Creativity and Curiosity
ICT for Education - Birmingham
Prof Miles Berry
These slides: bit.ly/ict4ecnc
8 November 2024
Coding in an AI age…
What was your first computer?
What was your first computer?
So why teach arithmetic?
Programming is obsolete?
Programming will be obsolete. I believe the conventional idea of "writing a program" is headed for extinction, and indeed, for all but very specialized applications, most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed. In situations where one needs a "simple" program (after all, not everything should require a model of hundreds of billions of parameters running on a cluster of GPUs), those programs will, themselves, be generated by an AI rather than coded by hand.
So why teach coding?
The end of programming?
A.I. could transform computer programming from a rarefied, highly compensated occupation into a widely accessible skill that people can easily pick up and use as part of their jobs across a wide variety of fields. This won’t necessarily be terrible for computer programmers — the world will still need people with advanced coding skills — but it will be great for the rest of us.
Post-scarcity jobs?
We are entering a post-scarcity world in some areas.
You have to be able to read and / or code well enough to put the AI generated pieces together.
There are likely to be other jobs that are very human focused.
Khan, 24/6/24
Computing
A high-quality computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world.
The best bits…
TS4 �Plan and teach well structured lessons
“promote a love of learning and children’s intellectual curiosity”
Child centred?
“At the heart of the educational process lies the child.”
“One of the main educational tasks of the primary school is to build on and strengthen children's intrinsic interest in learning and lead them to learn for themselves.”
Plowden, 1967
What questions have your pupils asked you?
My daughter’s view…
“We’re interested in what we can do with computers.
The boys are interested in what computers can do.”
Berry, S. (2024)
Active learning
Evidence indicates that learning computing in an active environment benefits pupils beyond the impact on their formal attainment; for example, it can help create an inclusive learning environment that encourages the participation of a more diverse group of pupils in computing.
Royal Society, 2017
Make something in the world to �make something in your head
When you make something in the world, it becomes an external representation of ideas in your head. It enables you to play with your ideas and to gain a better understanding of the possibilities and limitations of your ideas. By giving an external form and shape to your ideas, you also provide opportunities for other people to play with your ideas and give suggestions on your ideas.
Emotional learning
You need to know this for your exams
This is fascinating!
The J Factor
The finest teachers offer up the work with generous servings of energy, passion, enthusiasm, fun, and humor
Lemov, 2010
We feel therefore we learn
After all, we humans cannot divorce ourselves from our biology, nor can we ignore the high-level sociocultural and cognitive forces that make us special within the animal kingdom. When we educators fail to appreciate the importance of students ’ emotions, we fail to appreciate a critical force in students ’ learning. One could argue, in fact, that we fail to appreciate the very reason that students learn at all.
Immordino-Yang and Damasio, 2007
In summary:
Get them asking questions
Find out what they’re interested in learning
Demonstrate the relevance
Collaborative projects
Make things
Composition with Circles
Composition with circles (2003)
A primary characteristic is the way a complex visual structure is formed from the repetition of simple shapes. This is a principle which runs throughout Riley’s art. The wall drawing takes a complete circle as its starting point and repeats this shape, creating a web of abutting, nearly touching and overlapping hoops. In common with all Riley’s work since 1961, the wall drawing is the result of a long preparatory process involving detailed studies on paper in which formal ideas are tried out and progressively refined. Once a definitive image has been decided, the activity of painting individual works - or in this case, drawing a scaled-up composition onto the wall – is carried out by assistants. Though freely composed during the preparatory stage, the structure of the wall drawing marries organic asymmetry with an underlying sense of order, stasis with movement, flatness with depth. As in Riley’s paintings, the drawing, though abstract, reveals features which we recognise from certain experiences in nature.
What’s worked for you?
TS4b
“promote a love of learning and children’s intellectual curiosity”
Any questions?
These slides: bit.ly/ict4ecnc
m.berry@roehampton.ac.uk