Computer Code

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51 of 67 DOCUMENTS

The Sunday Times (London)

March 4, 2012 Sunday Edition 1; National Edition

The ancient language our kids lack: computer code

BYLINE: ELEANOR MILLS

SECTION: NEWS REVIEW;FEATURES; OPINION, COLUMN; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1079 words

The buff cardboard box was put on the table with a flourish. Out of it came a green circuit board covered in weird black boxes and bits of copper wire. "It's a computer," said my mum. I remember looking at her blankly as she explained that we could tell it what to do. An hour or so later, having fiddled around entering "0"s and "1"s into a keypad, following the interminable instructions, we finally saw the red display light up. "Hello," it said. The reward-to-effort ratio was singularly underwhelming. But 30 years later I still remember it and also the simple programming we did on a cream-coloured box called a BBC Micro at school. The result was a rudimentary understanding of the building blocks of a computer's brain. Although such technology now underpins all aspects of our lives, children aren't allowed to mess around with code. At some point schools became worried that kids would break computers by reprogramming them, so they stopped teaching them about code. Instead they learn how to use software, such as Word and Excel. "It's like teaching them to read but not how to write," says Ian Livingstone, author of a report on education and technology called Next Gen (and a co-founder of the company that launched the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons in Britain). Fortunately, that may all be about to change. Last week a £22, credit-card-sized computer, the Raspberry Pi, was released, aimed at schools and children. The intention is to create a new generation of computer programmers. It has taken six years to design and is the brainchild of a Cambridge charity. Eben Upton, its co-founder, got the idea because he was horrified by how little students - even those applying to study computer science at university - knew about "what a computer really was or how it worked". He teamed up with David Braben, a video-game stalwart who also wanted to find a way to get young people programming, and they decided to create a modern version of an "exciting, programmable machine like the old BBC Micro or Sinclair Spectrum in the 1980s, which created a horde of home programmers". It is paradoxical that as computers have become an omnipresent part of modern life, their inner workings have become more and more opaque. Just as cars have become so technologically complicated that there is no point in trying to fiddle under the bonnet to check what has gone wrong, so many of the latest computers, such as the iPad, don't even allow the user to open them up, let alone ever see a line of code. The result is that while children are increasingly computer-literate - I saw a two-year-old last weekend competently playing a shoot-'em-up game on a smartphone - they have less idea of how a computer works, or how to program it, than we did 30 years ago. There is also a widespread lack of awareness of what skills and subjects are required to pursue a career in Page 2 computer science, which is unfortunate given that it is a key area for the new digital economy and one in which Britain has rather a good track record. We are a hub for the development of computer games - the phenomenally successful Grand Theft Auto series started off here, to name but one. Computer gaming is predicted to be worth £55 billion a year worldwide by 2014 and is one of the largest entertainment industries. What's more, all the computer-generated special effects in the Narnia and Harry Potter movies were created here. Yet Britain is already falling behind in this area; we are being overtaken by countries such as Finland, Israel and Singapore. These are countries where computer science is part of the national curriculum. Livingstone highlighted this "worrying educational blind spot" in his report. He reckons we should put computer science centre stage in our schools - that it should be part of Michael Gove's English baccalaureate. "Kids love it," Livingstone says. "It teaches them maths, physics, logic. Britain is the most creative country in the world; we need to give our kids the coding skills to create the next Twitter or Google." Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, makes clear that Jobs's particular genius lay in being that rare creature, someone who understood technology but also art; his dual sensibility allowed him to see how computers could aid creativity. Yet all too often schools divide pupils into the scientific and the artistic rather than encouraging a fusion of the two. To be successful in the modern world requires both sets of skills. If you are creating computer graphics for a film such as The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it is all very well to understand how water moves but when it comes to creating a special effect to mimic it, you have to combine scientific knowledge with an artistic sensibility. The divisions in our education system discourage such a synthesis. That must change. Last week I attended a session hosted by Google designed to encourage more women to become programmers (only about 10% are female). "Becoming enthralled by the magic world of computers and of manipulating them needs to start young," Alma Whitten, 45, the firm's head of privacy, explained. She described how she'd first encountered a computer aged seven when a family friend took her to see a mainframe and let her play a game. "I was a bookish child who wanted to go into the theatre, but I'd always remembered the magic of that first computer encounter," she said. "I became a programmer as I thought it would be a better moneyspinner than waiting tables while I got into drama." She believes more women must follow her "if we are going to create the kind of technology that half the world wants to use". Computing doesn't have to be boy territory. Intriguingly, in Africa, Google has been handing out laptops to children. When they break, they go to the "computer hospital". In many African communities, healing is traditionally a female occupation - so, with impeccable logic, the computer healers are all female. Girls, Whitten says, need to be encouraged "to do that boy stuff - take apart alarm clocks and put them back together, and particularly to play visuospatial computer games. They need to do that stuff, not sit on Facebook." It is not just girls who need to be encouraged. Computer science needs to become as mainstream as literacy and maths. It is much too important to all of our economic futures to remain the nerdy preserve of teenage boys with specs and spots. So, kids, get coding! [email protected]

LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2012

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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GRAPHIC: Pupils at a school in Chester try out the new Raspberry Pi micro-computer held by the girl on the far right CHRISTOPHER THOMOND

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: STS

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The Times Educational Supplement

