EDU Of Things
My volume is set just right to a best-of-the-best 80’s mix, and I am about to download the latest and greatest in early education computer science programming. I suggest you sit back, crank the dial on your favorite 80’s jam and read on.
Today I returned from a week in Orlando, Florida, representing FuzePlay at the Future of Technology in Education (FETC) Conference. And, aside from the assortment of technological tools, insights, and tips, I was taken away to best of the 80s jams just about everywhere I went. The tunes set the perfect vibe for an EdTech conference discussing the future of technology in education!
What do the 80’s have to do with computer science and education? Well, Pac-Man for one. Launched in 1980, Pac-Man quickly became a pop culture icon that represents a technological tipping point. Soon after, in 1981, IBM released the first personal computer, and the rest is history.
Or, is it?
It is so easy to look at the tech giants of our day — Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft — and believe we have arrived; that the Holy Grail of tech has been claimed. Well, I am here to tell you that it hasn’t, and that we are far from it.
Tools and resources exist today that far surpass anything available at the time Pac-Man was invented. Speaking first to the youngest among us, the opportunities now available to digital citizens far surpass the opportunities available to the best-prepared and most-advantaged in 1980. The challenge for educators today is defining outcomes and integrating resources that will result in empowered young learners inspired to achieve the exponential greatness available to them.
Stay in the 80's with me for a minute longer. The 80's was a revolutionary time for personal computing which forever shaped the future of computer science and computational thinking. It was an era of tinkering, of taking things apart and putting them together again, but in new ways, different ways. It was physical first, then digital.
Take for example, the Apple Computer. It wasn’t a new invention, it was an assembly of existing IBM parts Steve Wozniak tinkered on until one day he arranged them in a more efficient schematic. This inspired brilliance, like one might assume, is a mix of nurture and nature. But, it is the nurture aspect of Steve Wozniak's life that should intrigue educators.
Steve Wozniak was nurtured in a manner shared by the large majority of proficient computer scientists and engineering gurus of our day — he was cultured in it. Yes, there was natural inquisitiveness, but all which came naturally to him was boosted by the fact his father Jerry Wozniak was an electrical engineer at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. You might imagine the toys being brought into Steve’s home. By age 11, among other things, Wozniak was building radio transmitters. The year would have been 1961!
As relatable a story this is for most top engineers — raised in a home with one or both parents trained and working in technical vocations — it no longer need be the norm to develop a technical mind.
Times have changed and this couldn’t be clearer after talking with an educator at FETC. Hosted in Florida annually, FETC is recognized for bringing together the largest number of Senior Level Strategists (Administrators, Superintendents, Directors, etc.) in education. Every teacher I met with was passionate, savvy, and intent on bringing back the best in computer science to his or her faculty members and students. It was also very clear that computer science is a BIG two words. Teachers don’t have it easy, and most are required to learn the inputs and outputs of teaching computer science on the fly, as an entrepreneur might validate a new venture in a new market they are unfamiliar with.
As cliche as it may sound, every school and district is unique and deserves to be treated as such. In terms of organizational leadership, during a time of such critical change in United States education, this point can’t go unemphasized. Different schools, with different teachers, with different students and different budgets all have a myriad of varying needs and resources that can’t be treated the same. That said, most all educators find themselves at a similar starting point when considering computer science programming. According to a new report from SAM Labs, studies show that 78% of teachers have not received the training necessary to teach with technology.
Educators championing computer science integration for their school and/or district come from varied educational disciplines and knowledge bases. Most all of them are leading in meritocratic form because they have proven to be not just early adopters of technology in the classroom, but very much visionaries of technical skills as a new literacy for a world of digital citizens. It is from this small, condensed group of passionate educators that computer science programming is evolving across the country. It is the number one problem educators today are striving to solve.
Commonly, each Technology Director has two or three teachers they consider to be their go-to technology gurus. These gurus are individuals who also understand the urgency of learning to teach with technology and have demonstrated a willingness to learn new skills and explore new methods of teaching. These fellow teachers implement programming iteratively and report back collaboratively to discuss successful resources, techniques, and tools. Most of these educators are in the early stages of planning (many are still seeking understanding) what their ideal computer science programming should look like. And, an increasing number of Technology Directors have a plan and have begun integrating various tools and programs they are monitoring across their schools and districts.
