Hour of Code - Take 2 Recap

Computer Science Education Week is done and dusted, and the second Hour of Code has come and gone.  Last week was busy!  Support for Code.org at my school this year has grown considerably, especially through the efforts of the tech coaches in the ES where every class from K-G5 did an Hour of Code!

As mentioned in my last post, I conducted three HoC events this year . . . one for parents, and two hours for HS students.  I also know of a number of HS students who did at least one Hour of Code on their own during the week, so I am not discouraged by the actual numbers who showed up to do some coding with me.  Here's a couple of photos from the week's events . . .

Small group of parents exploring coding for the first time - this was an interesting group to work with (they loved coding).

First Hour of Code this year for HS students - lots of deep thinking and collaboration.

My MS daughter getting in a couple hours of coding alongside the HS students - she's really into it!

An interesting twist to this year's Hour of Code happened during and after the second student event that I held in the HS.  On Friday after school, a small group of students gathered in my room to explore coding.  What was unusual this time was a "new student" joined us . . . let's call him Mikey.  Mikey is actually our HS Principal who was experiencing a "Day in the Life" of a G10 student for the day, which included going to an after school activity.  I had actually spent the entire day filming Mikey as he went through his day, and then did double-duty filming and hosting the HoC at the same time.  Mikey really enjoyed his coding experience - he went through the Flappy Birds tutorial and built his own game.  You can see in the image below that he finished the tutorial and earned his HoC certificate.

Mikey completing the Flappy Birds tutorial and earning his Hour of Code certificate.

What was also particularly interesting this year, came at the end of this second student HoC.  When everyone was packing up to leave and head home for the weekend, a bunch of the G11-12 students wanted to talk more about coding classes in our school, what they could do to learn more, and what should they be thinking about if they wanted to pursue programming in post-secondary school.  All great topics, worthy of spending more time on.  As my school has phased out the IB Diploma Computer Science course (as explained in this previous post), this conversation turned to alternative avenues for these students to learn more.  They were obviously hungry to learn, ready to delve into programming in a deep way, and asking all of the right questions.  The end result?  This group of students is going to self-form a new Coding Club which we will start in the new year, where we will jump into programming topics that I will draw from IB DP CS and AP CS courses.  I can see the club working through topics such as data representation and how the CPU works, working with some machine & assembly language simulators (knob and switch computers), programming in Python (using Alice 3D), and getting into some Java as well (Greenfoot and my favourite - the Greeps Challenge, plus BlueJay).  Mikey was part of this whole conversation, and it confirmed what we have been talking about for awhile now - that we need to update and change our elective offerings to include computer programming and computation thinking, even if we do not go back to offering the IB DP CS course.  There is obviously a need and a desire for doing programming - we just don't have the elective courses right now for these students to take.  In the meantime, a computing club will fill some of this need but it really needs to be a course for credit.

At your school, do you offer computer programming courses?  IB DP CS or AP CS or some other curriculum?  Do you have a coding club?  How are you preparing students who want to pursue their studies in computer science, programming, electrical engineering, computer architecture, etc.?

One of my HoC certificates from this year's events - thanks to Code.org!

Hour of Code - Reloaded

What is the only thing better than an Hour of Code?  No, not the second coming of the Hour of Code (but that's a good answer ;-) . . . two Hours of Code, of course!

Code.org is again supporting Computer Science Education Week (December 8-14th 2014) and we are making a more concerted effort here to have more students participate this year.  In the ES, all classes from G1-5 will be doing some coding during the week.  In the MS, I know that the MS Tech Club will be doing some coding again, and there might be some buy-in from math or science classes as well.  In the HS, I running an Hour of Code again as an after school activity, but I am offering two different sessions for students on separate days.  I am also offering a parent workshop during the week . . . let's see if any parents show up to try their hand at coding.

This year, to promote the Hour of Code in the HS, I built this short promo video based on statistics from Code.org and modelled after Karl Fisch's "Did you know?" style presentations.  This was just shown to all students in the HS to launch this year's Hour of Code, and it got students talking about it.  Yeah!

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[Music - "Geronimo" by Sheppard] for educational use/viewing only

Changing Mindsets . . . but not in a good way!

