Great CPD: Picademy

I was fortunate to get a place at Picademy (#picademy) in December 2015. Such a fantastic opportunity and great fun, especially as most of it was about Physical computing.

In the screenshot above I was playing SonicPi (http://sonic-pi.net/) programming music (or trying to create music in my case). If you haven't had a go at throughly recommend it. It is great that SonicPi is available on the Mac and PC as well - I spend quite a bit of time playing with it over Christmas. 

Playing with connecting Python and Minecraft is very engaging and fun, but programming LEDs and Motors through either the the GPIO or using an HAT (see the images below) is just what I enjoy the most.

In the above image was my attempt at a simple 'Dalek' - essentially a cup and straw, with a wheeled motor inside. Controlled using python,  Pi through an ExplorerHat. It essentially moved in a circle either clockwise or anti-clockwise.

Rise of Rabbitsapien - A team of us put together a project of a robot with a rabbit (no other soft toys were available) with a Passive IR sensor in its belly; that carries out a set routine when movement is detected.

It was also great to come away with some many resources both physical and activities. I was so inspired by it that since I built an X-Wing in Minecraft that is control by gestures see  http://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/gesture-controlled-minecraft-x-wing.html for more detail.

Thank you to the Pi Foundation for such a good experience. I would love to hear other people's experiences of Picademy.

All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.

Web sustainability - two of the lessons learnt

To read more on about the Web sustainability project at http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/ . The project is essence was to consider ways to rescue websites that are at risk and make them available sustainably - in effect at no cost, easy to maintain and transfer to a new host/user.




A. Migration to Google Site
1. Introduction
The project started by looking at 'rescuing' a site (www.emkn.org) by copying content to a Google Site version. The advantages and disadvantages have been found for this approach, and some suggestions have come out of the project.


2. Why Google Sites?

Google Sites (www.google.com/sites/overview.html) was investigated initially as a suitable platform for several reasons:

• It is a freely available resource, allowing this approach to be replicated with other at risk resources.

• It allows changes for individual pages or the entire site remotely by subscription

• It supports native RSS feeds for:

o Announcements pages

o Comments

o Recent site activity

• It integrates with a number of Google-based tools (such as Analytics, Webmaster tools, YouTube, Google Docs and Picasa).

3. What we found?

As each page essentially needs to be provide individually (producing templates of portions of the site help, but each page does need to be produced individually. For a site with a large number of pages this is extremely time consuming.

A major problem with Google Sites for this project is CSS can't easily be transferred, though to a large extent HTML can, the formatting of the site has to be redone.



4. Other options?

A quick option is to use the public folder of a  Dropbox account a URL can be created and if we are talking about content that is not going to change and yet you want it still publicly accessible, but really it is being shelved for later use; this is a reasonable option. It is free (if you have a free account) and publicly accessible but it does have some drawbacks:

• The URL produced is a little cryptic - it doesn't really bear a direct relationship with the site's name or content. So is a poor option in terms of Search Engine Optimisation point of view.
• It is difficult to add some common web analysis tools. Google Analytics is easy you, but tools such as Google Webmaster tools are much more difficult to work with.
• It is only really use for static content.
• As with all the free options there is the concern that it is only an option will the service running is available.

Amazon cloud route is currently under investigation, initially there are still some of the drawbacks common to the Dropbox route, namely:

• The URL produced is a little cryptic - it doesn't really bear a direct relationship with the site's name or content. So is a poor option in terms of Search Engine Optimisation. Saying that it is a little better than the Dropbox option as you can include a site name within the URL.
• As with all the free options there is the concern that it is only an option will the service running is available.

5. Flat and static sites versus dynamic sites.
For this type of activity, it is unlikely to come as little surprise that static website are easier to transfer, especially if you don't have direct access to the files on the original sites server. Tools such as WinHTTrack Website Copier (http://www.httrack.com/) extract the HTML returned from the server which could be a problem for PHP based sites, where the copying tools would extract it as HTML and for some the hosting sites option using more dynamic technologies is a little problematic without a re-building of the site, the case in point being Google Sites.



6. Outcomes and suggestions
Google Sites based solution are appropriate if there are a small number of pages within the site, where you have some flexibility of the design of the site (especially if the site it is not reliant on CSS) and the pages are essentially static pages. If your site does match any one of these, it is best to look at alternatives, such as dropbox and amazon S3. Otherwise Google Sites is a good option, especially as it has the backing of major company.