There is, however, a flip side that needs to be address managerially. Though not the norm, there exists an alternative group of educators representative of an alarming number of schools across America. In these schools the organizational challenges and budgetary constraints layered on expectations of student outcomes is insurmountable. A select number of Technology Directors I spoke with told stories of teachers that flat out refuse to continue learning. The reasons vary, but tend to be aligned with an adversity to change and intimidation caused by technology. Tenure and days until retirement can also be demotivating as the progressive speed of technology can eclipse the wisdom of age ever more rapidly as technology becomes more distributed and networked — this is the future “Internet of Things” (IoT).
The reality, however, is that the discounted ‘wisdom of ages’ feeling isn’t being felt just by teachers, but by the tech community at large. The rise of the “Internet of Things” is one example of how future technologies can scale in a networked world. Both the positive and negative unforeseen repercussions of this and similar technological shifts more directly affect the youngest among us than ever before. It is no wonder that education is seeing the reform in STEM subjects that it is. As quickly as technology can depreciate, so can old knowledge diminish the value of old learning methods. We have known this in business and now recognize it in education.
The Internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enables these objects to connect and exchange data. Each “thing” is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system, but is able to inter-operate within the existing Internet infrastructure. Experts estimate that the IoT will consist of about 30 billion objects by 2020. It is also estimated that the global market value of IoT will reach $7.1 trillion by 2020. (Source: An empirical examination of consumer adoption of Internet of Things services: Network externalities and concern for information privacy perspectives. Chin-LungHsuaJudy, Chuan-ChuanLin)
Ever since commercial computing arose in the 1950's centralized versus distributed computing has been debated. After personal computers hit the scene in the 1980's, distributed computing took off until the 2000's, when the elasticity, redundancy, and cost management of cloud storage became the go-to data storage solution for the majority of tech companies. In recent years, Microsoft and Amazon have made buku bucks hosting centralized cloud services — in other words, networks of very big data centers. Consequently, developers were able to do what they do best without worry as to the maintenance and scalability of the server side of their services. The majority of onlines services you pay for today rely on these data centers as one might rely on a lifeline to be saved.
However, advancements in technology have led to a proliferation of smart devices and smart computing and, in turn, a revitalization of distributed computing. Walking the expo floor at FETC, and earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), is proof enough. Our lives are being inundated by smart devices from smartphones and smart appliances to connected 3D printers and intelligent machine equipment on shop floors. These devices have powerful processors and can tackle jobs that previously would have required expensive and difficult to maintain server support. Software now days can also be moved around and updated more flexibly and is often readily available in open source environments independent from hardware — this concept is an inherent beauty of open source devices.
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. According to scientists who studied it, open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration. (Source: Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing, Andrew M. St. Laurent)
Demand for computing in these end-user environments is driven by non-technical reasons as well. Consumers care about privacy, especially in education as administered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Businesses want to use collected data. But if data leaking is a concern, businesses prefer to keep information managed internally. Lastly, some countries are further fueling demand for distributed computing by having passed laws that require data to stay within their borders versus being hosted on servers owned by foreign enterprise.
The dominant narrative in the tech industry — that most data is best crunched centrally in the cloud — is also undermined by the fact that many new software applications have to process huge amounts of data fast. According to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, vehicles will generate and consume roughly 4,000 GB of data for every hour of driving. If this amount of data relied on current centralized servers, then aside from exorbitant costs, in between the upload to process received data and the download back to the vehicle, the pedestrian sensed crossing the street may very well have already been hit.
Changing economics are another consideration. The faster adjustments can be made — for instance, to optimize the operations of a machine in a factory — the greater revenue gains tend to be. This means data is often best analyzed as it is captured, which needs to be done locally. The costs of transferring, storing and processing data in the cloud can be avoided too.