What do you do when someone's ambition and vision, collides with their skill set and technical abilities?  As a coach, what do you do when a person's mindset changes right before your eyes?  [this is the change that isn't very good to see]

So here's the story, the situation, the conundrum that I find myself thinking about for the last few days.  I will try to keep this as anonymous as possible, as I think this through as a write it all down.   But don't expect any answers here . . . I haven't got that far with my thinking.  Maybe you might have some input on all of this for me . . .

There is a colleague that I work with who embarked on a big project to revamp the online presence for part of the school.  They inherited a spaghetti map of different systems and platforms which wove together a piecemeal online existence, from their predecessor.  That previous colleague essentially built bits and pieces of the overall resource over a number of years, using whatever tool was on-hand, convenient, or in their field of view at the time.  In short, it is/was a mess and needed to be completely overhauled and replaced.

Enter my new colleague who fought and fought with maintaining this old plate of spaghetti, and came to hate it.  Once they had reached their tipping point where they wanted to fix it, change it, update it and make it their own, we started working on it together through regular coaching sessions.  My new colleague (how about I just call them Bob from now on) . . . Bob . . . started conducting a ton of research into what other schools were doing, their look and feel, their functionality and content, and their audience.  Bob also had a pretty good idea about what they wanted, as he had done a similar project at their previous school with much success.  The big difference between these two projects, is that the previous school did not have a system/platform already in place and they hired a developer to build everything for the school.  In the here and now, there is no big budget to pay someone, and the culture is more of a DIY project.

So Bob took it upon himself to rebuild everything from scratch, and made this their goal last year.  By the end of last year, we had built parts of the new system, but had not "released" it for use yet.  In other words, the old plate of spaghetti was still on the table and was still being served to the school.  At the start of this year, Bob really wanted to focus on building the last remaining pieces of the system and to get everything up and running as soon as possible.  As the beginning of the school year got busier and busier (as they do), this project got put on the back burner to simmer and stew.  We revisited it and worked on it periodically during our coaching sessions, but more often than not, something else would take precedence and would be more immediate.  When we did work on the project, development was often slow or at a standstill.  In Bob's own words, he often "could not remember how to do something" or "could not make a decision on what he wanted."  It was one step forward and three steps back, but we kept com in back to it, as it was/is important.

Then Bob dropped the bomb on me . . . he told me that he is so stressed out by the project and his inability to make any progress on it, that it is affecting his health.  Boom!  In order to preserve his health, he was going to drop the while thing, and perhaps we can salvage some of the pieces that we have already built.  "Thank you for your time and effort and patience in coaching me, but I can't work on this any longer."  Boom!!

What do you do when someone's ambition and vision, collides with their skill set and technical abilities?  The project involved rebuilding resources which are really important to the school, which support teaching and learning across school divisions.  Bob has a vision for what this could be, and would use it in his teaching everyday.  However, Bob really does not understand why he could not grasp how to use these tools to build his vision, and why it is so hard for him.  This is the clash or the difference between what they want to do, and having the skills/expertise to accomplish that goal.  As a tech coach, I see this as part of my job - to bridge the gap, which is what we have been working on for almost a year now.

What do you do when a person's mindset changes right before your eyes?  In the beginning, Bob clearly had an growth mindset towards this project - he saw it as a challenge and a point of deep learning on his part to work through it.  But all of that changed gradually as the frustration grew and the health issues started building.  Are these two things connected?  Bob seems to think so.  I, on the other hand, think that it has more to do with the steep learning curve that the project represents, combined with growing health issues related to his age . . . both difficult subjects to brooch in a conversation or coaching session.  With Bob's growing frustration and lack of progress, this turned into a downwards spiral which resulted in his mindset flipping over into the fixed position.  He is now thinking that he cannot learn these skills and tools, and that this project is just too big for him the tackle.  He even said that he will just leave it for someone else to fix and build once they are gone.  Totally defeated.  Bob no longer sees it has job to do this kind of work, and knows the school is not going to pay a developer to build it for him.  Totally stuck.

