Teaching Themes
Jan 15th
As I have mentioned previously I have been working on the curriculum I will be teaching to the kids on the program. It has been really challenging to sit down and work through all the topics that need to be covered and how to cover them in an engaging way. What is interesting is that as I did this I lost sight of what I was originally thinking would be a good option and after numerous attempts at writing down how it is going to work I have come full circle back to my original thinking. Slightly frustrating given the amount of time I put into this, but at least now I have explored other options and found them wanting.
All I have as a reference point is how I learnt so I am drawing a lot from that. When I started programing it was purely out of necessity. I needed to build an e-commerce website for a venture I was planning. Turned out that I wasn’t equipped to get the idea off the ground. Through that process though I learnt a heck of a lot, and it was what really got me started in my programming career. What I was building was going to enable me to revolutionise the way goods were sold on-line and make me a lot of money and that gave me a real sense of purpose.
So getting back to how I am going to teach. After the sandbox (which has also seen some exciting developments) kids will go into this teaching phase. At the start we will talk about a project that they may want to do. Something interesting and relevant to them. Social networks are hot topics these days so maybe something along those lines – if the kids are really creative maybe we will even get a new concept out of them! In the first session we will work through some of these ideas and turn what they want to build into a series of stories that, well, tell the story of how it will work. Subsequent sessions will work through the process of how to build it. At each step a new concept will be introduced that they must grasp. These are some of the fundamental elements of programming and understanding these concepts will, I believe, set them up to be able to take on almost any programming task they will encounter in a normal business environment.
Curriculum Theory
Jan 8th
I have been working on writing a curriculum for the sand box and teaching programs I plan on running. As I have never written a curriculum before I have been on a steep learning curve! I have been reading ‘Curriculum theory and practice’, and have found it really useful. The author presents four options as to what it a curriculum could be and leaves it somewhat up to the reader to decide the most appropriate meaning.
From reading this I find that I most identify with the ideas of curriculum put forward by Lawrence Stenhouse:
‘A curriculum is an attempt to communicate the essential principles and features of an educational proposal in such a form that it is open to critical scrutiny and capable of effective translation into practice’ – Lawrence Stenhouse (1975)
One of the key ideas that Stenhouse puts forth is that individuals are not merely present in the process but that they should have a voice in the way that the process is implemented. This is important because the process is only a guide that is being worked out. It will not necessarily be perfect or the right thing for all the participants, therefore they must be able to provide feedback on how things are run so as to provide them with the most value – after all they are the reason for even having the curriculum in the first place!
Classic methods of teaching often fail people because they do not work well with the way that they learn. I know this because the way I was taught had little alignment with the way that I learn, I therefore had little desire to apply myself and subsequently dropped out. I was lucky that my desire to succeed and accomplish things drove me to learn skills on my own time and in my own way. I am hoping that my experience with this, and the understanding of how I learn, will enable me to effectively pass that knowledge onto others. My goal is that they will catch a passion for learning that inspires them to pursue knowledge their own way, on their own terms.
Which brings me back to the last part of the quote from Stenhouse:
‘... and capable of effective translation into practice’.
This is the key – translating the theory into practice. I have a lot of work to do to figure out how to do this and it is what I will be working through over the next few years.
Inspiring hope
Jan 1st
I never finished school and I never went to University – and I don’t think that was a bad move. Sure it would have made things easier at times. I have missed getting a few jobs because of my lack of degree. But generally it has not been a problem.
I realise that this is not the norm though. I grew up in a very privileged environment. I had the most loving, supporting and encouraging parents anyone could ever ask for. I shared in my fathers ambitions and learnt to dream far beyond what I imagined was possible. I have always had a lot of hope for the future and to me my dreams seem completely realistic. I am not always sure how I am going to accomplish them, but accomplishing my dreams has always been more a matter of when rather than if. Along the way my confidence has taken a couple of hits, but again I have experienced amazing support that has managed to get me back on track. So I am still working out my dreams and their accomplishment, but I am still certain that I will get there.
I have come to realise that other people are not as fortunate as I have been and I want to do something about it. There are really two elements of what my business is about:
- inspiring people to have hope and dreams for the future,
- and equiping them with skills that will allow them to make a start in accomplishing those dreams
I have had some inolvement with a project called I have a dream (IHAD) they work with schools in low income communities and encourage, mentor and pay for “dreamers” to attend University. IHAD is an excellent program that has had a huge impact in peoples lives. It is a fantastic way to get involved in peoples lives and get them on the right track from the start and I hope that it grows and gets into more schools. In fact when I am in a position to sponsor a school it is something I will get involved with.
Something more than just that is needed though. What I am starting will be working at the other end of the spectrum – helping those who didn’t get that support while they were growing up.
How I got everything synced
Dec 31st
I have been going through the process of trying to get all my data synchronised across the different devices that I have. Cellphone, Laptop and the Web. I am considering the web as a device because it is like a device that is available everywhere.
So I am using Google Apps which gives me GMail and contact management. I love the web interface and because it has IMAP it easily syncs with outlook on my phone and with Evolution on my laptop.
Contacts
This was an interesting challenge. To sync with Evolution was no big deal, but syncing with Windows Mobile phone was. I tried to use OggSync but for some reason it never worked from my phone. The other option was to sync through the laptop. This can be done, Windows Mobile can sync with Evolution on Linux, however I experienced a lot of pain with it creating duplicate contacts and constantly running into conflicts so I decided to ditch this idea. The last option was to use one of the online sync services out there. I took a look at a few services before finding NeuvaSync. They have a service that looks like an Exchange Server, so using ActiveSync on my device I can point it to that server which in turn talks to GMail. It took about five minutes to get this setup and was by far the easiest option.