A child considered Pre-K-3 today will be between the ages of 3 and 8. If today’s technology solutions and concerns are extrapolated, it is not unlikely that these children will be terraforming worlds, exploring deep space, and building data centric IoT solutions that leverage open source AI platforms for personal use. Amidst global economic and technological shifts, how should we therefore be thinking about early computer science education?
The Zubi Flyer from FuzePlay was designed with this future in mind. FuzePlay FUZEs skills gaps through an integrated technology platform that universally focuses on developing real-world skill sets aimed at cutting-edge technology. FuzePlay’s hardware platform FUZEs play by allowing all online experiences to be taken offline and into the real word, thus creating opportunity for global citizenship and peer-to-peer sharing.
FuzePlay’s technology platform is designed with one simple premise — develop high-tech toys for the non-tech with a goal to make teaching and learning with technology as easy as 1, 2, 3 — Build, Hack, Play. The approach is simple — put futuristic technologies into universal toys and teach through play while leveraging free, open source tools that are familiar to educators and commonly used inside the classroom.
For early learners, Zubi Flyer is as simple as following instructions, learning numbers, and recognizing shapes. Zubi Flyer games are multisensory and designed for physical play. Students will cycle in and out of a color coded game menu where they apply principles of sequencing to make game selection. Zubi Flyer comes preloaded with 12 different game experiences that leverage art, sound, memory and physical play as mediums to teach concepts of computer science and computational thinking.
EARLY COMPUTER SCIENCE CONCEPTS
Programming
Sequencing
Loops
Conditionals
Functions
Functions with parameters
Variables
Computational Thinking
Decomposition
Patterns
Abstraction
Algorithms
One recent repeated-measures functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of kindergarten children shows that over the course of 8 weeks accumulating just 3.6 h of playtime with an educational computer program leads to changes in neural activity within regions of the visual system associated with viewing letters (Educational Neuroscience: The Early Years, Bruce D. McCandliss).
After becoming familiar with Zubi Flyer game play, teachers can level up applied learning by connecting Zubi Flyer to ScratchJr. ScratchJr is a visual programming language developed by MIT Labs designed to introduce coding skills to children ages 5–7. By creating interactive projects in ScratchJr, young children can learn to think creatively and reason systematically, despite not being able to read.
ScratchJr is commonly used in elementary and middle schools across the United States. Zubi Flyer can be connected to ScratchJr through a Scratch Extension. This process includes accessing FuzePlay’s open source code repositories on GitHub and uploading new code to the Zubi Flyer. With the new code uploaded to Zubi Flyer, FuzePlay code blocks become accessible in Scratch, and Zubi Flyer can then be used as a controller for interactive stories created in ScratchJr. Zubi Flyer becomes a physical object kids can control directly through block based code they create and control.
GitHub is a web-based hosting service for version control using git. It is mostly used for computer code. It offers all of the distributed version control and source code management functionality of Git, as well as adding its own features.
Teachers and students wanting to progress past block based coding and into a text-based coding environment can connect Zubi Flyer to Arduino. Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. A large number of students across the world have participated in Hour of Code or regularly use Code Studio in the classroom. These introductions to text based scripting will make modifying Zubi Flyer game code in the Arduino development environment seem familiar and intuitive.
Code Studio (formerly known as Code.org) is a non-profit organization that aims to encourage people, particularly school students in the United States, to learn computer science. The website includes free coding lessons, and the initiative also targets schools in an attempt to encourage them to include more computer science classes in the curriculum.
Zubi Flyer is designed for Parents, Education Administrators, Technology Directors, and Program Coordinators with the goal to close skills gaps regardless of where faculty training or student preparedness stands in correlation with computer science programming. Zubi Flyer is a tool that gives the teachers flexibility relative to their classroom, school, and district needs and constraints.
As skills gaps are closed so will the wisdom of age. No one expects cloud computing to go away. It will continue to grow. But, as the landscape of technology and hardware shapes up, there will be a real fight over who colonizes the fringes of computing and in turn which companies will control the “Internet of Things” and its $7 trillion dollar global market. We can expect things to be everywhere, and these things will become an immersive part of our lives.
