Author: user

Personalized Learning and Coding in the Classroom

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Personalized learning is a topic of ever-increasing importance in today’s educational environment, and code fits perfectly within its ideals.

Personalized learning is about tailoring the experience to the needs of students, allowing them to focus on things that interest them and use styles that best suit their needs. Code offers a unique opportunity to allow for structured and yet personalized learning. Ultimately, the way you learn to code is by completing projects.

Project based lessons

Students can practice application-related project scenarios as many times as they choose. Moreover, in programming, there is rarely only one way to solve a problem. With no definitive answers, students can use their imaginations via personalized learning to figure out how to get the desired result.

Even if a class of students is working on the same topic, each student can focus on tackling the difficulties in a learning method that best meets their interests. More advanced students can try more complicated solutions, while other students can focus on building the basics. Both are developing a better understanding of how fundamental elements work and interact.

Using coding in class

In an HTML and CSS lesson using personalized learning, students would design a poster with a solid backdrop, text blocks, and a photo. More advanced students might instead add changing background colors, embed videos, or make poster elements interactive. A personal touch can be added by having each participant create a poster on something they enjoy learning about. A lot of projects allow for a lot of customization.

Enabling students to pursue interests while working towards a common objective is at the heart of individualized learning. Personalized learning allows students to develop their creative thinking skills while creating tangible items they can be proud of. It’s a win-win for everyone.

For more on this subject, check out our other articles below:

Understanding Personalized Education in Schools
Launch Into Your New School Year With a Real-World Tech Project

Do Video Games Benefit Student Learning?

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While the argument over modern games and their impact on society continues, it is clear that video games have the ability to teach a wide range of abilities, especially in education.

Much of this potential is tied to the immense versatility of video games themselves. Video games are one of the most flexible types of entertainment around, more so than movies, books, or music. To fit an ever-widening range of circumstances, they require users to acquire ever-widening skills and capabilities.

In a classroom, games allow students to learn at their own pace, without much social pressure. In a typical classroom, students are frequently pushed past essential concepts that the rest of the class immediately truly understands. An enthusiastic student may lose interest or cause problems for others by having to wait for others to catch up. Games can allow for each player to progress at their own pace, doing much to alleviate this issue. Students can also acquire ideas without the social pressure of performing in front of the class; instead, they can focus on understanding the concepts presented without being judged by their peers.

A video game’s whole design revolves around producing an engaging experience for the user. Game-based learning allows students to quickly apply or understand new concepts rather than just listening or reading.

For instance, The Republia Times is a free web game in which players are tasked with writing headlines for a newspaper; the catch is that, through the titles, they have to toe the line between sentiment and bias. The game requires students to write creatively, balance numerous agendas and allows for discussions on media and free speech. There’s also Cell Command, a web-based game where students control various organelles inside an animal cell. Through the game, students learn about cell functions and how each part interacts while actively participating in the learning process.

With Kahoot! you can create a game using a pre-made template, then play it solo or as a group. Students can also create games to test each other on content taught, which is a great method to retain information. Teachers can even assign games as homework; you can probably see how students might prefer playing a trivia game to filling out a piece of paper.

Fortnite, a popular battle-royal game, has a team mode that encourages students to work as a group, creating strategies and building their teamwork to beat other teams of players. In doing so, they’ll need to learn how to collaborate with others, communicate successfully, deal with failure, and learn from mistakes.

In general, most games ask players to use their brains to solve problems under a set of rules and limitations. Maybe that challenge is how to solve a puzzle, how to maximize the efficiency of a system, or how to out-maneuver another player; regardless, players are being asked to learn new skills and think about things in new ways.

Video games do tend to be a fairly divisive topic; some say they encourage young people to withdraw from the world and others, robbing them of important social skills. Others claim that playing video games offers a wide range of benefits, from improved hand-eye coordination to enhanced strategic thinking, and that through online games players build essential skills in cooperative problem solving and teamwork. That’s a bigger discussion, and because this is real life we’re talking about, they’re probably both right.

