I’m currently working in the Public sector (at least for the next 2 weeks!) providing my expertise around all things IT and Procurement 😀 As a result, I got asked to go along to an event a couple of weeks ago (on my birthday, if you’re interested) that XMA and Apple have been running across the UK to help teachers understand how to better use iPads and technology in the classroom. The event was very hands on, with sessions covering coding, 3D printing, STEM (which I found out stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths), drones and robots! The theme, Mission to Mars, tried to tie everything together, and like most of these things sometimes the links were a little tenuous after all no one left the venue in Glasgow! I did find out though that from over 200,000 applicants for a 1-way mission to Mars, 1058 have been selected and are now conducting further training:-o It wouldn’t be a free event without some sales presentations, although to be fair these were very light touch as very few people in the room had their hands on the purse strings. That said, the could certainly influence the direction of travel, or more importantly take some of the ideas back to the classroom to increase the knowledge of potential future Mars Cosmonaughts. Everything centered around the use of iPads in the classroom, and how mainly free to download apps can be used from a pretty young age to get kids thinking in a style much more akin to writing code as their skills develop. Having a 4-year-old, some of the early apps were the most interesting, and I’ve already tried a few out on her. Tynker has a number of different games, of which Candy Quest was the one I’ve played with the most. This involved a small furry alien who likes to eat candy but needs to be guided using different blocks of code and loops to achieve his goal. It’s very clever, and the fact my daughter was so enjoyed with it opened my eyes to how the future of teaching is going to be so different from my school experience. I’m quite fortunate that my Dad was very much interested in the birth of home computing, and we always had various machines to play with. I think the first I remember was a Sharp MZ80, but we also had a full range of Sinclair machines (ZX80, 81, Spectrum, XL that I now have in my garage), Commodore, Dragon and various others. I’ll maybe dust them off one day and write a few blogs about those! When I went away to University, they had a great student deal on a 286 PC that my Dad made use of. I’d hoped it was for me, but instead he kept that and handed down his old Amstrad PC1512 which actually served me very well through my years, running Word Perfect 5.1 to write my dissertation and Coral Quattro Pro 4, which gave Lotus 1-2-3 a run for its money before Microsoft Excel wiped the floor with both of them. When you stop to think about it, it’s quite scary how fast technology has moved on in the last 25 years. At the time, all of these machines blazed their way, but almost everyone now carries around a phone or tablet which is hundreds of times more powerful, with thousands of times more storage, in our pocket and bags. Although the march of technology seems to have slowed a little, and a laptop from 6 years ago (I’ve finally made a reference back to my MBA!) doesn’t look that much different, the processing power and speed under the hood is still progressing as quickly. I hope I can do the same job for my daughter as my father did for me, and encourage and nurture her use of technology, as there’s no doubt in my mind that these are the essential skills for the future that everyone will need at least a basic understand to get on in the world.
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