Tag: learning

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Replied to Shopping Sheet – Improving the Shopping Process During the Pandemic by Aaron DavisAaron Davis (readwriterespond.com)
The current pandemic has led to many changes in habits. One of which is that I like to be prepared when I go to the supermarket, especially when doing a big shop. Fine I may not last out the two to three weeks that Zeynep Tufekci flagged early on: For food, you can just buy two or three weeks’ wor...

Hi Aaron,
Since the start of covid I get a delivery from the supermarket once a week and make a quick trip to a smaller one in the evening. Newspaper from the wee coop early morning.

What I love about his post is the quote/  featured image. I liked it on flickr earlier.

Ten Lessons I Learned While Teaching Myself to Code

I’ve been messing around with code and scripting on and off since I started using computers. Never enough to get the basic stuff in my head long term. I suspect my aged brain as well as the lack of daily practise. I can still have “fun“.

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Caught in the Study Web – Cybernaut – Every

Much of Study Web parallels more adult and professional spaces that have emerged in the last decade—revered influencers, a bend towards materialism, and inspiration over analysis.

Really interesting post, strangely l’ve listened to some of the ‘music’ videos as background in my classroom of much younger learners.

Study Web is the space students have constructed for themselves in response to the irl system that just isn’t working. Unable to find a place or person to turn to with their academic and career anxieties, they find internet strangers—strange kin—to speak to, or simply share the same space with, online. Lacking the intrinsic inspiration to study for hours each day, online advice and group accountability provide a solution. Feeling isolated, virtual study partners create a sense of fellowship.

During lockdown I occasionally gave my class time to complete a short piece of work. Turning off my screen and playing some music, often the lofi type mentioned in the article. I wonder if having longer ‘working together’ sessions would have been helpful? Did anyone else try this sort of thing with primary pupils?

Coincidently one year ago I noted: Our Magic Box A poem written by my class in teams w hen I gave them some 5 minute intervals to write.

Link via Waxy.org

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Replied to Learning through frustration | Open Thinkering by Doug Belshaw (dougbelshaw.com)
the assumption that everything can be broken down into a sequence that can (and should) be learned by people in the same order. I just think, for me at least, learning doesn’t work like that.

Learning does not work for me like that either Doug, serendipity, excitement, rabbit holes & fascination are usually the drivers for me.

something kicks in

& then I am lost in it. I often believe this will change lots of things and emerge blinking to reality.

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TL:DR: Cut to the puppies.

When I was working on Glow full-time Ian Stuart talked a lot about the Zone of proximal development . Wikipedia says that the ZPD is The zone of proximal development is an area of learning that occurs when a person is assisted by a teacher or peer with a skill set higher than that of the subject..

This week I’ve had a personal revelation about this zone.

Most of my personal learning over the past few has not been directly related to my profession. A lot has been in the sphere of computers and computing driven by fascination and fun. I frequently take a shallow dip into coding and web development. On of the areas I’ve occasionally tried to understand is Git and GitHub.

Git is a widely used source code management system for software development. It is a distributed revision control system with an emphasis on speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.

Quite a mouthful and well above my pay grade. My simple understanding is that git can be used to develop code (or writing) allowing one to experiment without breaking a working system. It can also be used to collaborate with others. It has some educational uses 1.

Git is also difficult, or I’ve found it so. I’ve dipped in and out several times over the last few years but taken away very little. I’ve used GitHub to download software and played about with both the command line and GUI application, but never got further than following instructions.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been dippping in and out of Ry’s Git Tutorial – RyPress this really makes sense, and I am making some slow progress but not quite in the zone.

Last week I read couple of posts on Alan’s blog Fork on the Range: Getting Over the Fear of GitHub Forking and Forking Your Way into the Flickr CC Attribution Helper. These offered the opportunity to fork a couple of Alan’s repos (fork = make copies), change some things and submit pull requests (pull request = offer Alan the chance to pull in your changes).

Both examples were very simple to join in with. Nether needed any coding skills. What they did do was offer the opportunity to see the collaborative functionality of gitHub in action. This was enough to take me into the zone.

