↩

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Carol Dweck: where growth mindset went wrong | Tes News

There is an interesting twitter thread started by the tes author Jon Severs.

Somewhat worrying that this is not only being introduced to schools but that a wee industry is being built up before implementation is properly understood.

“Teachers have to ask, what exactly is the evidence suggesting?” she explains. “They have to realise it takes deep thought and deep experimentation on their part in the classroom to see how best the concept can be implemented there.

Not something that can be done after a few sessions of in-service then?

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Screenshot of microbit app

Since returning to the classroom I’ve been using micro:bits with my class of 8-11 year olds. We have had a deal of fun with them, some of this is on the class blog.

We normally use pc laptops and chrome to access the MakeCode editor. In the second year I tried using the iOS app but out of a class only one or two children managed to get their micro:bits connected. At the time I put this down to multiple micro:bits and iPads in close proximity.

I have occasionally tested new versions of the app and the most recent one seemed a lot better. It displayed the webpage code editor in app and flashing seemed simpler. Today wanting to move our micro:bit guitar project on when the PCs were in use elsewhere in the school I decided to give the app another run. I am very glad I did. Everything about the app seemed to be better. I think that coding and flashing to the micro:bit for an iPad is simpler than using a pc. We had no problems in getting code written and flashed to the micro:bits.

I’d highly recommend the app if you have both iPads and micro:bits in your classroom.

I’d also recommend the Microsoft MakeCode Guitar project. I’ve been working with a mixed age group class and the mix of tech and ‘art’ fits very well. Some of the younger children are getting their first experience with coding and the art and construction can keep them motivated when the coding concepts get tough.