When used correctly though, video games offer a way to make kids excited about learning and engaged with the material, all in a way that allows for an experience tailored to suit their learning style. While you can have too much of a good thing, when used responsibly, today’s video games can be an incredible asset for building a variety of skills.  

For more ideas on how to use video games in your classroom, check out this link.

Coding Is Just Like A Language

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Why do we refer to coding languages as “languages”? While it’s easy to pass off as just a phrase, the term is remarkably fitting; understanding why can help broaden and deepen our understanding of coding and our spoken languages. Here are just 5 of the exciting ways coding is like a traditional language:

1. IT’S USED TO SHARE INFORMATION.

First, and perhaps most fundamental, coding and languages are both used to share data. We use language to convey our thoughts, feelings, and intentions in our daily interactions with other people, whether over the internet or in person. At its core, code is doing the same thing; when you write code, you’re talking to the computer and telling it what you want. Some could even argue that the computer takes those instructions much of the time and uses them to communicate with other people through web pages, video games, apps, etc.  

2. THEY HAVE RULES AND GRAMMAR (OR SYNTAX).

Rules and grammar are an essential part of coding languages. Without rules and the framework they provide, our languages would not convey meaning as effectively as they do. If you get the rules wrong while coding, the computer can’t understand what you’re trying to say.  

3. THEY ARE EXTREMELY VERSATILE.

While coding languages do have definite rules, much like traditional language, those rules also allow freedom. We can use spoken language for many purposes: we use it to share thoughts, request things, and generally communicate. We can even use language to make music or play games with it. In addition, code has flexibility. For all its strict rules and specifications, coding can solve different problems in various ways. Thus, while some methods might be best suited to specific instances or contexts, there generally isn’t one “right” answer as long as it follows the basic rules.

4. THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

Mandarin and English are very different languages. They have additional grammar and methods of speaking or writing. While they ultimately fulfill the same purpose, some ideas might be easier to express in English, and some pictures might only be fully appreciated in Mandarin. The same is true of coding languages. While one language may be able to solve various problems, another language might be able to do it a little better. Some languages can converse fluently with data; some are right at home giving a robot instructions. In the same way that learning a new spoken language allows you to communicate with new people in new ways, learning new programming languages enables you to deal with problems differently.

5. YOU WON’T BECOME FLUENT IN A DAY

If you crunch, after a day of study, you might be able to say hello, ask for the bathroom, and maybe order from a restaurant in a foreign language. But to understand a language takes practice. While learning a new programming language is generally faster than picking up a foreign language, ultimately, the same principles apply.

After a day or two of study, you can create some cool projects and build a base understanding of the rules, but you won’t be able to build an expansive piece of software. While that can be discouraging, it’s also what makes learning so rewarding. Learning a new programming language, whether it’s your first or fifty-first, can allow you to think about old problems in new ways and accomplish things you couldn’t before.

While they may look very different on a page, coding languages and spoken languages share many similarities when it comes down to it. In comparing the two, we see both things in a slightly different light to understand new aspects of the familiar.

A slight shift in perspective may make us reconsider an oft-occurring problem or particularly vexing issue and find a better solution. Ultimately, by changing the way we think and develop new ideas, we can change a world, a country, or even a classroom.

Behind the Scenes: The Team Building BSD Online

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I’d like to take you behind the scenes of the BSD software development team. Did you know that BSD’s Online platform is built in Bangkok? Our team is actually a multicultural and international group of developers, data scientists and designers from Thailand, Scotland, England, France, the US and Myanmar! We work closely together but also spend a lot of time collaborating with our colleagues in the United States and Hong Kong.

Our software developers divide into two “agile teams”. This means that they work on a process of building, testing and adjusting to feedback to create solutions that are finely tuned by the time they are in front of our users. When we give our users access to what we have created, this is called a release. Building upon Amazon Web Services we have created a release process that allows us to deploy at any time of day, even when the platform is being actively used, and reducing the need for down-time or maintenance. Everyone in the team works really hard because the focus is always on building a high quality experience. The way we work could be summarized as:

Work hard. Work smart. Learn. Improve. Deliver quality.