A few years ago I got a badge: Try Git this feels quite different, a couple of comments from a known friend is on a different level. The step into the zone was serendipitous rather planned by the teacher in this case so I guess this might not be a great example of ZPD, but it feels like it.

Another piece fell into place on Thursday: #tdc1550 Oh No! We missed #NationalPuppyDay Do a Puppy Video 2 This had nothing to do with git, but I decided I could approach the challenge by making a website rather than making a video. I could host that website on GitHub and develop it with some version control to practise the stuff I’d been learning on Ry’s Git Tutorial.

The site: Puppies is pretty silly, but it took a while to put together. And it gave me an chance to repeatedly practise the git commands I’d been learning. I could also easily backtrack through the development:

johnj:puppies john$ git log --oneline
14ed184 Adding credit links for gif and sound
df2914a Fixing title on single.html
0a22006 more explaination & info
d63de49 linking to single.html
e7ffc2e Started on single gif sound combo
a57e6d7 simplfying the starting of audio, adding sound ids t oquery
d99dfc7 commenting out console logging
31adc22 Added # for loading and linking
7612182 fixing the position of mobile button
07678ae moving mobile button
c06acd0 adding button to start sounds on ios
ac233e6 Create README.md
bf7a3f6 added info button and text
2760bb5 add gitignore file
25ba5ab Adding example buttons
cd503e0 Adding a search box
403b1c9 fix credits on first sound
0a80883 Adding credits fro sounds
02b5e24 meta description
18dfa21 fixing height css properly
f0dbc3b fixing height
6d8084b Remving some cruft
8de4425 first commit

I can see that my spelling and typos could be improved. I’ve left them in place here, I don’t know how to fix them in the git log (more to learn).

I am not sure I would choose this process for a similar (or even a slightly more sensible task). Each time I wanted to update the live page I had to go through a dance of several commands. But if I ever got to to something in collaboration with other folk it would be invaluable.

What helped my learning, was two things: Alan’s teaching, arriving at the right time, encouraging me that this was worthwhile; The Daily Create challenge which gave me a playground and a small but friendly audience.

This is probably enough git learning for me for now (unless Alan issues more challenges) but I am in a much better place to move on if I need or want to.

This post got some commentary when cross posted to medium. (Manual webmention)

Featured image, one of my own that has zone for a tag on flickr. Filtered to mono as the colours were terrible.

1. For example:

Get started with Git in the classroom | Opensource.com or education/teachers: a place to share ideas around using GitHub for learning ↩

2. The Daily Create provides a space for regular practice of spontaneous creativity through challenges published every day.
Each assignment should take no more than 15-20 minutes. There are no registrations, no prizes, just a community of people producing art daily. Developed as part of the ds106 open course on digital storytelling, TDC is open to anyone who wants a regular dose of creative exercises (and it more fun than jumping jacks, pushups, and P90X). ↩

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it is seldom about technology designers’ a priori plans for a technology, and more about users’ unexpected practices with it. That, to me, is the most fascinating and useful basis of research inquiry.

via Brief statement on ‘Digital Wisdom’ | Ibrars space.

I love ‘unexpected practices’ it is why we need flexible technology in Learning and Teaching.

My favourite use for word when I was teaching primary 6 was as a poor man’s vector editor, Sandaig Otters » Seeing Stars, and I’ve often been surprised by how pupils and teachers bend unsuitable software to their needs.

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I agree wholeheartedly with Terry Anderson who recently wrote, “learning occurs through construction, annotation and maintenance of learning artefacts.” “Learning artefacts” are things you create like videos, essays, diagrams, concept maps, photo collages, etc. Because these artefacts are the core of your learning experience, it is critically important that you own these artefacts and have ongoing access to them. Consequently, all of the learning artefacts that you create for this course will be stored somewhere outside the learning management system. Specifically, these artefacts will be stored and maintained in a space controlled solely by you.

from: P2PU | Intro to Openness in Education David Wiley

Sounds like a good plan.