Calendar
NeuvaSync also gives me calendar syncing with Google Calendar. It works beautifully and finally makes using Google Calendar worthwhile for me. I had never bothered with it before, opting to use only my phones calendar. But it is nice to be able to edit it online. The calendar also syncs with evolution which is a again a no brainer to setup.
Tasks
I am trying to make more task oriented as I find it hard to know what I am supposed to be doing at any given time. Writing down tasks and just working through the list of priorities makes things a lot easier. I am using the built in task application on my phone and Remember The Milk to manage them online. RTM has an application to sync tasks called MilkSync, you have to pay $25/yr but it is nothing considering the benefits. On the laptop I am using Tasque which is a client for RTM so the data is the same. RTM ALSO comes with a widget for GMail so I can see tasks from there as well, now I have no excuse for not getting things done!
Offline Support
On my phone everything works fine without having to be connected to the net. Bizarelly this is a problem on my laptop. Evolution does not seem to copy the contacts or calendar locally so I can’t use that. And tasque stores everything directly in RTM so there is no local copy of tasks either. I am pretty sure that evolution is supposed to work offline to there must be something I am not doing right there. I am not sure about tasque. I might have to try a new program to get offline support for that one.
Conclusion
Overall I am quite happy. Since leaving dropping Outlook and switching to GMail it has been painful to not have data synced between devices. Using these services has made things a lot easier and at practically no cost. NuevaSync is currently free and RTM is cheap ($25 USD/yr). Everything else is open source and free.
Finding youth to work with
Dec 27th
One of the things people keep asking me is where am I going to find people to train.
I expect that getting this business started is going to take some time because it is very much about relationships and in my experience there are no short-cuts – it just takes time. So here is my game plan. I want to form relationships with existing organisations and people that know of people who could benefit from my help. This involves school, the police, youth workers, churches etc. Of course they are not just going to refer people to me directly with no track record of helping so I am going to have to build some trust. To do this I will have to get involved with an existing organisation working with youth. Maybe to do some mentoring or just general dogs body helping out.
It may not be exactly what I envisaged from the start but I am beginning to see that transforming a vision into reality involves making some consesions and doing things a little differently along the way.
Alice
Dec 24th
I have this passion for programming but I know that other people don’t necessarily get it. So I have been wondering how to make programming fun. One of my friends mentioned Alice a software development environment that makes it easy to for people to create 3D games and animates. Seems like this might be a good tool to use in the sandbox.
I haven’t managed to get it working yet as there is some problem with the version of Java I have on this version of Ubuntu. Once I sort that out I will have a play and see if it something worth using.
The power of community
Dec 24th
The last six months I have had a real change of mindset with regard to communities. I suppose I had been going through the “Every man is an island” stage. For the last six months I have been doing a Discipleship Training School with Youth with a Mission. There were eighteen people on the course (including staff) and we spent nearly all day together every day. One thing I have learnt was that while you can live as an individual, it is much better to live in community. Having your life closely entwined with others enables them to be there for you. It gives you opportunities to encourage each other and just makes life easier!
We were taking things to extreme by most peoples standards. We would often have times when we would write encouragements to every other person. Pulling out the good things that we see in them and building them up. Personally I was so blessed by this. My self esteem was built up – but not falsely, and I become much more confident to do the tasks that we had to do. I wish this wasn’t extreme. I wish that we did this kind of thing all the time.
So where am I going with this? Well one of the reasons I wanted to start this business is that I want to live in community. So I decided the best way would be to move to get myself in a place where I can do that. The business will be planted in a community and its goals will be around working for that community by bringing in work, developing local community based projects, social networks, encouraging and equiping people for life etc. I am not sure how all this will come together at this stage but I want to try and use it as a vehicle for implementing some of the things I have learnt about living in community.
The Sandbox
Dec 21st
One of the goals of the sandbox is to give people a good overview of what is involved in software development and to get people interested in doing it! I am working on a list of things that I think are important to have an understanding of:
- How computers work
- Platforms (OS+Development Frameworks)
- How the internet works
- Basic web development
- Different Programming Languages
The problem is I don’t think this list will sound that exciting to anyone but a bunch of geeks!
What do you think? What topics would you teach to a group of late teens to get capture their interest?
Applications I use
Dec 20th
I just came across this post talking about what applications the writer uses, like him I want to keep track of them in case (well for when) I next re-install. Currently I am running Ubuntu 8.10 but am thinking of trying out the latest release of OpenSUSE I would also like to give Nexenta as the ZFS file system sounds great!
Part of the plan
Dec 20th
I have spent some time making up plans for this business I want to start. Here is the run down.
Get a bunch of kids who have no bearing in life and have had trouble with school. Spend a couple of hrs a day with them, teaching them the basics of software development. I am preparing some short modules that I hope will be fun and they can take and use to get started with the learning process. I call this ‘the sandbox’. It is a time to play around, dabble with some technology and with a bit of luck, and encouragement, catch a bit of the passion that comes with it.
I think the sandbox time will last a few weeks. The people who have got some motivation and are interested will be welcomed back to continue learning with a more in-depth teaching class, but again just a couple of hrs a day. This will consist of more advanced concepts along with exercises to complete and material that encourages them to look for their own answers and develop their own solutions to problems
At the moment I am working on a curriculium for how this will work. The more advanced part of it I think I know what I am doing – that sounds wrong I know. But getting people interested, passionate and wanting to learn? I am not sure how exactly to go about that! But it should be fun to give it a go 
