{"id":2232,"date":"2011-12-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/?e=2232"},"modified":"2011-12-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","slug":"the-nearest-thing-to-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/the-nearest-thing-to-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"the nearest thing to magic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class='posterous_autopost'>\n<div class=\"posterous_bookmarklet_entry\">\n<blockquote class=\"posterous_long_quote\">\n<p>But in a way they&#8217;re making the same mistake as those who saw ICT as a way of preparing kids for the world of work by training them to use Microsoft Office \u2013 ie designing a curriculum by looking into a rear-view mirror. What we ought to be doing is giving the kids the ability to operate in \u2013 and perhaps help to create \u2013 industries that nobody has even dreamed of yet.<\/p>\n<p>What governments don&#8217;t seem to understand is that software is the nearest thing to magic that we&#8217;ve yet invented. It&#8217;s pure &#8220;thought stuff&#8221; \u2013 which means that it enables ingenious or gifted people to create wonderful things out of thin air. All you need to change the world is imagination, programming ability and access to a cheap PC. You don&#8217;t need capital or material resources or adult permission. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"posterous_quote_citation\">via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/profile\/johnnaughton\">\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Naughton<\/a> in today&#8217;s Observer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/technology\/2011\/dec\/04\/ict-national-curriculum-john-naughton?utm_source=sendgrid.com&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=website\"> Programming should take pride of place in our schools  guardian.co.uk<\/a><\/div>\n<p>It is this nearest thing to magic that has attracted me to using computers. Even a wee bit of coding can be very exciting. Enthusing pupils is the challenge. I&#8217;ve noticed quite a few new, to me anyway, approaches to this; <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hackasaurus.org\/en-US\/\">Hackasaurus<\/a> which I&#8217;ve blogged about and more recently:<br \/> <a href=\"http:\/\/teachcomputing.wordpress.com\/2011\/11\/05\/hackademy-after-hours-event-nov-4th-2011\/\">Hackademy<\/a> and  <br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/teachcomputing.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/28\/hack-to-the-future\/\">Hack To The Future<\/a> on the <a href=\"http:\/\/teachcomputing.wordpress.com\/\">Teach Computing<\/a> blog by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/teknoteacher\">Alan O&#8217;Donohoe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Alan  contributed a couple of boos: <a href=\"http:\/\/edutalk.info\/want-to-teach-python-to-year-7-in-5-easy-step\">Want to teach Python to Year 7 in 5 easy steps? Part 1, here&#8217;s how&#8230;<\/a><br \/> and <br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/edutalk.info\/part-2-teaching-python-to-year-7s-lesson-45-p\">Part 2, teaching Python to Year 7s. Lesson 4&#038;5, pros&#038;cons<\/a><br \/> to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/edutalk.info\/\">EDUtalk<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My <a href=\"http:\/\/linkli.st\/johnjohnston\/8gEZx\">eduHacking \u00b7 linkli.st<\/a> is getting longer.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But in a way they&#8217;re making the same mistake as those who saw ICT as a way of preparing kids for the world of work by training them to use Microsoft Office \u2013 ie designing a curriculum by looking into a rear-view mirror. What we ought to be doing is giving the kids the ability [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mf2_syndication":[],"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"post_format":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-wwwd","7":"kind-","8":"h-entry","9":"hentry"},"better_featured_image":null,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p57zFQ-A0","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"kind":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2232"},{"taxonomy":"post_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_format?post=2232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}