It’s not all work on our primary product all the time. Our focus on education is not just in the product we’re building. Technology is forever changing and so it’s essential that our team has the time to explore what is up and coming or new to them so they can create the best possible technology through their work. You could say we focus on education in our product and ourselves. We are always trying to learn and improve. To give us some structure we do a monthly “Code Jam”. Everyone in the team chooses their own initiative to work on. This can be learning new technologies, prototyping an idea for a new feature on the platform, or creating a new lesson on the platform. Often people choose to work with colleagues to build something together.

You might have heard that it’s really hard to hire technologists. This is definitely true. We work really hard to have a strong reputation for the quality of what we build, running a strong process in our team, the ability for team members to innovate and the opportunity to be part of a company with an international culture and unified passion for education. When hiring we always look for people who have excellent software development ability and share our passion, culture and values.

Some of you may be interested in our technology stack. These are all the ingredients that go into our technology. We use: JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, SASS, ReactJS, Redux, RxJS, webpack, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Amazon Web Services (Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, API Gateway, CloudFront, CloudFormation, S3, CloudWatch, ECS).

This might look like a lot of names and letters. However, I would like to point out a primary technology we use in this list, called “ReactJS”. It was developed at Facebook and then shared with the open source community worldwide after being created, so teams like ours can benefit from the work that the engineers in Facebook did. It is a really prominent feature of technologists around the world that they share their knowledge and help others benefit from what they discover. When this has happened and it is by a big organization like Facebook, it also becomes a technology that thousands of developers use and improve so it becomes really powerful, efficient to use, and a great choice for building a platform like BSD Online.

There we are – a brief introduction to the approaches and philosophy of the software development team. We all learned to programme without the benefit of a platform like BSD Online. We really want to improve the process of learning technology for those who are coming next!

Stay tuned in the coming weeks to learn more about the lives of our data scientists and designers!

Women in STEM and Inspiring Female Role Models in the Classroom

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The lack of representation of girls and women in STEM-related careers is regularly reported on the news and social media.

You’ve probably seen the stats, but just as a reminder:

  • Microsoft found that 58% of female university students believe that jobs requiring programming and coding are “not for them”
  • A UK survey found fewer than 10% of girls aged 7-10 preferred a career as an engineer or scientist
  • Only 1.4% of Nobel Physics Prize winners have been female

Moreover, the absence of women in STEM careers has a global impact, as The World Bank points out in this blog post:

‘The fact that women are not entering these fields of study or working in these sectors and occupations means that talent is misused and that economics are less productive than they could be.’

– The World Bank

As educators, we must work to improve female representation in STEM-related careers. Previously, we discussed the importance of making STEM subjects relevant to students’ real life.

We recommend introducing your students to female role models during your lessons. This is because girls’ views about STEM are made throughout their education,

The Microsoft research cited above found this exciting revelation in their studies. ‘Girls who know a woman in a STEM profession are substantially more likely to feel empowered when they engage in STEM activities. This is 61% more than those who don’t know a woman in a STEM profession (44%)’.

However, thanks to entrenched gender stereotypes, girls and young women can find it difficult to picture themselves in STEM roles. Bringing female role models into your classroom helps remind girls they have a place in these fields.

There are plenty of ways to bring female role models into your classroom. Here are some ideas:  

  • Make sure they are represented in displays, presentations, and resources
  • Follow inspiring women on Twitter and share their stories with your class
  • Hold a “STEM Women in History Day” in March
  • Invite a Guest Speaker
  • Create a STEM Mentorship Program

For more insight into gender differences in technology, give this article a read today. It goes into detail to highlight the issues many women and girls are facing in the tech industry and provides actionable steps to overcome the challenges currently set.

Many of BSD Education’s team are female, performing critical roles in a fast-growing international technology company.

To highlight a few: Charlotte Brearley is the Chief Operating Officer with global responsibility, Eva Yeung is a Director in our Education Team and a key strategist in our educational vision, and Beth Darvell is our Senior Marketing Manager who oversees and manages our global online presence.

We would be more than happy to connect you with Charlotte, Eva, Beth, or our broader team to share their stories with your class.