March 9, 2012

A basic approach to programming

BYLINE: William Stewart

SECTION: PEDAGOGY; Pg. 4 No. 0024

LENGTH: 2491 words

Teachers have new freedom to teach computing - and they will discover that coding is not just for ICT experts. In an era when ministers like to state exactly what method schools should use to teach reading and seek to define the "essential" subject knowledge every pupil must be taught, Michael Gove has done a very rare thing. The education secretary announced this term that he would rip up the rules for an entire subject, leaving teachers free to decide what to teach in it and how to teach it. And this was no fringe subject, but information and communications technology, a key part of the curriculum and compulsory throughout primary and secondary school. From September, Gove's plan is that ICT will not be in the national curriculum at all. But, he said, it "will remain compulsory at all key stages, and will still be taught at every stage of the curriculum". And it will be up to teachers to decide how it is taught. "Technology in schools will no longer be micromanaged by Whitehall," the secretary of state said. "All schools will be free to use the amazing resources that already exist on the web." Sudden and unexpected freedom can be bewildering and frightening, particularly if you have no idea of the rationale behind it. So before looking at some of what is available on the internet, it is worth briefly examining why the change has taken place. The background It is a move ministers have been under enormous pressure to make, from a growing lobby that has been ar- guing that the ICT curriculum has been putting England at a competitive disadvantage. Our pupils have been wasting hours learning to use office applications that as digital natives they would have picked up anyway, the argument goes. Meanwhile, the programming or coding skills that helped make Britain an early leader in computer games - now a multibillion-pound industry bigger than Hollywood - are being ne- glected. Ian Livingstone, the games publisher, co-authored a report last year that warned that the UK had gone backwards because its "schools turned away from programming in favour of ICT". "Bored by ICT, young people do not see the potential of the digital creative industries," he wrote. "It is hardly surprising that the games industry keeps complaining about the lack of industry-ready computer programmers and digital artists." However, ministers have suggested that it was pressure from Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt that had really changed their minds. Schmidt warned last August that, by failing to teach programming, the UK was throwing away its "great computer heritage". The Royal Society also told the government that the ICT cur- Page 2 A basic approach to programming The Times Educational Supplement March 9, 2012 riculum was unsatisfactory and grassroots organisation Computing at School has been making similar points. Banishing boredom Gove has got the message. He wants an end to pupils being "bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers". So what should go in its place? A Royal Society report last month argued for a "digital literacy curriculum" that should include: the safe use of computers; an understanding of the internet; the underlying principles of computing; the application of computers in society; and programming. It is this last topic that is seen as the most important by those who want the UK's computer industry to thrive. But it is also the one teachers are likely to find the toughest. The Livingstone-Hope Skills Review reported that only 22 per cent of ICT teachers consider themselves to be good at creating or modifying even basic computer programs. And they are supposed to be secondary specialists in ICT. The law expects pupils of all ages to be taught the subject. So how will primary generalists cope? Surely they won't be able to teach programming to their classes. Well, actually they probably could. Help is out there. Kodu, a new visual programming language, is a good place to start. It has been specially designed to be taught by teachers without programming experience and to be accessible to children who can use it to develop their own computer games. Kodu employs simple icons instead of complicated computer code and can be programmed with an Xbox games controller rather than a keyboard. But it teaches children exactly the same principles of logic used to create computer games blockbusters such as Halo or Tomb Raider. Just as importantly, it allows pupils to be creative and, according to its designers at Microsoft, to "express advanced game design concepts in a simple, direct and intuitive manner". Before road-testing Kodu on some Year 5 pupils, Amy Parkin, a trainee primary teacher at Plymouth Univer- sity, was worried that the program might be too difficult for children. Instead, she found they took to it imme- diately, excited by the prospect of being able to create a version of the games they played at home for fun. "The program works by creating a world, with the children being able to choose the landscape, trees, moun- tains and rivers," Amy explains on her blog (amyparkinbed.blogspot.com). "They then add a 'Kodu' - the character they play with - who they can also customise. They can then begin to program their Kodu. This works with a simple 'when' and 'do' system. You simply click on the + sign next to 'when' and select from the options - for example, 'see' 'apple', and then do - 'eat'. When in play mode, the Kodu will then see and eat the apple. "The game gives countless options and the children had fun creating strange actions for the Kodu to perform." Amy was "beyond impressed" with the program. She found it worked best when pupils were left to work out how to use it themselves, with a teacher on hand to help when needed. And contrary to her initial fears about Kodu being too advanced for young children, she reports that Year 3 pupils picked it up even quicker than their Year 5 counterparts. "The children worked on their own and created an amazing game, with hills and rivers, where the Kodu had to reach a castle to rescue his 'girlfriend' and profess his love to her via a speech bubble, on the way collect- ing stars, coins and apples, and avoiding the deep water," she says. Amy believes the program will work better with small groups of pupils rather than whole-class sessions, un- less higher age groups are involved. Kodu runs on a PC or Xbox 360 and can be downloaded for free with accompanying lesson plans and helpful videos at http://fuse.microsoft.com/page/kodu. The next level up Slightly more advanced is the Scratch tool devised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The programming language is designed to make it easy for young people to create their own animations, games, interactive stories, music and art, and for them to share their creations with others over the internet. Page 3 A basic approach to programming The Times Educational Supplement March 9, 2012

Scratch takes its name from the scratching technique used by hip hop DJs because of the way it allows users to mix together materials from a variety of sources. But the developers of the software believe it will also help pupils to learn vital mathematical and computational concepts and to think creatively and systematically. The package for the PC and Mac is available for free download at http://scratch.mit.edu. It allows young people to program by clicking together graphical blocks on screen, without the "obscure punctuation and syntax of traditional programming languages". Most important for Mitchel Resnick, head of the Scratch development team, is its potential for online sharing, feedback and collaboration - for young people to "remix" each other's Scratch projects. "Until now, only expert programmers could make interactive creations for the web," he said when the software was launched in 2007. "Scratch opens the gates for everyone." Since then, millions of projects have been shared, and often remixed, by young people on the Scratch website. They include everything from interactive birthday cards to political commentaries and virtual construction kits. The software is aimed at 8- to 16-year-olds, but its developers say that university students could use Scratch for introductory computer courses while younger pupils can work on Scratch projects if helped by an older sibling or parents. Resnick says it is these early years, or "kindergarten", when children are most creative and collaborative. "We need to treat the rest of school more like kindergarten." It is not the kind of thinking that you might expect Gove, with his emphasis on uniforms and essential subject knowledge, to be a fan of. But the education secretary has given Scratch his seal of approval, saying last month: "We could have 11- year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch. By 16, they could have an understanding of formal logic previously covered only in university courses." Resnick's Lifelong Kindergarten research group was also behind the "programmable bricks" that inspired the award-winning Lego Mindstorms robotics kits. Lego Mindstorm NXT - the accompanying basic computer programming language used to control the kits and engage pupils in engineering tasks - was held up by the Livingstone-Hope review as an example of the resources available to schools. Computer science The review also noted that although ICT literacy was important, it was computer science rather than ICT that should be made a core part of the curriculum. Gove has not followed that recommendation directly - in statu- tory terms it is ICT that all schools will have to teach. But the education secretary has thrown down the gauntlet to industry, universities and schools to transform the subject. Gove praised the OCR exam board for pioneering a new GCSE in computing and said that if further computer science GCSEs were developed, he would consider their inclusion in the English Baccalau- reate. Eben Upton is trying to tackle the same problem. But his solution has been to develop a new computer rather than create a new exam. The former admissions tutor at the computer science department at St John's Col- lege, Cambridge, has been concerned about a proliferation of ICT, as opposed to computing skills, for a long time. In the 1990s most applicants Upton saw were hobbyist programmers. But their counterparts a decade later were "often incapable of writing simple code" and typically only had experience of web design. He and a group of colleagues identified the causes as the colonisation of the ICT curriculum with lessons on Excel and Word, together with a change in the kind of computers that pupils had access to at home. Cheap computers such as the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 that earlier generations learned to program on had been replaced by games consoles and the more expensive home PC. Page 4 A basic approach to programming The Times Educational Supplement March 9, 2012