As with all sites (or perhaps even more so due to these sites not necessarily having support, but still useful), following good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) principles are important. The site, we hope, is going to be use by others but the resources behind the site are likely to minimal. Following good SEO principles at least gives the site an improved chance of being picked up by others and the search engines. One possible advantage of the Google Sites approach is URL produced as standard is a little more easier to interpret than some of the other techniques, which could have some benefits from a Search engine optimisation prespective. 



B. Sustainability Challenge

The area of sustainability of websites should be an important consideration for any funding that involves public money, both during the life-time of the project and after it. Especially when government funded agencies are being rationalised finding ways to keep the sites going even if they are not updated further, they still provide a ‘snap-shot’ of the resources at a particular point in time. This project looked at possible sustainability options and has the following recommendations:

·         A sustainable web solution should be considered for funded projects. There are a number of free options.

·         Google Sites is an appropriate solution if the number of pages is small, the formatting of the pages is not too complicated and it is a new web site.

·         Amazon is appropriate for both new and previously developed material is being migrated.

·         Dropbox is as in the Amazon solution appropriate for new and previously developed sites and is appropriate if only basic tracking tools such as Google analytics are needed.

·         Sustainable web solutions proposed are good as a back-up or archiving solution; but also can be used as the main site if the domain name is redirected to the new site.

As with all sites (or perhaps even more so due to these sites not necessarily having support, but still useful), following good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) principles are important. The site, we hope, is going to be use by others but the resources behind the site are likely to minimal. Following good SEO principles at least gives the site an improved chance of being picked up by the search engines. One possible advantage of the Google Sites approach is URL produced as standard is a little easier to interpret than some of the other techniques, which could have some benefits from a Search engine optimisation perspective. 

Some of this has been disseminated on a posting on a University of Northampton blog of ‘expert opinion’ (http://blogs.northampton.ac.uk/expertsatnorthampton/2011/09/27/web-sustainability-its-gone/) aimed at disseminating ideas from the university to the wider community. More details are available on the project's blog: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/


All views are those of the author and should not be seen as a reflecting the views of any organisation the author is associated with.

Enhancing computing student employability skills through STEM outreach.

Enhancing computing student employability skills through partnership working in STEM outreach.

Scott Turner, Associate Professor, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, University of Northampton, Northampton, NN2 6JB, UK

Abstract

Student volunteering is growing in the UK and elsewhere, and there is an ongoing debate about whether it is really “self-evidently a ‘good thing’” or there is a greater need for reflection to determine whether this statement is true (Holdsworth and Quinn, 2010).  This paper presents a personal reflection of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) volunteering as a potential route to increasing Computing student’s employability.

This paper looks at an approach at the University of Northampton that involves:

• ·         Linking but not combining a local STEM volunteering scheme to the National STEM Volunteers (STEMNet 2015)
• ·         Creation of a STEM Steering Group that has representation across all parts of the university.

Enhancing computing student employability skills through partnership working in STEM outreach. - CEISEE 2015 from Scott Turner

Three brief case studies of computing student volunteers at different stages will be presented and culminate with a personal reflection based on observations over a ten year period.

References

Brewis, G., Russell, J., and Holdsworth, C. (2010). Bursting the bubble: Students, volunteering and the community. Research Summary.

Holdsworth, C., & Quinn, J. (2010). Student volunteering in English higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 35(1), 113-127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070903019856

Junkbots (2015) Junkbots [online] Available at: http://junkbots.blogspot.co.uk/ Accessed on: 24th January 2015.

Sinclair J, Allen A, Davis L, Goodchild T, Messenger J, Turner S (2014) "Enhancing student employability skills through partnership working in STEM outreach; the University of Northampton approach " HEA STEM Annual Teaching and Learning Conference 2013: Enhancing the STEM Student Journey, University of Edinburgh, 30th April-1st May 2014

STEMNet (2015) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network [online] Available at: http://www.stemnet.org.uk/ Accessed on: 24th January 2015.

Problems first and robots

Scott Turner and Gary Hill from the Division of Computing (along with Jonathan Adams from the Division of Engineering on a related project) have been investigating teaching and developing problem solving skills as a first step developing programming skills through the use of LEGO-based robots and graphics based programming.