Encouraging Students To Study Technology

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It’s that time of year when students start thinking about next year’s classes. We know that misunderstandings about technology, especially computer science, might discourage students.

Here are a few pointers to assist explain or counter these beliefs and increase involvement in your school’s technology program.

1. You need to be good at math to be good at coding

To be a good coder you don’t need to have in-depth knowledge of mathematical concepts (like trigonometry, algebra, or calculus). A good coder can follow instructions, reason logically, and solve problems within the code’s limitations. Because solving problems effectively is a skill that we all need in the workplace and as adults.

2. It’s monotonous and boring

Anything built with code is about thinking and working creatively. This usually involves testing an initial idea, modifying it till it’s perfect. It’s not boring, but it requires students to apply existing information and develop new techniques to create technology that can help or improve the world. The beauty of technology is that the effects are often instant and visible to the creator.

3. You need to memorize and know all the code

There are hundreds of coding languages, so this means that no coder can know everything all the time or even try to remember it all. To get around this, coders regularly look up new syntax and snippets of code and borrow from each other. Coding is a very active community with an ethos of people with different skill levels working together and helping each other out.  

4. Coders don’t socialize much

Useful technology tools are always created by teams where people with different primary interests and abilities work together to perform different tasks. For this reason, coders and technologists need to collaborate and communicate effectively with others, sometimes across time zones, cultures, and national borders which makes coding and technology a very sociable activity.   

5. Coding is only for boys

Coding is a skill and a toolkit that is relevant for everyone. The very first coders in the world and some of the most influential coders have been women. For instance, Ada Lovelace is considered the world’s first coder, Grace Hopper developed the first compiler for programming languages and Marissa Mayer was one of the first programmers at Google. You can find some ideas for encouraging female students to take on the challenge of technology in this article by our COO, Charlotte, here

In the end, technology and the ability to create with technology is and will continue to be ubiquitous to everything that students love to do. For every student, continuing their technology studies is an opportunity to learn about different ways to enhance the enjoyment of what they like doing best, whether it be analyzing the data of their performance in sport, or understanding how to use technology to promote their school play. With technology and coding, all of this can be achieved while paving themselves a successful road for the future.

Catching up with EdTech: Our Favorite Article Sources

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We have prepared a little treat for you this Halloween! The Education Team at BSD understands how precious your time is as a teacher – parent-teacher interviews are coming up, the assessment period is approaching, reporting is just around the corner – before you know it, you are already being asked to prepare for the next academic year! To help you stay ahead, we have scoured the internet for the most insightful and interesting edtech content (blogs, articles, and podcasts) to help you stay afloat in the rapid changes and tides (driven by tech) in education.

*The 6 sources below are listed in alphabetical order their place on the list is no indication of preference

1.Cult of Pedagogy (https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/category/technology/)

Jennifer Gonzalez is an experienced female educator who shares a wealth of insight into the world of education through podcasts, blogs, and videos. Cult of Pedagogy is a great general resource for getting inspiration on learning theories and classroom management. The section “Technology” is our favorite part (for obvious reasons). Gonzalez is pragmatic in her recommendations and through her “interviews [of] educators, students, administrators, and parents about the psychological and social dynamics of school” we always feel re-energised and inspired to get back into the classroom to try something new.

Recommendation: “When Your School Is Short on Tech” https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/low-tech-school/

2.EdSurge (https://www.edsurge.com/)

EdSurge is one of the more well-known edtech sources out there. There is a lot of content here though, so our favorite way to catch up with EdSurge is through their weekly mailing list, where the week’s key articles are summarized. EdSurge has a community of educators, techies and entrepreneurs to share news, information, trends and research about what emerging technologies and how it can (or cannot) support teaching in learning in K-12 and higher education.

Recommendation: “YouTube Launches $20 Million Fund as Part of ‘Learning’ Initiative” (https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-10-23-youtube-launches-20-million-fund-as-part-of-learning-initiative)

3.EdTech Digest (https://edtechdigest.com/)

A great site again for cool tools, interviews, and trends to get inspired and stay up-to-date with various opinion pieces. With edtech thought leaders in the tech sector and academics, EdTech Digest offers insights, updates, interviews into the rapidly evolving world of educational technology. EdTech Digest also conducts EdTech Awards annually, so this is also a place to find recommended resources.