"While a lot of homes have a computer these days, kids aren't encouraged to start messing around with programming languages on these family machines," Upton told The Observer last year. "No one wants their home PC going into meltdown. A useful analogy might be that you wouldn't let your children take the family car apart, but you might be happy to let them loose on a bike." His solution is a computer equivalent of that bike: the Raspberry Pi. The credit card-sized computer can carry out many PC functions, such as spreadsheets, word processing and surfing the internet - but it costs between £ 16 and £ 24 and has been designed specifically to encourage children to learn how to program. Gove is a fan. "This is a great example of the cutting edge of education technology happening right here in the UK," the education secretary said last month. "It could bring the same excitement as the BBC Micro did in the 1980s." Those BBC Micros were the crucial ingredient behind the UK's first wave of computer game talent. Produced by British company Acorn, they had no more than 64K in memory. But their endorsement by the BBC as part of its computer literacy project meant that they were a fixture in British schools for at least a decade, allow- ing a generation to learn the principles of programming through the BBC Basic language. Thirty years on, the corporation is expected to be launching a new Micro program by the end of the year. This time round, there may be no new hardware, but there is a software system that allows pupils to learn how to code. Whatever form it takes, if a BBC Micro 2.0 really does emerge and has anything like the same impact as the first version, it will be a real sign that British computing education is getting back on its feet. In true 1980s style, we really will be going back to the future. Mentoring When pupils have the programming bug, teachers might want to introduce them to Young Rewired State (YRS). The network, run by volunteers, aims to foster and mentor British coders who are under the age of 18. An annual "hack event" is held in the first week of August when around the country businesses host the young people. Mentors and YRS alumni help them develop digital products built on at least one set of open government data. At the end of the week, they travel to London to show their products to their peers, the press, government and industry. The next event runs from 6 to 10 August. To apply to take part, go to www.youngrewiredstate.org Teaching to program In 1985, Hardip Mothada became one of the first two pupils in his west London comprehensive to pass a computer studies O level. By then he had already taught himself to program in his bedroom on a Commodore 64 and had written - and later published - three computer games. He went on to become a professional programmer in Silicon Valley, California. More than a quarter of a century later, things have come full circle. Today, Mothada is an ICT, or rather computing, teacher leading the battle to rescue pupils from tedious lessons on spreadsheets. As an assistant head at Acton High, just down the road from where he went to school, he has helped to bring in the pilot of OCR's new computing GCSE. It has proved so popular that two classes are taking it. "The kids seem to be really enjoying it," says Mothada. "They see the difference between ICT and computing because we are teaching them how to program. "It is definitely harder than ICT as a subject. But because the kids love it, they are much more resilient than if they were learning how to use a spreadsheet. Page 5 A basic approach to programming The Times Educational Supplement March 9, 2012

"They really want to find out how things work. They are picking it up and a lot of them want to go on and become games designers." Pupils at the school now start learning to program in Year 8, when all pupils use the Scratch application. Mothada's colleague Stephen Ford is also a former programmer, who wrote games for corporate websites that included Disney and Xbox. But there are other Acton High ICT teachers without that kind of industry experience. The assistant head believes that it is "definitely possible" for teachers who have not been programmers to teach computing at key stage 3, and "possible" at key stage 4. He advises ICT teachers in this position to follow the example of his colleagues and go to www.codecademy.com to learn how to code or program.

LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2012

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Magazine

Page 1 Putting an end to flawed computer studies could give everyone a piece of the Pi; Ian Livingstone and David Braben are attempting to reboot the great British computer world, Giles Whittell discovers The Times (London) March 10, 2012 Saturday 49 of 67 DOCUMENTS

The Times (London)

March 10, 2012 Saturday Edition 1; Ireland

Putting an end to flawed computer studies could give everyone a piece of the Pi; Ian Livingstone and David Braben are attempting to reboot the great British computer world, Giles Whittell discovers

