Coding 2 Learn

Dear Theresa,

Marc Scott — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0100

I haven't written anything here for a couple of years, but recent events have inspired me to once again touch fingers to keyboard, in the hope that you might read this.

What I'd like to talk to you about is encryption. Wait a second... Please keep reading. I know the …

Every Lesson Should Be A Hackathon

Marc Scott — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:00:00 +0100

a note for readers outside of the UK. Year 10 students are equivalent to 8th-grade in the US

This year I wanted to do things differently. It was an experiment; one that could go disastrously wrong, and nearly did, but I was determined to go ahead. Let me explain.

I …

One Year On

Marc Scott — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 16:20:00 +0100

About a year ago I wrote a post called Kids can’t use computers… and this is why it should worry you.

In the post, I expressed my opinion that the concept of children being digital natives was a misnomer, that computer literacy is on a decline thanks to the …

Computer Games Are A Waste Of Time

Marc Scott — Sun, 18 May 2014 11:20:00 +0100

When I was a kid I played a lot of computer games. I once played Betrayal at Krondor for so long that I started hallucinating from sleep deprivation. When I was at Uni I chose to mow-down humanoid warthogs in Duke Nukem rather than learn metabolic pathways for amino acid …

Please stop sending me your shitty Word documents

Marc Scott — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 16:07:00 +0100

Throughout this rant I use the second-person personal pronoun (you) quite a lot. This does not necessarily mean I am speaking to 'You' the reader, but rather some other 'You' who will probably never read this anyway.

When Microsoft announced Office for iPad I shed a small tear. Excel is …

Installing Pygame on Mac OS X with Python 3

Marc Scott — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:22:00 +0000

This has been a bugbear of mine for sometime now. I like using Python 3.x. I like teaching kids how to use Pygame. I use a Mac. Trying to get all three to play nicely with each other has been impossible for me up to now.

I've trawled through …

What exactly are we teaching anyway?

Marc Scott — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 16:00:00 +0000

On Twitter, numerous education blogs and even on Hacker News, there have been more than a few debates of late regarding the education of students in Computer Science/Computing/Coding/IT. In the UK, in particular, the debate has been fueled by Lottie Dexter's "Year of Code'; a government backed …

X Days of Christmas

Marc Scott — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 08:39:00 +0000

Just a quick one from me today.

I woke up this morning with a lesson idea in my head, that was also a Python script.

I've a few teacher followers, so I thought I'd shove it up here for others to use if they want. You'll have to forgive my …

How I rediscovered experimental learning and why it doesn't matter

Marc Scott — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:30:00 +0000

A few months back I received this tweet.

@coding2learn We loved your recent article about kids & computers & want to send you some Bits. Can you DM your email address?
— littleBits (@littleBits) August 12, 2013

I was a little surprised, but DM'ed them back with my address and then promptly forgot …

Computing is much more than coding?

Marc Scott — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:09:00 +0100

Trying to justify that every student in the country should learn computing is quite a tricky endevour, and it shouldn't be. We're all users of technology after all, and benefit from the advantages and disadvantages of being so. We should all have a basic understanding of computers, networks, encryption and …

A rant from my brother

Marc Scott — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 19:03:00 +0100

My brother is the reason I learned to code. To be honest, he's probably forgotten more about programming than I'll ever know, and I'm not exaggerating. His preferred languages are Haskell and OCaml, but he's recently had to dive into Javascript for a project he's working on. I received this …

How we were trained to lower the drawbridge

Marc Scott — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 09:28:00 +0100

A few years ago, the parody news network The Onion released a video claiming that Facebook was a massive CIA surveillance project. It was funny at the time. It's not so funny any more.

Perhaps naively, I believe that Facebook, Google and the other tech giants reluctantly cooperate with the …

The Myth of Mobile Computing

Marc Scott — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 15:01:00 +0100

note - I use the term General Purpose Computer (GPC) rather than PC as it does not carry connotations of which OS you are running

This is not an anti-Apple rant. I love my iPad. It's the device I pick up the moment I get out of bed in the morning …

How I do my computing by !=Richard Stallman

Marc Scott — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 21:48:00 +0100

I use an HP laptop with Windows on it. I'm not sure which model it is. It's blue. I also have a Samsung Galaxy thingy, which I use for the Internet quite a lot.
I chose Windows because it came with the laptop, with lots of helpful tools made by …

KickStarting A Revolution

Marc Scott — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 13:00:00 +0100

So I've had an idea. It might very well be the worst idea ever, I can't really judge as I'm naturally biased - I think all my ideas are amazing.

The First World Problem

I'm unhappy about the current political landscape. In England we have a choice between three parties; Conservatives …

Kids can't use computers... and this is why it should worry you

Marc Scott — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 15:37:00 +0100

TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. "nom nom". This blog post is not for you.

The phone rang through to …

GitHub for Teachers

Marc Scott — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 20:13:00 +0100

Why use GitHub?

I'm not sure how you share resources within your departments, but I should imagine it is much the same way as resources are shared in my school. The creator of the resource uploads them to a shared area on the school server and then informs everyone where …

The One App To Rule Them All

Marc Scott — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 11:55:00 +0100

New app - AutoBotClassRoomManager will revolutionise the way you teach forever.

Why your students must use KnowledgeHeroine and use it now.

1,000,000,000 ways to use PinBook in your classroom.

These are typical of the tweets that pop into my twitter feed on an almost hourly basis. I'm a …

Precrime

Marc Scott — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 11:04:00 +0100

I'm not the first blogger to highlight the similarities between the Snowden revelations and Philip K. Dick's excellent short story - The Minority Report. I'll brush over the fact that most commentators seem to have forgotten, or be unaware, that the concept of Precrime did not first appear in the inferior …

The NSA hears a Who

Marc Scott — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 11:11:00 +0100

So young Snowden sat, his laptop on his knee,
And wondered whether we'd ever be free.
Siphoning data from all the four corners,
and thinking that someone should finally warn us.

"Enough is enough" he suddenly thought,
This data is private and cannot be sought.
People trust Facebook and Google …

It's our own fault... Deal with it.

Marc Scott — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 10:02:00 +0100

TL:DR I delete every cloud service I belong to and take back control of my data.

I don't blame them. I just keep thinking about a future scene from the next bond film.

M: So you see 007, we need to find out which of the millions of citizens …

Selling Computer Science

Marc Scott — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:55:00 +0000

Selling Computer Science from Marc Scott on Vimeo.

The idea for this video came from Rebecca Franks over on the CAS forums. I've copied her original idea and just added my own flare.

The Second Amendment In The 21st Century

Marc Scott — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:19:00 +0000

Two items in the media have recently interested me.

The first was related to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. It was not the tragic incident itself that sent me scouring Wikipedia articles for information, but the way in which gun proponents in the United States immediately began screaming about …

Banning mobiles is not enough...

Marc Scott — Sat, 12 May 2012 08:46:00 +0100

Michael Wilshaw, the new inquisitor-general over at Ofsted ( NOBODY expects Ofsted! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to Michael Gove.) has …

How the Grinch stole ICT

Marc Scott — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 07:45:00 +0100

Gove said to the world “ICT is no more,
The curriculum’s going out of the front door.
It’s coders we need and I need not disguise,
You should all teach computing on Raspberry Pi’s.”

A school full of hackers’
That’s of course what we need,
The …