Recommendation: “Busting the Myths of the “Digital Native”” https://edtechdigest.com/2018/10/22/busting-the-myths-of-the-digital-native/

4.EdTech: Focus on K-12 Magazine (https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/)

EdTech: Focus on K-12 is an online magazine that is part of CDW, which is a leading multi-brand technology solutions provider to business, government, education and healthcare organizations in North America and the United Kingdom. The articles are a curated set of contributions by educators and tech leaders in education. In this context, EdTech: Focus on K-12 provides an interesting repository of implementation solutions and discussions faced by educators and tech integrators, such as suggestions in classroom setup, technology professional development for teachers etc.

Recommendation: “Facebook Launches Communication App with K–12 Students in Mind” (https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/12/facebook-launches-communication-app-k-12-students-mind)

5.Hello World (https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/)

Hello World is a digital (and printed) publication by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The magazine is published three times per year and it’s available entirely free as a Creative Commons PDF download. The magazine is a curated collection of interviews, case studies, and opinion pieces, as well as practical tech lesson plans submitted by other educators. The most recent issue discusses the challenges of ethics in computing and creation in the classroom.

Recommendation: Issue 6: https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/issues/6

6.The Tech Edvocate (https://www.thetechedvocate.org/)

The Tech Edvocate (Matthew Lynch) covers a wide range of topics from gamification, online learning to childhood development with tech to name a few. This is a well-rounded source of articles and discussion pieces to find out more about the trends in edtech and what’s up and coming the the world on tech that will help boost student agency and engagement.  

Recommendation: “10 AMAZING HACKATHON IDEAS” https://www.thetechedvocate.org/10-amazing-hackathon-ideas/

For a list of top accounts to follow on Twitter to stay up-to-date, click here to read our suggestions from issue 5

Advantages of Real-World Technology Camp for Kids: Game Development Camp

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Like a technology camp, Extracurricular activities benefit children by exposing them to skills beyond academics, applying what they learn at school in a different context or environment, and developing them as well-rounded young adults. In addition, they socialize and make new friends while exploring new areas of interest and broadening their perspectives.

Here we explore what real-world skills your child will learn if s/he enrolls for a game development technology camp.

Developing games is an intense, collaborative, and multidisciplinary activity, taking the developer through the planning, designing, coding, and testing stages. Creating a game touches upon various abilities and interests, from programming logic to artistic design and narrative writing.

Because one person rarely excels at all these things, a game development camp becomes an excellent opportunity to work on team-building. Additionally, budding gamers will spend a lot of time practicing communication and collaboration! Here is a bit more detail on some of the ways we see campers honing their abilities at technology camp:

Imagine and plan

Developing games is a creative endeavor, and your child will primarily learn to translate their ideas by creating a storyboard. Putting your imagination to paper helps to spot the gaps in the idea and, in turn, solidifies the gameplay.

Code

Coding is the tool that takes the game from a mere idea to a fully formed product—a game that can be shared and played. Students will typically learn to code using languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and coding libraries. However, making a game function correctly means breaking the game’s overall process into small and manageable pieces. This process is called decomposition. This refers to the set of instructions on making them work together as a piece of software. It’s also the functioning game that aligns with the creator’s tech, design, and artistic vision.

Problem-solving

While building the game at technology camp, kids will encounter many problems like the code not working, not understanding some parts of the code, complexities of developing an algorithm, etc. Then, thinking creatively to solve these problems, they’ll brainstorm to create a solution that works.

Adapting to Feedback

The experience of the users is key to the success of the game. Ensuring the game players have a fun and engaging experience, kids will have to carefully plan the game experience, its rules, structure, levels, and score system. During this, they will have to give the game to other users, observe them and take their feedback. Feedback comes with many different suggestions. Kids will need to consider everyone’s input and learn to exercise judgment on what will ultimately be in the final game. This is excellent preparation for their daily lives as adults and a fantastic exercise in empathy.