BYLINE: Giles Whittell

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 30

LENGTH: 757 words

Ian Livingstone is far too polite to name names, but he still becomes vexed thinking about the people who forced ICT on to the National Curriculum during Tony Blair's first government. "Whoever decided that ICT [Information and Communications Technology] was all about using applications rather than making them should be accountable for putting kids off technology for life," he says. Quietly and cautiously, Mr Livingstone and a small group of fellow entrepreneurs have been celebrating two seminal victories this week that they hope will transform the teaching of computer science in British schools. One is the Government's promise (announced in January but still to be fulfilled) to tear up the ICT curriculum and write a new one that might inspire a new generation of software wizards. The other is the frenzied welcome given to a tiny new computer with a tinier price known as the Raspberry Pi. The Education Secretary when ICT was introduced was David Blunkett. On his watch, in Mr Livingstone's view, civil servants pushed through a wellintentioned but entirely botched effort to bring computer literacy to all schoolchildren, not just a minority of geeks. ICT, he says, mistook basic competence with a few dull programmes for the real computer science powering the digital revolution. It bored pupils rigid, turned girls in particular off computers, sent applications for university computer courses plummeting and stripped Britain of its hard-won role as the pulsating heart of a global computer games industry. As a co-creator of the multibilliondollar Tomb Raider phenomenon, Mr Livingstone is in a position to pontificate.David Braben, another British video game legend, takes a similar view. He says that what has passed for computer training in British schools for the past decade has been "terribly well-meaning but very, very damaging". Both men have spent most of this week in San Francisco, at the annual Games Developers Conference where the new titans of entertainment gather to play each other's games and buy each other's companies. But they have kept at least half an eye on the new schools computing revolution they want to foment in Britain. The hardware arrived amid hype that seemed to be matched by public approval. Page 2 Putting an end to flawed computer studies could give everyone a piece of the Pi; Ian Livingstone and David Braben are attempting to reboot the great British computer world, Giles Whittell discovers The Times (London) March 10, 2012 Saturday Parents of children who keep asking for laptops of their own may be aware that the first 10,000 Raspberry Pis, priced at £22 each, sold out within minutes of going on sale last week. At one point orders were said to be coming in at 700 a second, yet this is not a bandwagon that anyone should worry about missing. The people behind the credit card-sized device are now making so many of them, so cheaply, that they hope to be able to give them away. Mr Braben is one of those people. Like Mr Livingstone, he considers himself lucky to have been at school in the early 1980s, when such primitive computers as the Acorn Atom and the BBC Micro gave children a chance to write software before it was all written for them. One result was that "in the UK we had a huge crop of kids who got familiar with the technology, and many of us founded successful companies". Many of the same people are still creating some of the most popular and creative digital content on the planet, he says. "They've just moved abroad." Mr Braben's motives for putting time and money into Raspberry Pi mirror Mr Livingstone's for what has become a personal mission to get the ICT curriculum replaced. Both seem to be driven by nostalgia, altruism and self interest. "In about 2004 we noticed a real drop-off in the number of applicants for programming jobs," Mr Braben says of the video game company he still runs. All the anecdotal evidence pointed to ICT as the culprit, "and I found that deeply depressing". In that year, Britain's creative software industry was the second biggest in the world. It is now the sixth. Labour proved deaf to appeals to respond by reforming the ICT curriculum, but soon after the last election Mr Livingstone was asked to write a report on what should replace it. He made 20 recommendations, chief among them to teach real computer science, starting with basic computer code. In the office of the new Education Secretary, Michael Gove, the message fell on fertile ground. Mr Gove has promised a brand new curriculum with computer science at its heart in six months flat. Google, IBM and Microsoft are helping to write it. Who knows? The next Angry Birds might actually be British. The 2012 GAME British Academy Video Games Awards take place on March 16 and will be broadcast on Challenge TV on Sunday, March 18

LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2012

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Ian Livingstone, below left, co-created Lara Croft while David Braben, right, is behind the low-cost Raspberry Pi

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JOURNAL-CODE: TIM

46 of 67 DOCUMENTS

The Sunday Times (London)

July 8, 2012 Sunday Edition 1; National Edition

Kids join the IT crowd; What are the rules when school meets the digital world? Alex Pell explains

BYLINE: Alex Pell

SECTION: BACK TO SCHOOL;FEATURES; Pg. 10,11

LENGTH: 1130 words

The age at which children are exposed to technology plummets so fast that you half expect an antenatal scan to reveal junior tweeting in the womb. We live in exciting times, with sensational technology at our fingertips and a trove of clever software (see panel) that not only enhances education but empowers children to teach themselves any skill they have the impetus to learn. The burning dilemma is deciding how much access to allow one's child to technological toys and at what point they have their own gizmos, rather than tinker with mummy or daddy's. Some five-year-olds play chess online - an age at which others prefer to make mud pies in the garden. But it is far from simple to ascertain exactly which digital skills they should have at any particular age, and what kit parents should buy for them, if any. The national curriculum for ICT was such gibberish that the government decided earlier this year to scrap it. In the absence of credible official guidance, parents may look to a reputable retailer for advice. "By the time a child is about eight, they will typically have needed to conduct research on the internet for a school project, even if this is just sourcing pictures," says Rebecca Smith, computing buyer at John Lewis. "By the end of primary school, they will probably require at least some familiarity with basic word processing to complete their assignments." Do not, however, think you have to buy pricey digital kit on the premise that it is for use in school lessons. Pupils are generally not allowed to operate their own gadgets in class - even at secondary school - and recent legal changes have given teachers authority to clamp down hard on mobile phones. Check with the school before you get your credit card out, advises Laura Higgins, manager of the professionals' online helpline for the Safer Internet Centre, an EU-funded resource that is popular among teachers. "There are no national guidelines. Many local authorities offer advice to schools but, ultimately, policy is handled on a school-by- school basis," Higgins explains. "Some have a blanket ban on children bringing in their own laptop or tablet. Others allow them into the building but much prefer the children use the kit provided in class." This is slowly changing, says Miles Berry, chairman of Naace, the professional association that represents the UK education technology community, who adds: "A few schools have adopted a bring-your-own-device policy, albeit that this is still rare and far more likely for tablets than laptops." Some schools allow pupils to use their own tech devices outside lessons, either at lunchtime or in after-school clubs; they may or may not restrict access to the school's wi-fi network. Either way, given that most phones boast fast internet connections and swish apps, children typically have far better online access than their parents imagine. Even a humble iPod Touch, ostensibly a music and gaming toy, offers much of the power of a laptop once it is online. These can be potent educational tools, provided that children are shown how to use them safely. Don't leave this until your child knows more about technology than you do, says Higgins. Read the excellent guide at bit.ly/KJva9k. There is a wealth of safety resources aimed at children of all ages, many of which are entertaining too, such as the funky Know IT All videos by Childnet International (see childnet- int.org). Adults should check out the sage advice at getsafeonline.org or consider installing security software with web-filtering tools, such as Symantec Norton 360 (£59.95 from John Lewis). This is important stuff, but don't overegg it, advises Tanya Byron, a clinical psychologist and author of the Byron Review, which forms the basis of government policy on children's use of IT. In her regular Times column, she recently warned that parents place too much emphasis on restricting children's access to the internet instead of teaching them how to use it safely. "In today's risk-averse culture, [children] do not have the space to take developmentally normal risks - no tree climbing, no conkers, no roaming... The digital world is an exciting place full of endless opportunities for children, but we adults, to our shame, do not talk to them about how to enjoy it safely." When is the right time for a child to own a device? It's impossible to generalise, as it depends on the individual child and the family's circumstances. "There comes a point, probably once a child regularly relies on a computer to do homework, where it is appropriate for them to have their own rather than battle with younger siblings," says Dr Dorothy Einon, a child psychologist and author of books on learning and parenting. With digital literacy now the cornerstone of so many aspects of modern life, should you sign your children up for extra IT lessons? Probably not, says Miles Berry of Naace. "The best way to learn technology is to play with it and experiment. The evidence says we tend to pick up these skills by trying to create things and, in particular, collaboration. If parents encouraged this, it would benefit their children more than formal tuition." Software to train the brain BBC Dance Mat Typing Learn touch-typing from a funky goat or a bull in a toga - just two of the cool animated characters in this impressive BBC tool, aimed children aged 7 or above. Free; bbc.co.uk/schools Scratch The brainchild of the American science powerhouse MIT, this program enables young children to create a simple animation or even a game. Drag and drop blocks that each perform a specific command, or snap a few together like Lego bricks and see what happens. It already has more than 2.5m users. Free; scratch.mit.edu Isle of Tune Making music on a computer can be daunting, but Isle of Tune is easily accessible. It enables children to create songs by building a road, and then activating sounds by getting cars to travel along it. The iPad version (£1.99) is even simpler. Free; isleoftune.com Oddizzi Learn about the world with Odd and Izzi, two characters who reveal fascinating facts about the planet and offer plenty of laughs along the way. The software is aimed at primary teachers but is also available at this discounted rate to parents. £30; oddizzi.com Teach Your Monster to Read A new game designed to impart the principles of phonics, the building blocks of reading, and featuring comedy monsters and the voice of Simon Farnaby, from BBC Horrible Histories. Free; teachyourmonstertoread.com Primary Blogger Enthuse children about using English properly by getting them to collaborate on a class blog. This simple service, based on Wordpress, is free for schools. Free; primaryblogger.co.uk "BY THE TIME A CHILD IS ABOUT EIGHT, THEY WILL HAVE CONDUCTED RESEARCH ON THE INTERNET FOR A SCHOOL PROJECT"