So what do I do with this project?  On one hand I could jump in and build it for Bob, but that is not my role or my job, and does not really involve coaching in any way.  Furthermore, Bob would not be in a position to maintain and further develop their system from whatever point I brought it up to . . . I would be signing up to be the gatekeeper and custodian for his system.  On the other hand, I could just accept that Bob is giving up and try to salvage some of the work we have already done, but that would effectively making part of the plate of spaghetti taste a little better, while at the same time making the plate bigger.  Not a very good outcome.  So what should I do, to move forward with this project and with Bob as a colleague whom I coach?  Any ideas?

Reflections on being part of the Learning 2 Africa Organising Committee

Being asked by John Iglar to be part of the Learning 2.014 Africa Organising Committee about a year ago, after it was announced in Singapore, has been both an honour and a curiosity to me. My immediate response to him at the time was "you know that I am not in the Africa region" to which he replied "I know, and I still want you to help with putting the conference together." Now that the first ever Learning2Africa is complete, we could talk a little more about the process and how he had to defend his decision to include me on the committee with both his own staff and the Learning 2 Advisory.  Which is fair enough, as I pointed that out from the beginning. John later told me that he wanted my enthusiasm and experience with Learning2Asia to set up the conference in Addis Ababa, as only a few others on the committee have been to an L2 conference before.

Working on the conference from afar was not a problem at all. Sometimes the Skype on GHangouts connections would get dropped during our weekly meetings, but other than that, everything was communicated asynchronously through email and shared GDocs. I suggested that I work on the Cohorts, Cohort Facilitators and Workshops remotely and to keep John and the committee in the loop as things progressed. 

As the cohort set up with Learning 2 conferences is so unique and important to the success of the conference, I decided to take my own approach to setting up the cohorts. My plan from the start was to align good leaders with each cohort, to have an innovative and effective leader embedded in each cohort. With this goal in mind, started contacting people at I know who would make good cohort facilitators who are either in the region, or nearby and who might want to come take part. This proved to be a really successful approach as it served to pre-advertise the conference, and provided the selected people with a little more leverage with their schools in order to attend the conference in a leadership role. I was only able to pre-select about half of the facilitators roles in the end, but this gave us a good base of people in these important roles. It also encouraged these schools to send more faculty to this new, unknown conference.

As the conference neared, some other advancements that I wanted to introduce into the process included:

• provide each cohort facilitator with a list of the members, schools they are coming from, and their roles/positions there
• having the cohort facilitators contact their cohort members in advance to front-load them with information to connect them and to start the networking process
• have the cohorts start thinking about their own "burning questions" , big take-aways and goals for attending the conference
• build in an orientation meeting for all of the facilitators prior to the conference opening, to form them into a team and to come to a common understanding of the philosophy of Learning 2 (which is new to most of the conference participants)
• daily check-in meetings with the facilitators to set them up for the cohort sessions later that day)
• daily debrief meetings with the facilitators to see how their cohort sessions went and to gather feedback from the cohorts; interestingly, these immediately became joint Learning 2 Leaders and Cohort Facilitators debriefs 

#baboon - Other than #Learning2 and #buses, #baboon was a trending hashtag during the conference (but we never did have a school baboon alarm)

As the conference got underway, the Learning 2 Leaders were asked to attach themselves to a cohort of their choice which was wonderful. Not only did the Cohort Facilitators enjoy having the Leaders present and participating in their cohorts, but the Leaders really connected with the participants through the cohorts. In the debrief meetings, the feedback that came out of the cohorts was inspiring and exhilarating - participants were connecting, sharing, collaborating and networking which are all the main goals of the conference and what distinguishes Learning 2 from other conferences (which have typical job-alike meetings). The best feedback came out of the second cohort session where each group is cussed their "burning questions" using a simple protocol based on the Final Word - Critical Friends. Having the chance to discuss issues, problems of practice, challenges and open "how to" questions with a group of peers in a non-threatening/judgemental environment (through the protocol) was fulfilling, enlightening and productive. Many of the Cohort Facilitators came away from that session raving about their group and how they really came together as a team. At the end of the conference, some were talking about how they would like to continue having cohort meetings online every day - surely this is the best possible outcome for the conference which is all about sharing and collaboration, especially beyond the conference.