Communication and presentation

Every child needs to present their game, how it works, how they built it, and how they overcame challenges. Working as a team, they also plan their presentations and make sure that all contributions in the group are recognized. Doing this in a technology camp reinforces a lot of the lessons from school about collaboration and citizenship.

Learning to develop games is a wonderful technical, artistic, and creative endeavor. There is no denying the connection that kids have with games, the prominence of the gaming industry or its implications for their future careers. Most importantly, however, attending a game development camp is a fantastic opportunity for children to deepen their passion. Lifting the lid on how games are created, take their communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and empathy to a new level while making friends and having a great time at technology camp.

If your students have attended a game development technology camp, let us know! We would love to feature their creations on social media. You can share by using the hashtags #BuildSomethingDifferent or #BSDEducation

Check out this link to a great 2D runner game from another technology camp that Matthew built from Sha Tin College on BSD’s Online platform to get started: https://app.bsd.education/share/4W4efS37/.

For more advantages on technology camps, see our related articles below:

Advantages of Real World Technology Camps: App Development
Advantages of Real World Technology Camps: Roblox
Advantages of Real World Technology Camps: Robotics with Micro:bit

Opinion: Why Work Experience Needs to be Bite Sized

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Work experience is an important part of a student’s journey to prepare them to begin a career. However, offering work experience to high school students is often seen by businesses as a time drain with a weak value proposition. The skill set or capability of the students is not clearly understood to create relevant and meaningful work for them to undertake, and the moment of potential recruitment is not seen as sufficiently impending to compel action by the business to provide the work experience opportunity.

Work experience has traditionally been offered as a one-week placement, meaning 5 days working at an office in a company for 40 hours. Often students are already assigned to a department in a work experience company, but in order to set students up for success, the planning and organization of productive tasks for the student will need to reflect more than 40 hours of work. Without really comprehending the skills and competencies of the student, this becomes extremely time consuming and challenging for the supervisor.

In practice, having offered work experience to school aged students now for 9 years in four different businesses, I have found that in reality a successful 40 hour placement for a student really needs to have 80 or more hours of options for work available and prepared. This takes time and resources, with the resulting activities often becoming either menial or contrived. Where the foreseeable outcomes or benefits of the work experience to the company are in doubt, it creates a situation within the company where employees are being asked to take on extra work for an unclear purpose.

It is worth noting that curriculum vitaes or resumes themselves do not give an accurate gauge of an individual’s capabilities. To help potential employers better understand a student’s ability, a well presented portfolio of projects, even school projects, that showcase a student’s ability to use a particular tool, to design, write or analyse would be much more effective and can save a lot of time.

However, I question whether the model of ‘40 hours in a week’ is even the right approach at all. For younger, high-school aged students, it is far easier for a team in a company to find a single task that re-occurs each week, has an easily comprehensible and measurable value and will potentially free-up full time employees for other work.

Let’s take the example of a marketing team. Marketing exists in every company of every size and needs reports each week about the different campaigns that are running. The data can rarely be accessed and automatically compiled through a single system. Therefore, a report needs to be put together showing clearly defined results in one place. With a simple initial briefing, this task can be taken on by a student and then repeated weekly with a work experience visit that continues over a period of time. The task itself gives a clearly identifiable value to the team and allows  tracking of quality and improvement. A bite-sized approach of shorter tasks, significantly reduces the time taken to prepare students to properly undertake their responsibility compared to a week-long work experience programme.

When we think about the purpose of work experience, the focus is really for students to develop their employability skill set. This is where students apply their hard skills while developing their soft skills in a professional environment. To employers, the importance of soft skills of both high school and university graduates is very clear and the afore-linked article does a nice job of defining some of the soft skills I am referring to. Skills such as professionalism, time management and communication, are not developed quickly or in the space of a week. They take time and repeated practice supported by coaching and correction.