LOAD-DATE: July 8, 2012

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: On the button: the best way to learn technology is to experiment Getty Images

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The Sunday Times (London)

September 2, 2012 Sunday Edition 1; Northern Ireland

Geeks go mad for a bit of Pi; INSIDE STORY ; Raspberry Pi, the £15 computer

BYLINE: Oliver Shah

SECTION: BUSINESS;BUSINESS; FRONT PAGE; Pg. 1,9

LENGTH: 1582 words

IT was almost the perfect crime. Bored at break time, a couple of 11-year-olds from Our Lady's Catholic high school hacked into the canteen's cashless payment system and worked out how to top up their lunch cards for free. Greed was their undoing. Catering staff at the specialist maths and computing school in Preston were be- mused when the students' accounts suddenly showed £5,000 credit. For Alan O'Donohoe, head of computing, the incident was both inspiring and worrying. "You hear anecdotes about children doing things in spite of teachers," he said. "In a way it's impressive, but because it's self-taught their energy doesn't always go on the right things." O'Donohoe now draws hope from a project launched by a team of computer scientists from Cambridge. He has joined a growing army of unpaid evangelists spreading the word about the Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized computer designed to get young people interested in a more wholesome kind of programming. The Pi is modelled on the BBC Micro, the primitive device whose red and black keyboard introduced a generation of software entrepreneurs to programming back in the 1980s. The best thing about the Raspberry Pi? It costs as little as £15. O'Donohoe and others organise events called Raspberry Jams where users meet up and swap tips. Eben Upton, the Raspberry Pi's 34-year-old mastermind, is grateful for their enthusiasm. Almost 500,000 units have been sold since it Continued on page 9 ? ? ? ? Continued from page 1 was launched in February. By Christmas that could approach 1m. It sounds lucrative, but the company is structured as a charity, so he doesn't see a penny - all profits go to- wards educational activities. And Raspberry Pi has just one full-time employee - Upton's wife, Liz, who does social media and marketing. "She tells me off for saying they are selling only to geeks," he laughed. "I think they are selling 80%, 90% to geeks, but when you have 500,000 units, even if 10% are selling to kids that's still massive." Page 2 Geeks go mad for a bit of Pi; INSIDE STORY ; Raspberry Pi, the £15 computer The Sunday Times (London) September 2, 2012 Sunday