To me, the cohort experience has been the most important part of the Learning 2 Asia conferences that I've attended. To bring this experience and connection to Africa for the first time is very satisfying and fulfilling for me. To take this another step or two forward, I have now been tasked by the Learning 2 Advisory to collaborate with L2Bangkok to help organize their cohorts, embed my additions to the process for setting up the cohorts, and to rewrite the "playbook" for future L2 conferences. And to take my own participation in Learning 2 a step further - I will be facilitating the Curriculum Leaders cohort at L2Asia in Bangkok. 

Unprofessional Development

In thinking about and reflecting upon last year as a tech coach, it is hard not to dwell on the bad bits and negative stuff that happened over the year.  It's not that there wasn't anything good to think about . . . there were lots of victories and advancements big and small.  In fact, I would characterise last year as a series of really high-highs and low-lows.  Kind of a Karsh mountain-scape straight out of China.  Everyone always remembers the bad bits though - it's just human nature.  Last year, I had three events where people acted unprofessionally towards me, so I am going to devote my first posting of the school year to reflecting on some positive take-aways from those events.  First off though, I will not be getting into the who said/did what . . . no airing of dirty laundry here.  I have moved past all of that now - the perspective of time does wonders.

So here is my list of top-three take-aways from last year:

1. Perception can be everything - As the first tech coach in the HS here, how the people that I work with view and understand my position/role might not coincide with my day-to-day reality.  I am always there to help with anything tech-related, be it big or small, complex or simple, physical or digital, systems or tools based.  As a result, some people see me as being in charge of anything and everything that goes "bing", has a screen on it, or uses electricity (this is part of what I am talking about when I say "guilty by competence").  One of the incidents from last year revolved around what a faculty member thought was my job, as I was helping them with a number of issues and challenges.  But in fact, I was just trying to help mediate between Tech Services and the teacher, and support both sides of the equation.  This  ended up in a big mess and some heated talk when some decisions were made which were not in the teacher's favour.  My take-away . . . try to ensure that the people I work with understand my role, what I am in charge of and when I am merely a facilitator or mediator.  Being a teacher is so much simpler as everyone knows what your "job description" is . . . being a coach is a lot more fuzzy in many people's minds!
2. Sometimes you can't fix it and you just have to wait - Last year, I was put in a very uncomfortable position with an administrator where I had to sit on my hands and wait it out, no matter how illogical and irrational the "process" became.  I was unable to affect any positive change in the situation, nor could I inject any rational thought into the matter at hand.  Instead, I had to just wait for the year to end so that positive change could happen with the start of the new year.  My take-away . . . have faith that cooler/rational heads will prevail in the long run, and that things will be "put right" with time and patience.  Sometimes it is hard to give up that time, to have that patience, and to have confidence that things will get sorted out properly . . . this is one case that I will look back on that worked out in the long run.
3. You can't help everyone, and you can't make everyone happy - As a coach, my position means working with the entire HS faculty.  But what do you with a faculty member who is in a really bad place, and who is negative about everything concerning the school?  On a sports team, this would be like having the un-coachable player on the team . . . and there are no cuts and no trades.  Working with this faculty member became impossible as the year wore on, as they were prone to very unprofessional outbursts and rants directed at anyone nearby.  Unfortunately, I was on the end of one of those outbursts . . . but had no recourse other than to report it and move on.  Not a satisfactory conclusion by any means, but the person in question was leaving at the end of the year anyways so Admin thought it was best left alone.  My take-away . . . when working with faculty, they have to be in the right mindset in order to be receptive to coaching, must be internally motivated to learn and grow, and timing is everything (just-in-time learning rules).  If any one of these conditions is amiss for any reason (let alone all three of them), then the act of coaching may be poorly received or ignored altogether.  And sometimes, these conditions and the mindset of the faculty are completely out of your control.

Have you ever had negative incidents at school which were unprofessional in nature, that seemed to overshadow everything?  Did these incidents cause you to doubt yourself, or make you think that you somehow doing a poor job?  Was it hard to move past these kinds of incidents?  Reflecting upon them, and trying to pull some "lessons learned" from them is the best way to move on and take charge of things which you have no control over.  What stories do you have?

