How to Not Waste Your Only Life Debating Direct Instruction and Inquiry-Based Learning

Teachers will do what works for them and they won’t do what doesn’t work for them. It is true that “what works” in a very well-defined context is an empirical question. You can study it. You can referee two different teaching approaches using assessment scores, survey results, classroom observations, meta-analyses—all the usual tools.

Posters — Jamie Clark I like the Dylan Williams influenced ones…


Learn p5.js for Creative Coding – 5 Beginner Projects – YouTube I have played with p5.js on and off, but never got too far. THis course seems short enough to be doable.


Sora Pretty crazy, video AI linked everywhere.

RedKetchup – Online Tools A nice set of online tools to do simple stuff with images that I prefer to do on the desktop. Handy for time I don’t have access to familiar tools. Got a 20 second delay on download if you don’t upgrade, via Aaron

How To Pay Attention. 20 Ways To Win The War Against Seeing | by Rob Walker | re:form | Medium I think I saw this 2014 post a few times before. Still enjoyed it. Some might be fun with class.

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;-))

Liked Tom Smith on Twitter (Twitter)
“Absolutely loving @p5xjs since I FINALLY got round to trying it. Decided to teach it next week. I wish the online editor had code completion because my brain doesn't. https://t.co/R6wST1yNEJ”

I played with processing on a Future Learn course a while back. I’ve noticed p5xjs and though it might be interesting to play with. Never did, still do.