Everyone with an interest in the economy had better hope he is right. Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, used last year's MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh television festival to draw attention to the skills crisis building up in Britain's technology industry. The nation is "throwing away" its computing heritage by failing to nurture young talent, the Silicon Valley guru warned. "I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn't even taught as standard in schools," Schmidt said. "Your curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made." Statistics bear him out. The number of students taking ITrelated A-levels has fallen by 20% in six years to 16,250. The government has woken up to the danger and is overhauling the curriculum. At first sight, the Raspberry Pi looks an unlikely panacea. It is an exposed green circuit board dotted with silicon chips - processor, video unit, connections. Plug it into a television, attach a keyboard and mouse and you're away. The graphics are better than a PlayStation 2 and it can play Blu-ray quality films. The Pi runs Linux, a less userfriendly interface than Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac operating system. This is important, according to Upton. It gets programmers into the right frame of mind. "When you bought a BBC Micro and turned it on, the first thing it did was go 'beep' and give you a prompt. That's powerful. We're not suggesting computers should go back to being unfriendly, but we are saying there was a positive side-effect to the unfriendliness." So far buyers haven't been put off. Dave Akerman, a 52-year-old from Newbury, Berkshire, connected a Raspberry Pi to a webcam and a hydrogen balloon to take pictures of the earth from near space. At London Zoo, scientists plan to use Raspberry Pis to operate a network of motion-sensitive cameras for wildlife ob- servation in Antarctica, Kenya, Mongolia and Sri Lanka. Children are using it too. Ryan Walmsley, a 16-year-old from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, created a digital map called Rastrack that lets users register their location. Liam Fraser, an 18-year-old from Liverpool, made YouTube tutorials that attracted 1m views. "I saw it on the BBC website and got one to play around with," said Fraser. "Most people have the family computer that they can't mess around with. The Raspberry Pi is a totally separate thing - it doesn't matter if you break it." Plump, shaven-headed, wearing T-shirt and jeans, Upton looks the part of the computer pied piper. He grew up in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, the child of English teachers - "I'm the freak" - and started programming in his bedroom when he was 10. "I don't think I would have had any choice but to think of myself as a geeky kid," he admitted. "I had mates that did this too, though." Upton studied computer science at Cambridge and stayed on, eventually running the undergraduate course at St John's. It was there he witnessed the decline in students' computer literacy. "When I went to Cambridge in 1996, the computer science course was heavily oversubscribed - six applicants for every place," he said. "We could rely on people we let in coming with a very deep understanding of how computers work." A decade later, there were three applicants for each place, and candidates were often unable to write simple programs. "In the late 1990s the drop was masked by the dotcom boom, when people saw it as a meal ticket. Then we saw the real horror from 2001 to 2005. It all fell apart." Upton and his colleagues decided to do something. He and five others - including Pete Lomas, an engineer - formed a team that became the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Helped by a handful of Cambridgebased angel investors, they raised £126,000 to design a prototype successor to the BBC Micro. It had to meet four crite- ria: be interesting for things other than programming; be robust; be as cheap as a textbook; and come with software. In May last year, one of Upton's team, David Braben, showed an early version to the BBC technology corre- spondent Rory Cellan-Jones. The video went viral and got 800,000 views. Emails flooded in. "That gave us a kick up the arse," Upton said. "We'd accidentally promised 800,000 people we'd build them a computer. It was, 'Okay, bang, we've got to do that'." Page 3 Geeks go mad for a bit of Pi; INSIDE STORY ; Raspberry Pi, the £15 computer The Sunday Times (London) September 2, 2012 Sunday

The original idea was to call the device the BBC Nano, mimicking the 1980s project in which the corporation lent its name to Acorn Computers' Micro, but it became clear the BBC would be uncomfortable taking part in a commercial venture. Upton's foundation used its seed funding to pay for the first 10,000. Demand was wild when they went on sale in February: distributors' websites crashed and orders had to be limited to one per person. Raspberry Pis sold for thousands on eBay. The foundation realised it had nowhere near enough working capital . It decided to license the intellectual property to Premier Farnell and RS Components, which now make the computers. They are manufactured in China, although there are ambitions to move some of this to Britain. Two-thirds of sales have gone to America and Europe, and one-third are to Africa and Asia, where families want a cheap computer they can plug into an analogue television. Yet there are doubters. Sophie Wilson, who helped to design the BBC Micro, said: "This generation has grown up with iPads and Xboxes - they're in a world that's highly graphically attractive. Typing 'hello' and making it repeat 100 times was a dramatic step forward in the 1980s but that's not going to cut it now. I'd love to be proved wrong." Steve Furber, the Manchester University professor of computer engineering, produced a report for the Royal Society this year highlighting the lack of qualifications among IT teachers. He said: "The Raspberry Pi has created a buzz, and if kids get interested, then great, but it doesn't solve the teaching problem." Others criticise Upton for keeping the design secret. The software is "open source" - anyone can look at its composition - but the Pi's hardware is not. Upton said this was to allow Premier Farnell and RS Components to recoup their investment before opening the field to imitators. "There's no sneaky profit motive," he insisted. "Some people worry we're going to press a button some day and transform into an evil organisation ... that there's some weakness in the charitable set-up. We have to keep earning people's trust." Raspberry Pi was set up as a charity because the number of chips it wanted was small. "If you're a charity you can say, 'Look, do us a deal'," he said. That was crucial. As a capitalist enterprise, Raspberry Pi would have had to start small or take private equity. "Both business models land you with a retail price of £60 to £120, either because your component prices are sky high or because you are making a fat profit to pay back your investors. To the extent this is an innovation, it's an innovation in terms of business model." Does Upton regret not cashing in? "You see the money coming in and you think, 'Man, it would be great if I had shares in this.' But it wouldn't have worked. I'd love to be rich - I'd have an island - but I'm not sure I want it enough to bend a business model to get there." Chips with everything GPIO (General-purpose input/output). These are the pins you'll need to connect to use the Pi to turn lights on and off, give instructions to robots, detect input from sensors and switches, water the garden, control your home's thermostat and do other physical computing. W W Continued from page [...]

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The Times (London)

November 17, 2012 Saturday Edition 1; Ireland

Play the game, but write the software too; Children aged 7 should know how to program, Gove told

