On Monday, my PocketCHIP arrived! What is a PocketCHIP? It is a touchscreen and keyboard device for the CHIP $9 single board computer that also provides a battery and external access to the input/output pins on the CHIP. In the simplest terms, anything that you would do with a Raspberry Pi you can do with a CHIP,…
Data-driven instruction is one of those buzzwords in today’s educational landscape. We hear all about data, but if your experience is anything like mine, you’ve never really been trained to do much with it. Sure, we give pre-assessments and set goals for post-assessments, growth, and student success, but it often feels like we’re doing so…
I’ve been thinking about the questions that drive my work a lot of late. I’m wondering which are really worth pursuing, as in which do I think actually have an answer that is within reach of both my feeble brain and my time left on Earth. (Change in schools is very slow, in case you…
Hour of Code is one of those burgeoning ideas that is getting a lot of up take in schools. Proponents love it as an easy way to introduce the coding and computer science to students with little or no background needed from either the teacher or the student. Critics argue that it’s not enough and…
Bosses play no role in fostering a sense of meaningfulness at work – but they do have the capacity to destroy it and should stay out of the way, new research shows. The study by researchers at the University of Sussex and the University of Greenwich shows that quality of leadership receives virtually no mention…
In the age of #CSforAll, there are hundreds of online resources to teach you and your students how to code. But is it possible to learn this digital skill through an analogue method? For those of you that love the touch, smell, and feel of books, below is a list of recommended reads to get…
Last May, I backed a project on Kickstarter1 for the CHIP computer. At $9, the CHIP computer is the cheapest single board computer (SBC) that is fully functional. The Raspberry Pi project released the Pi Zero at $5 during the past year, but it isn’t fully functional since you still have to buy an SD…
Nationally, 9 in 10 parents want their children to learn computer science (CS) but only a quarter of principals report offering CS with programming in their schools. Source: Google for Education: Accelerating CS Education in Local Communities: The Stats by State Computer Science is the study of what computers can do. Programming may be a…
While surfing the net looking for information on running Android Apps on my Chromebook Flip, I found an interesting page, Use Android apps from the Chrome Web Store. Apparently, there are about 36 android apps that you can currently run on the Chromebooks. Kinda cool, although the experience is a little jarring. I’m hoping the final…
It’s distressing to think that the sound of a baby crying reduces our mental agility just at the moment when we most need it. But it helps to take the long view of parenthood and its effects on our intellectual capacities. In her wonderful book The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter, journalist Katherine Ellison reviews…