The Case of the Blue Chinese Teapot

Accidents happen . . . we all know that.  Some accidents are more dire than others, some have little or no consequences, and some make you take pause and think.  This morning, my son accidentally broke our old Chinese teapot.  It wasn't particularly special, expensive, or irreplaceable.  We can get a new one from Chinatown back home in the summer without a problem.  However, it was used everyday by my family for about 30 years . . . now that I think about it, it's something that I have had my entire adult life since university days when I was first on my own.  Same old teapot, new handles, many new lids, new tea cosy . . . but the same old teapot filled with stories and memories.  One in particular that I am fond of involves having my Tech Director and officemate over for dinner when we were living in Istanbul.  When Colin went to pour himself a cup of tea, he stopped and remarked that such a great old teapot must hold a lot of stories.  Which it does . . . or rather, did.

The exact Chinese blue teapot that I had before it went for a tumble,
with a simple blue and white pattern and translucent rice grains
embedded in the porcelain.  Apparently available online for $30.
<http://www.laurelleaffarm.com/pages/kitchen&table/vintage-
rice-china-teapot-large-blue-white-Chinese-porcelain-tea-pot-
Laurel-Leaf-Farm-item-no-u71532.htm#.U0PeOBa-aJU>

Which got me thinking about this whole accident this morning and relating it to ed tech and coaching . . . bear with me for a minute.  In a round about way, this accident relates to working with the reluctant tech teacher with my work as a tech coach.  I don't blame my son at all for what happened.  Instead, I am upset with my wife who put the teapot in a precarious place on the little kitchen island rather than on the side counter.  She has been doing this since we moved into this house in Poland, just out of convenience and ease.  You see, the kitchen island is right there, directly in front of the door into the kitchen.  It's been 5 years of me moving the teapot to the side counter, me saying please don't put the teapot there, and me saving the teapot from being swept off of the island a few times.  It's not that the side counter is any farther away from the kitchen door.  What it really comes down to is convenience, comfort levels, and old habits.  Which is where I made the connections with ed tech and coaching.

Still with me?  In a previous posting (Some thoughts on working with the "reluctant tech teacher") I commented on some strategies for working with that teacher who just does not want to engage with technology in their teaching practice.  In that posting, I identified "fear of change" as being a major factor in a teacher's resistance to change.  After this morning's accident, I also think that comfort and convenience is another factor that needs to be considered.

Now, I'm not talking about someone being lazy or complacent.  What I see is someone who has become comfortable with their teaching practice, where their "go to", "tried and true" classroom practices are right there in their mind . . . comfortable, convenient, and ready to go.  So why change, despite being shown a different technique or tool?  Why do something different, despite being warned of possible negative outcomes or consequences?  Why change when it is much easier not to?  Do you see the connection?  My wife has continued to place the teapot on the kitchen island, despite my interventions, despite my warnings, despite my constant/repeated demonstrations of where the teapot should go.  In the end, it was a simple and easy solution (placing the teapot on the side counter), but it was never adopted.

In my other posting, I said that "a person will only undergo a process of change if it is easier for them to make the change, rather than to keep with the status quo".  I think this still applies in this case, but the motivation to keep with the status quo is comfort and convenience, rather than fear of change.  Now that the teapot is gone to the rubbish heap, change of habit has become forced and must happen.  With respect to ed tech and coaching the reluctant teacher who is stuck in their comfort zone, how do you "break their teapot"?  In my other posting, all of the strategies that I outlined there have not worked on this kind of teacher, save for the last one.  To break this reluctant teacher out of their comfort zone, perhaps a stronger course of action needs to take place like connecting technology integration to teacher evaluation.  This is what my school is currently in the process of formulating.  The school is already bringing in a new evaluation system for implementation over the next two school years, and the group of tech coaches is working on embedding the ISTE Standards for Teachers (formerly called the NETS-T Standards) into the new system.  For some, this will be no big deal at all - they are already meeting these standards everyday.  For others, it will simply be a case of tweaking their classroom practice in places, to meet all of the standards.  But for some, the reluctant teachers with technology, they will be forced to change their practice to meet the standards for tech integration . . . which they never have been forced to do before.  This one change will effectively "break their teapot".

Will this really work?  Well, give it a year or two and I will let you know what happens.  And we should have a new teapot by then . . . I wonder if the new one will last another 30 years or more?

The 1000th view . . .