Young adults, where their primary work experience will consist of a single week will inevitably have less opportunity to develop their soft skills and overall employability than they would in a weekly experience over a long period of time. Where a week of work experience coincides with a period of instability in life – this is something many young adults experience for reasons out of their own control, particularly in underserved communities – we might also view that there is a higher risk of  disruption, which will mean that there will be no perceivable benefit to the student or the employer in a one week work experience engagement. A shortcoming on an individual week in a weekly work experience will have the opportunity to be redeemed during the following week. A long-term work experience builds sustainable skills, lasting relationships and stability, it allows room for personal growth.

Finally, with the development of employability skills in a work experience placement, there is the issue for high school students that the moment of recruitment is not impending. With a one week experience it rarely, if ever, could be impending unless it took place during the final month of a school career. It might also be unlikely that an employer would immediately meet a high school experienced student and instantly see a place for them in their business purely based on their skill set. Recruitment results from people seeing not just technical merit, but also the ability for that person to fit in their working environment on a daily basis and both sides wanting to work with each other.

One of the best possible ways for a young person to fit into a working environment, which is new and often alien to them, is not to seek an immediate result, but to allow relationships to develop over time. Weekly work experience over a period of time will allow credibility and trust to build between the student and the company as weekly tasks are consistently accomplished, communication is learned and the individual is simply proven reliable and convivial. The issue of impending recruitment from a long term engagement materialises more easily where the relationship can grow and would naturally run to the conclusion of the student’s time at school to connect with their progression to the workforce.

To conclude, business functions through the realisation of return on investment. Frequent bite-sized long-term work experience has a clearly definable value to the company with a lower potential for failure than an isolated experience in a single week. From a business perspective it provides a clear positive return versus investment of time and therefore offers a strong reason for a business to engage in providing work experience for high school aged students.

For students, weekly work experience allows the development of skills and business relationships in an environment where they join with a clear value proposition, and are able to operate with a forgiving margin for error.

Weekly work experience is the optimal model to deliver the best possible experience of the professional working world for students and companies alike.

Why Mobile Phones Are a Powerful Learning Tool

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This week we bring you a discussion by five education experts on using mobile phones in the classroom. The overall consensus is that experts don’t want to ban mobile phones in school because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

This discussion came about in June 2018 when the Minister for Education in New South Wales, Australia – Rob Stokes, ordered a review into mobile phone use in schools.

There are concerns about communication and the risk of cyberbullying, but they are outweighed by the positive benefits that mobile phones bring. There is also an opinion expressed that phones are necessary to access parents, while banning them might merely serve to make bullying more hidden.

Benefits include understanding the multitude of different ways to communicate we now use in the present day and the importance of the phone as part of the authenticity of real-world context in learning.

There is a lot of flexibility available to students to use their phones to progress at their own pace. However, it does seem clear that the benefits of mobile phones are best achieved when used with a clear purpose. Proper guidance in learning how to use mobile phones can positively impact their learning and overall well-being and life in general.

Some quotes from the article we particularly liked:

Matthew Kearney, an Associate Professor for the Teacher Education program at the University of Technology Sydney: “if school students want to investigate, collect data, receive personalized and immediate feedback, record media, create, compose, or communicate with peers, in and beyond the classroom, then using mobile apps is ideal.”

Joanne Orlando, a Technology and Learning researcher at the Western Sydney University, says, “We should not ban mobile phones in schools because it’s important to educate children to live well in the era in which they are growing up.”. She adds, “A good education for students today is knowing how to use technology to learn, communicate, and work with ideas.”

Susan M Sawyer, a Paediatrician and Professor of Adolescent Health at The University of Melbourne: “schools need to develop policies around the use of mobile phones during school hours. Given the dynamic nature of the mobile world, regularly engaging students and parents in reviewing and revising these policies is an important part of everyone’s learning.”

We encourage students to use mobile phones in the classroom to document their learning by taking notes, clicking photos, researching online, or testing the mobile compatibility and user experience of their recently coded projects. Students are most motivated when they fully understand the potential of technology and consequently feel empowered to use it impactfully.

Here are 40 ways to use mobile phones in your next classroom. Tweet us at @EducationBSD and share your stories, obstacles, and opinion on allowing mobile phones in your classroom.

Code Is: Your Voice

Try Code Is Your Voice today with 6 free coding projects to start building something different today!

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