Work on problem-solving has been on-going in the School of Science and Technology (was School of Applied Sciences) for the last four years looking at the concept of teaching and developing problem-solving first, then programming. The main vehicle for developing the problem-solving skills has been LEGO Mindstorms robotics kits and series of gradually more challenging robot-based tasks.

Lawhead et al (2003) stated that robots “…provide entry level programming students with a physical model to visually demonstrate concepts” and “the most important benefit of using robots in teaching introductory courses is the focus provided on learning language independent, persistent truths about programming and programming techniques. Robots readily illustrate the idea of computation as interaction”. Synergies can be made with our work and those one on pre-object programming and simulation of robots for teaching programming as a visual approach to the teaching of the widely used programming language  Java.

The main benefits that the students stated of this approach was they  believe robots provide a method to visually and physically see the outcome of a problem. The approach taken the module has been visually-orientated. The appropriateness of this seems to be borne out by the student comments. Student satisfaction  for a module based around this approach is over 92%. One of the comments made was that the linking of the problem-solving robot task and the programming assignment was liked. This feedback is similar to that reported by other authors when teaching programming using robots (Williams et al, 2003).  There is enough scope in this approach to have different levels of complexity/functionality within an assignment task offering a basic ‘pass’ level for a particular task, but also the scope for those students that desire more of a challenge.


Reference
Lawhead PB, Bland CG, Barnes DJ, Duncan ME, Goldweber M, Hollingsworth RG,
Schep M (2003), A Road Map for Teaching Introductory Programming Using
LEGO Mindstorms Robots SIGCSE Bulletin, 35(2): 191-201.
Williams AB (2003) The Qualitative Impact of Using LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot
to Teach Computer Engineering IEEE Trans. Educ. Vol. 46 pp 206.


Publications

• Turner S (2014) "Greenfoot in Problem solving and Artificial Intelligence" CEISEE 2014 University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu China 24-25 April 2014

• Turner S (2013) Junkbots – it is not one thing! Engage 2013 27-28th September 2013
• Hill G and Turner S (2013) Electronic Online Marking Of Software Assignments (EOMOSA) CEISIE 2013 13th -14th May 2013 Milan
• Turner S (2013) Junkbots HEA STEM: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2013: Where practice and pedagogy meet 17 Apr 2013 - 18 Apr 2013
• Kariyawasam K., A., Turner S., Hill G. (2012) "Is it Visual? The importance of a Problem Solving Module within a Computing course", Computer Education, Volume 10, Issue 166, May 2012, pp. 5-7, ISSN: 1672-5913. 
• Turner S (2011) Neural Nets Robotics Workshop. Bot Shop! University of Derby, 28th October 2011.

• Hill G, Turner S (2011) Chapter 7 Problems First Software Industry-Oriented Education Practices and Curriculum Development: Experiences and Lessons edited by Drs. Matthew Hussey, Xiaofei Xu and Bing Wu. ISBN: 978-1609607975IGI Global June 2011
• Kariyawasam K and Turner (2011) "Is it Visual? problem solving evaluation" Learning Global,University of Northampton 11th May 2011
• Turner S and Hill G (2010) "Innovative use of Robots and Graphical Programming in Software Education" Computer Education Ser. 117 No. 9 pp 54-57 ISSN: 1672-5913
• Turner S, Hill G, Adams J (2009) "Robots in problem solving in programming" 9th 1-day Teaching of Programming Workshop, University of Bath, 6th April 2009.  
• Turner S and Hill G(2008) "Robots within the Teaching of Problem-Solving" ITALICS vol. 7 No. 1 June 2008 pp 108-119 ISSN 1473-7507 
• Turner S and Adams J (2008) "Robots and Problem Solving" 9th Higher Education Academy-ICS Annual Conference, Liverpool Hope University, 26th August - 28th August 2008. pp. 14 ISBN 978-0-9559676-0-3. 
• Adams, J. and Turner, S., (2008) Problem Solving and Creativity for Undergraduate Computing and Engineering students: the use of robots as a development tool Creating Contemporary Student Learning Environments 2008, Northampton, UK. 
• Adams, J. and Turner, S., (2008) Problem Solving and Creativity for Undergraduate Engineers: process or product? International Conference on Innovation, Good Practice and Research in Engineering Education 2008, Loughborough, UK. 
• Adams, J., Turner, S., Kaczmarczyk, S., Picton, P. and Demian, P.,(2008). Problem Solving and Creativity for Undergraduate Engineers: findings of an action research project involving robots International Conference on Engineering Education ICEE 2008, Budapest, Hungary. 
• Turner S and Hill G(2007) Robots in Problem-Solving and Programming 8th Annual Conference of the Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences, University of Southampton, 28th - 30th August 2007, pp 82-85 ISBN 0-978-0-9552005-7-1 
• Turner S (2007) Developing problem-solving teaching material based upon Microsoft Robotics Studio. 8th Annual Conference of the Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences, University of Southampton, 28th - 30th August 2007 pp 151 ISBN 0-978-0-9552005-7-1 
• Turner S (2007) Developing problem-solving teaching materials based upon Microsoft Robotics Studio. Innovative Teaching Development Fund Dissemination Day 1st March 2007 Microsoft:London 
• Turner S and Hill G (2006) The Inclusion Of Robots Within The Teaching Of Problemsolving: Preliminary Results Proceedings of 7th Annual Conference of the ICS HE Academy Trinity College, Dublin, 29th - 31st August 2006 Proceedings pg 241-242 ISBN 0-9552005-3-9 

