Chapter 21: Teaching Coding, Technology & Computers using Hello Ruby - Part 1
Date/Time: 25th July 2024 Thursday - 4:25 am & Friday 26th July 2024 - 2:27 am
This is yet another interesting post about a great training session online with teachers and an early year school head. It's been a while since I did training sessions online. I was skimming through the Hello Ruby book on “Adventures in Coding” and I came across a wonderful idea of creating an online session for teachers, school heads and coordinators specifically teaching in schools in Pakistan. Hello Ruby is written by Linda Luikus who is a Finland based children's author and illustrator. She has written three books on coding , technology and computers. I skimmed through the Hello Ruby website and thought of creating an interesting , fun learning training session for teachers.
This post will focus on ideas shared on the Hello Ruby website and the books. The post will reflect on the content in the training session and the feedback of the participants. This was something new for me too. Also I felt happy creating the content in Google Sites , Google Drawings, Google Forms and Google Drawings. My knowledge for Google for education tools was very handy here. I feel empowered to design my own courses because of my Google and ISTE certifications. ISTE certification ensures I stay focused, on path and the training content is relevant, purposeful and meaningful. It reflects effective technology integration.
It was sort of challenging since I thought of creating my own content inspired by the Hello Ruby activities in the books and the website. I choose to create interactive activities in Google Drawings. It was easy to share with participants, they could drag and drop the objects on screen, and write comments if needed. And I can easily share links of Google Drawing with the participants through the Google meet chat box. The attendance and feedback form was created in Google Forms.The reading tasks and certificate were designed in Google docs. Autocrat was used to generate the e-certificates for participants in PDF form. The certificates were emailed to participants after completing the session tasks.
The whole session was designed in Google Sites. The introduction page had the welcome note, session description, objectives and the links to ISTE standards. The next page had the session tasks. Each session task had a link to google drawing task. The next page had the feedback form which participants were required to fill at the end of the session. The last page had the certificate which the participants will receive after completing the session tasks. The session was delivered through Google Meet. It is easy for participants to join using Google Meet. I was thinking of delivering a session through Zoom. Google for Education has more tools that can be very handy during online training sessions as compared to Zoom.
The feedback of the three sessions was very positive and the participants enjoyed the learning experience. They stated and I quote,” it was a great learning experience”. The session started with discussing with participants the traditional way of teaching coding , technology and computers a few years back. Most of the participants had similar responses. They shared about being taught using textbooks since in their time so much technology was not available. The teacher and the textbook were the sole provider of knowledge. The schools had a white board where the teacher wrote instructions and the code to copy.
Even today I had a chance to observe a computer science lesson in a matric school, where the students were taught the code from the textbook and they copied the same on the computers in the computer lab. The issue with this system is if you give students a slightly different code in the final exams , they will not be able to do it. Just because they learnt the code by heart and never had a chance to comprehend the meaning of the code.
The second task was interesting. I showed the participants a few images of routine use objects, these included a remote control, a digital thermometer, a car, a traffic signal and an elevator. The participants had to make connections with a computer. It was a great opportunity to think out of the box and come to the conclusion that everything we see around ourselves is actually a computer. For example a remote control functions the same way, we input the commands and the channels on the television are changed. Similarly think of an elevator or lift, the person presses the floor buttons and lift/elevator takes you to that floor. A car has a navigation system that routes you to your destination. And so on. This is an easy and simple way to start a discussion about computers in preschool or early primary school. You can let the students think of anything they see around and functions as a computer and then build on their responses. But this was a very interesting task for me as well as the participants. It triggered them to think!
The next task was also very interesting, the participants had to make connections between algorithms and art. In the initial task they had to imagine themselves as computers and I was supposed to give instructions to them. They were given instructions for three tasks: to draw a rectangle, draw an object beginning from letter A and draw a triangle of unequal side. Interestingly the participants had to use pencils and colours to draw the shapes and objects. The participants started when I said “start” and stopped when I said the word “stop”. The whole process was repeated two times. This was followed by a question/answer session to build further understanding about algorithms. How would the computer do these tasks? What difference would there be between a computer and a human doing tasks? Participants came up with interesting responses: the computer would have efficiency, speed, no eros but humans would bring in diversity, flexibility, thinking, creativity etc.
Participants were able to understand that algorithms are a stepwise procedure or set of instructions to achieve a goal. This was followed by discussion on a dance algorithm. The purpose was to add clarity to the sequence of steps. They discussed an algorithm to fry an egg and then wrote an algorithm to fry an egg. They were able to understand that the steps in frying have to follow a sequence and logic, otherwise the goal would not be achieved. This was a really good activity because algorithms sound technical and difficult for a non tech person. But using everyday examples makes it much easier to explain.
Even if we take a moment to look around us, we would be able to see a lot of algorithms in action around us. Think ! heating food in an oven, or washing clothes in an automatic machine, baking in an oven, driving a car, doing a transaction on an ATM machine and so on. Everything is made up of steps and we follow them in a sequence to achieve a target or goal. It makes sense. This way students would learn the concept in depth and would be able to come up with their own algorithms too. I was happy with the task feedback by the participants.
Details on the next tasks in the next blog post coming soon!
The overall session experience was great for me as well as the participants. I look forward to other participants joining the session InnshaaAllah.
Enjoy Reading :)
Regards and prayers
Sheeba Ajmal
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