When I started this ed tech blog about 15 months ago, I said at the time that it was mostly for my reflection on teaching and learning with/through educational technology . . . and I think that this statement still holds true.  This is my 23rd posting, which puts me right on a 1.5 posting per month pace.  Not bad for a first time blogger.  As I write this short post, I have noticed that I have just reached the 1000th view of my blog.

Now, I am not so naive to think that all of these page views actually came from real, live people.  Over the past year I have noticed a few hits along the way that have come from some automated trolling services in far-off lands.  Plus there's the clear evidence that my postings have only had a few comments left on them, or have had a few people Google+1 them.  So there is some evidence that people have read some of what I have written here, but I still maintain that this blog is for my reflection first, and sharing ed tech stuff with the world comes second.

So which posts have generated the most reads/hits?  Far and away, the clear winner here is my second posting about the Unplugged day that I held last year ('84 on 8/4 Unplugged Challenge - Revisited).  Coming in second was my posting about applying to the Google Teachers Academy (Getting All Googley).  After that, there's a bunch that have similar numbers of hits.  

Do you have a blog?  How long have you been writing it, and how one did it take you to reach a 1000 hits?  Do you know anyone who started a blog which they have since let fall away into the void of the internet?  Why did it fail, or why did they stop writing it?

What does Giorgio Armani, your mobile phone and drinking water all have in common?

No, it's not some story about Giorgio dropping his mobile into a glass of water and destroying it, all caught on video.  World Water Day is almost upon us (March 22nd), and the answer to the question lies therein.  I came across this great UNICEF project this year which coincides with World Water Day, and decided to launch it within the high school a few weeks ago.  Here is the short video intro/promo that I made for the launch during our weekly assembly . . .

Basically, Armani has teamed up with UNICEF to provide clean drinking water to millions of needy children around the world through this simple online project.  Armani has pledged to donate up to $75,000 for water through this project, plus at least half a million dollars through other related projects, to UNICEF.  I hooked into this project as it is a simple yet effective service learning opportunity for students, while also feeding into our school-wide mindfulness movement through having students unplug from their mobile phones for long or short periods of time.  By unplugging from the constant noise of the internet and social media, students can better understand their own wants/desires/needs to stay connected at all times.  For some students, this is a real enlightening exercise in self-awareness and reflection.  And they are raising money for clean drinking water at the same time . . . win+win in my books!  Interestingly, after launching the campaign in the high school, I heard from a number of staff and students about how many days of water they raised in one day.  It was nowhere near my forecasted challenge in the video, but it was a good start.  And a number of students have taken it upon themselves to follow through with this project over an extended period of time as a CAS project . . . a nice bonus and an additional measure for reflection.

How does it all work?  Pretty simple - just go to UnicefTapProject.org on your mobile phone's browser and start the project.  The program will start on your phone and will record the amount of time elapsed before you pick it up and use it.  For every 10 minutes that you left your phone alone and running, UNICEF & Armani will donate 1 day of clean drinking water to a child in need.  Note that you must have a mobile phone which has a motion sensor built into it for the program to work, and no, it does not work on an iPad.  While the program is running your phone can still receive notifications and messages, etc. but the program will end if you pick it up or move your phone.  Even though World Water Day is on March 22nd, the program will run through the end of the month, so there is still time to jump on board.  I raised 41 days of water on my first try at school during the day.  My MS daughter promptly broke that overnight by leaving the program running while she slept . . . smart girl!

Hour of Code Recap

Computer Science Education Week was last month, before our long winter holiday, and I managed to squeeze in an Hour of Code event even though I was out of the school for most of the week.  Leading up to CSEdWeek, I planned and promoted our very own HoC event through HS assemblies, posters and this promo video that I put together for fun . . .

Our small HoC event was successful and fun, with about a dozen students turning up to try their hand at programming.  The MS tech club also participated earlier in the week, so we had about 25-30 students participating across the school.  It was a little disappointing that I could not get any interest from the ES faculty to get involved, but I attribute that to the timing - the last week of school before Christmas break is simply too hectic and full of other seasonal events . . . too much competition for people's time and energy.  I think the one person who was the most excited about all of this was my daughter Jasmine (G6).  She singlehandedly poked and prodded the MS tech club into participating, got other students interested in writing code, attempted/completed numerous tutorials over the week, and even came to do some coding with me and the HS students . . . pretty sweet!