BYLINE: Greg Hurst

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Children will learn to write computer programs from the age of seven in the first step of a revolution in the way that schools teach technology. Learning to code will be taught in primary school alongside science and history to equip young people to understand and navigate the digital world. Experts from technology and gaming companies who have been asked by the Government to draw up a plan for computer science teaching say that the key is to begin coding at a young age. Their plan, to be submitted this month, will form the basis of a national curriculum for computer science from September 2014. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, is scrapping the current information and communication technology (ICT) programmes, declaring them boring and out of date. Children will learn what an algorithm is, write simple programs and learn computational thinking by 7 and should be able to design and build a mobile phone app by 11. Those who go on to GCSE level should be able to write a program sophisticated enough to solve a Su Doku puzzle. A-level students would be expected to write elementary program languages. The plan is likely to be welcomed by Mr Gove, who asked software industry leaders to act as advisers to the Department for Education in developing the new curriculum. He has specified that teachers training to become primary ICT specialists must be able to code in two programming languages and explain concepts such as selection, repetition, variables and relational operators. The level of demand may alarm teachers, particularly in schools where subject specialists are rare and class teachers cover most or all subjects. The authors of the plan say that recruiting and training teachers to instruct children in coding, abstraction, decomposition and other computational thinking is its biggest challenge and may take 15 years to complete. In many schools the subject focuses largely on developing skills to use software packages such as Word, PowERPOINT and Excel and too often neglects instruction in coding. The industry's proposed curriculum, on which it is conducting a rapid online consulation, was developed by experts from companies such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook and BT via the BCS Academy of Computing. Bill Mitchell, the body's director, said: "Primary school children enjoy learning how to write computer programs and they are good at it. It will have a really profound influence on their education - just think of what you could then do at secondary school and then at sixth form and university." Young children could create games with programs such as Scratch or Kodu and should grasp the basic principles over a term, he said. "Young children have remarkably analytical minds when they are focused and where they are given the motivation to do that." Simon Peyton-Jones, of Microsoft Research, said that although coding was important grasping the concepts behind it was even more so. "There is a clear distinction between programming and the discipline underpinning it," he said. "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a significant change to what our kids learn. It is very, very fluid, very exciting." Simon Milner, Facebook's public policy director for the UK and Ireland, said that familiarity with coding was hugely valued by employers. "We have a dearth of high-quality graduates and young people who are fit and ready to come and join web developers, games developers, marketing companies." Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop and president of the games company Eidos, wants computing to be seen as a fourth science. "Regrettably over the last 25 years we have just taught our children how to use technology, thereby putting them off for life, almost, about how to create technology on a device they play games and communicate and run their lives on." But one academic said that the case for teaching code was more profound. Miles Berry, senior lecturer in ICT at Roehampton University, said: "It goes to the heart of what we mean by a liberal education. If you don't at least some grasp of what goes into making the software in your computer it will mean there is a gap in your education." Meet the whizz kids Amy Mather, 13, Manchester A member of the "Young Rewired State" network of software developers and designers aged 18 and under, Amy, below left, exhibited her Arduinocontrolled volcano at the Manchester Mini Maker Fair this year. She also teaches older pupils how to code in her lunchbreak, and has taught workshops as part of the Manchester Girl Geeks network. She is working on a web app that will raise funds for a local charity called Wood Street Mission - http://woodstapp.z1.tl Jack Needham, 16, Cheshire Won "best in show" at the Young Rewired State Hack event this year for his Manchester Image Archives site. You can search for a place in Manchester and find an archive image alongside a Google Streetview of the same place. Jack, below right, teaches children Python coding language in their lunchbreaks -www.jackneedham.co.uk/ archive/ What every child should know Age 5-7 Use knowledge of algorithms to write simple programs; store and retrieve data; know ways in which information is represented digitally Age 7-11 Write programs to accomplish goals; detect and fix errors in algorithms and programs; use variables and tables to store, retrieve and manipulate data; analyse and evaluate digital content Age 11-14 Represent aspects of a problem as abstractions that can be described within a program; generate, develop and implement creative programmatic solutions to a range of computational problems; explain how and why an algorithm works; know the hardware components of a computer system Age 14-16 Develop understanding of digital technologies, including managing online identity and participating in communities; develop and apply computational thinking skills Source: BCS Academy of Computing 'Young children have remarkably analytical minds when they are focused and where they are given the motivation to do that'

LOAD-DATE: November 17, 2012

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Children at St Teresa's primary school in Morden, Surrey, are already writing code. One academic says that a grasp of what goes into making software is essential TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER CHRIS HARRIS

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: TIM

Copyright 2012 Times Newspapers Limited All Rights Reserved Page 1 Program or be Programmed; The best time to start learning the language of computer code is now The Times (London) November 17, 2012 Saturday 41 of 67 DOCUMENTS

The Times (London)

November 17, 2012 Saturday Edition 1; Ireland

Program or be Programmed; The best time to start learning the language of computer code is now

SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 543 words dvoid setup() void draw() { background (255) ;stroke(0,0,0);line(0,0,60,hour(); line(0,0,120,minute()0;stroke(255,0,0); line(0,0,180,second()0; } The world divides into a majority for whom the preceding four lines are meaningless and a minority for whom it is clear at once that, given the right breaks between them, these lines will create on your computer screen a simple clock. For the majority, the world of software is a built world that, like a city, helps us to organise and to consume. But it has been built by others. For the minority, software is merely a curtain that can be pulled aside to reveal a wild world of confusion, trial and error, but also of virtually unlimited creative and commercial potential. It is time for Britain's schoolchildren to be granted access to this world. For a brief period in the 1980s, British schools and universities punched far above their weight in the production of graduates who spoke the language of computers. This was partly a legacy of Britain's pioneering role in the fundamentals of computer science and partly thanks to the BBC Micro, which appeared in most schools in the country but required an understanding of code for even its most basic functions. The Micro generation went on to dominate the creative side of the computer gaming industry, but mainly in other countries. Since then Britain's top three universities for computer science - Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College, London - have kept their rankings in a global top 20 predictably dominated by the United States. But for a wasted generation, computer science in schools has languished at the expense of something else entirely. As Michael Gove lamented in a speech in January, the national curriculum's vision of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) had atrophied to little more than a primer in the use of Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. What pupils got, if they could stay awake, were simple skills that conferred little competitive advantage and in most cases could anyway be self-taught. What they needed was a rigorous but rewarding grounding in code as a foreign language. At the Education Secretary's invitation, industry has produced a blueprint for a new computer science curriculum. It would start early. By the end of primary school, pupils would be able to build an app for a mobile phone. By 16 they would be able to write a program to solve a Sudoku puzzle. By 18, if they took computer science at A level, they would be able to write the code to guide a van along the shortest route between two points on a digitised map. Under this scheme, coding would start at 7. Its advocates say this would produce, eventually, the number of computer-literate graduates that British employers need; equip all pupils with the ability to compartmentalise and sequence their thinking as coding requires; and reflect the new reality that no rounded education is complete without an introduction to programming. Page 2 Program or be Programmed; The best time to start learning the language of computer code is now The Times (London) November 17, 2012 Saturday It is a compelling case. Some schools may respond that they cannot possibly have enough qualified teachers ready for such a curriculum by 2014, when the successor to ICT is due. That is no reason to push back the deadline. It is a reason to speed up the necessary training. That clock on your computer screen is ticking.