Social Network analysis - fun and informative

figure 1. #StarWars 30/12/15

Playing with Socioviz (socioviz.net) - a free online tool for looking at influence on twitter. The image to left show connections between tweeters using the hashtag #StarWars on the 30th December 2015 up to 6pm (GMT).

Figure 2 shows the most active tweeters for this hashtag and the most influential based on Retweets and Mentions - the four greatest influencers are picked out in the video below, showing the map evolving (speed-up 20 times).

figure 2

To experiment with this a bit more +The Royal Institution  has a long traditional of holding a series of Christmas Lectures  which are now televised, Dr Kevin Fong presented this years. I was curious about who the biggest influencers on twitter were for the hashtag #xmaslectures over the three days of the show. The three biggest influencers came out as @Kevin_Fong @Ri_Science @astro_timpeake, the presenter, the host organisation and one of the main guests (had to present virtually as he is on the ISS at the time of writing. The figure below shows the centre of the graph were the majority of the connections.

figure 3 #xmaslectures

To read more about this go to the tutorial by Alessandro Zonin https://alessandrozonin.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/socioviz-a-free-social-network-analysis-tool-for-twitter/.

Another example of used it for is plotting a particular tweetchat and seeing if there were groupings within the data there was for this particular chat.

figure 4 plotting a tweetchat

opinion: Use of free mindmapping tools

Figure. 1

As part of the two modules involving research methods I have been 'playing' with mindmaps in the class to capture the discussion. Figure 1 above was taken from a classroom discussion around some of the issues within a project idea that the group was working on. The tool used is the free on-line tool https://bubbl.us/ .

Figure 2

Figure 2 shows the tool. Is it the best mindmapping tool out there? I think it is fair to say it isn't, I have some paid ones installed that offer a greater range of features. It was selected as it is-

• Online;
• Free;
• Simple to use;

At the end of the session I wanted to the students to have the final map we had produced together so only having an image of the map was fine.




All views are the authors, and may not reflect the views of any organisation the author is connected with in any way.

Screen-o-matic a free video tool

Apart from it's name (Screencast-o-matic) I really like this piece of video screen capture software. Even though (or especially as) it is a  free bit of software it has some very nice features:

- you choose capture the screen either through a downloaded app or through a link on the site (i.e. no download needed)
- When the cursor is moving you get a large yellow circle surrounding it and it clear where it is. Which is great for demonstrating software in a video.
- When you left click the mouse you get a brief blue blob on the screen next to the cursor to show a click has occurred. Again, great when demonstrating software.
- you get up to 15 minutes per recording.
- several videos formats are possible.
- it is easy to use.
- last and certainly not least it is free.

On the free version you get Screencast-O-Matic.com across the bottom of the screen, but in my view that is easy to live with and doesn't really distract from the content.

As a complementary tool to use alongside software such as Panopto this is a very nice tool.

The software can be found at: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

I would be interested in receiving comments from others on other similar pieces of software.