The tutorials that were produced for the Hour of Code are all excellent - great that this movement will continue and grow.  In particular (as a computer science educator), I really liked the LightBot tutorial for beginners or students with a little experience, the Angry Birds/Plants vs Zombies maze project for younger students and complete beginners for it's accessibility, and the App Inventor project where you can build an Android program and put it onto your phone in an hour (for more advanced students or ones that want to challenge themselves).

On the Thursday after school when we held our own HoC event, students spread out around my room or went and found their own space in the hallways . . . to start writing code.  When we started our hour, the counter on the CSEdWeek website was just below the 10 million mark . . . and ticked over the 10 million goal as we were working.  Now, about a month later, the counter is well over 20 million and still counting!  This project from Code.org has done so much to change people's awareness of computer science and computer programming . . . let's all keep the ball rolling, the zombies walking, and the little LightBot jumping!  I still have students coming by my room asking about the Hour of Code, as they could not attend that day.  This whole process has really made me aware of the existing need that we have in my school for programming courses and other opportunities for students . . . something to definitely think about and work on for next year and years to come.  It's a shame that we retired IB Diploma CS a few years ago, as there are still so many interested students.  But the changes that have been made to IB CS have made it untenable to offer, at least at my school.  In a previous posting I wrote about the decision to stop offering CS here - you can read about it here.

So what were my favourite parts of our HoC event?  Well, the first one is obvious - my daughter Jasmine asked her coach if she could miss the first half of her basketball practise in order to "come and write code with her Dad".  Even though she is in MS, she was not put off by doing the HoC with a bunch of HS students.  Good on her!  And my second fav bit was after the fact, when my principal told me that he was returning to his office after school to find two girls sitting on the floor in the hallway, intently working on their laptops.  When he had a peek at what they were doing, he was amazed to see that they were busy writing code and were totally engrossed by it.  Pretty cool!

Did you host an Hour of Code event in your school?  Does your school offer computer science/computer programming courses in ES/MS/HS?  Has your school phased out the computer science course in recent years (as we have) due to falling enrolment or the inability to find a teacher for the course?

Now I'm All Googley!

It has been almost a month since I attended the GTASWE 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden and I promised to write a post about the experience.  Well, it was a blast for sure and well worth the effort of applying, making the video, getting myself to the GTA in the last week before our long winter break, and then trying to recover from being away from school for three days during the last days before Christmas.

Be prepared to put in long, full-on days at the GTA, meet lots of great, innovative and inspiring people F2F and online, work really hard with learning new tools and expanding your world, and then crash afterwards.  I was only gone for two nights, but I didn't get much sleep while I was away.  Not that jet-lag was a problem for me (like it was for some others coming from the US or Asia), as I only changed one time zone.  The work days were just long (and dark in Sweden in December), so it was late to bed and early to rise . . . breakfast was served at the Google offices early each morning and I had a 2 km walk each way from where I was staying.

The biggest take-away for me from the GTA was certainly the people that I met and worked with, and the network of GCTs that I am now hooked up with.  As an Apple Distinguished Educator, I know how valuable such a network of people can be as a resource, guide, mentor and sounding board - the growth and learning with Google started at the GTA and has been running full throttle ever since through the Google+ GCT group, which is very active and dynamic.

Becoming a Google Certified Teacher (GCT) involves creating an Action Plan for a Google related project that you endeavour to tackle over the next year.  "How are you going to change your world?" was the project question . . . I went to the GTA with no clear idea about what my project would be, but over the course of the two days, it all started to take shape in my mind.  On the first morning, I met Liz and we talked about a number of Google-related and topics over breakfast.  Without having any idea who she is or what her role at the GTA was, we got to talking about working in Poland and her connections here.  As I would be the first GCT in Poland, she wanted to talk later about how I might help her with something that she was already working on.  It turned out that Liz Sproat is the Head of Education for Google, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa region) and she is working on a huge project to bring GAfE into Polish national schools.  After discussing this more before the GTA finished, this has grown into the "big part" of my project.  The "smaller part" of what I want to do involves creating and sharing a Google Lit Trip for my father's memoir "Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A childhood in wartime China" (by Michael David Kwan).  If you are interested in the progress of either of these parts of my project, then have a look here at my Action Plan Site.