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The Times Educational Supplement

September 27, 2013

Computing - Coding lessons may already be obsolete

BYLINE: Richard Vaughan

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Tech industry short of business savvy, not specialised skills. The race is on around the world to improve computer literacy and to push students to learn coding. But a major report on the IT industry has concluded that coding alone will not fill the skills gap that is leaving thousands of jobs empty. The study - which surveyed major tech companies operating in the UK, including Fujitsu, IBM and Oracle - found that significant numbers of jobs will require general business skills, not technical expertise. At the insistence of education secretary Michael Gove, computing will be compulsory from September 2015 for all students in England aged 5 to 14 in an attempt to ensure that future generations have the skills appropriate to a 21st-century workplace. This follows similar moves by governments elsewhere in the world, keen for their young people to be taught computer programming languages to boost their chances of gaining employment. Earlier this year, US president Barack Obama said it "made sense" that students should be required to learn programming languages in school just as they have to study modern foreign languages. Technology companies, including Google, have lamented the lack of students opting for computer science at school and university in the UK, US and Australia. This latest report, funded by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and published earlier this month, predicts that 300,000 workers will be needed to fill the skills shortage in the UK's tech sector by 2023. But Liz Hollingworth, research and policy manager at e-skills, the skills council for the IT industry, said that computing was not the only answer to the future job needs of the IT sector. "While the research does show that there is a real need for those fundamental and deep technical skills, it is also showing that the IT industry needs those skilled workers who do not have the technical training," Ms Hollingworth said. "The IT industry has to ensure it is not putting people off by just appealing to those with technical skills. It needs more volume (of workers) across a wider spectrum of skills." Her comments come just weeks after figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency showed that computing graduates were more likely to be unemployed six months after graduating than those with a degree in other subjects. Further studies have shown that even three and a half years after leaving university, computing graduates were more likely to be unemployed. Bob Harrison, education adviser for computer company Toshiba and chair of the Department for Education's expert group on computing, said that employers did not need coders. Page 2 Computing - Coding lessons may already be obsolete The Times Educational Supplement September 27, 2013

While stressing that he was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of Toshiba, Mr Harrison said that employers in the IT industry wanted more than just computer scientists. "Problem-solving is a real skill, but if you asked employers what skills and experience they want, coding is very, very low down on the list," he said. Is coding the new Latin? Don't miss next week's cover feature for TES' in- depth investigation.

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Page 1 This mum says: Here's looking at you, code; As more IT jobs go unfilled, the government has put coding on the curriculum. Parents should get techy too: after only a day's tuition I built my own app The Sunday Times (London) February 9, 2014 Sunday 16 of 28 DOCUMENTS

The Sunday Times (London)

February 9, 2014 Sunday Edition 1; Ireland

This mum says: Here's looking at you, code; As more IT jobs go unfilled, the government has put coding on the curriculum. Parents should get techy too: after only a day's tuition I built my own app

BYLINE: ELEANOR MILLS

SECTION: NEWS REVIEW;FEATURES; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1109 words

Be honest: do you have any idea how your computer works? Are you fluent in HTML and JavaScript or do the mere words make you feel puzzled and uncomfortable? I would guess probably the latter. Perhaps, like me, as a child you were taught to program a BBC Microcomputer. Remember? Strings of white text commands on a grey screen and then it would flash up something underwhelming such as: "Hello Eleanor". Since those days computers have moved on about a gazillion generations and the majority of us could no more fiddle with computer code to make it do something new than we could re-engineer the electrics in our cars. We know how to use a computer - create a document or spreadsheet, get our email, play a game, listen to a tune on our iPod - but the rest is the realm of science fiction, magic, a mystery. The mind boggles just thinking about it. I suppose the crucial question is: does that matter? If we know how to drive a car, does it matter if we don't understand how it works? Similarly with computers: if we can use them productively, does it matter if we don't know what makes them tick? Well, a government campaign called Year of Code was launched last week to encourage us to learn. From September British schools will have to teach pupils aged 5-16 how to create and manipulate computer code. George Osborne, the chancellor, has announced £500,000 to train teachers; scholarships of £25,000 funded by Microsoft, Google IBM and Facebook are being offered to computer science teachers. This will make the UK the first G20 economy to implement coding teaching nationally; the idea being to fill the yawning skills gap and turbocharge our booming tech industry. It will be a big change: at present 83% of girls and 67% of boys don't learn any coding. So in the spirit of embracing the future I spent last Wednesday tapping letters and numbers into a laptop at Decoded, a swanky code education centre in east London. To my immense surprise, I built my own app in just one day. Now my creation wasn't exactly ready for the App Store. But it did work. And although much of the process made my brain ache in the way it used to when I had to solve quadratic equations at school - code is all about the detail, one missed comma and the dreaded error message appears - I felt I had cracked it. The Page 2 This mum says: Here's looking at you, code; As more IT jobs go unfilled, the government has put coding on the curriculum. Parents should get techy too: after only a day's tuition I built my own app The Sunday Times (London) February 9, 2014 Sunday most beguiling discovery was that it's not complex calculus. Most of what you need to make a computer do something has already been created by someone else. So if, say, a geolocator is required for an app (mine needed someone to be in a certain location for them to sign in) I didn't have to make it from scratch, I just typed "geolocator" into Google and a load popped up. It's easy to discover which bits of code work best because they are all rated by other coders (my geolocator had been given the thumbs up by 249 boffins). The geek kings who make this stuff are celebrities in this parallel universe. On the website stackoverflow, for instance, you get 10 points if your invention is used by someone else. One super-geek had 13,900 points. Perhaps most rivetingly, all these bits of functionality - those boxes for choosing dates that come up when you are booking train tickets, or the little icon that goes round while your computer is thinking - are all usable by anyone and are entirely free. Coders call using other people's inventions like this "standing on the shoulders of giants" and I understand why. You don't have to be able to program this stuff yourself, you just have to find it and copy it. Then you whack a few symbols such as < these> around a word such as "link" and it works. Magic. Of course, the really clever people then customise bits and these in turn end up back in the libraries. But once you know enough to integrate the clever stuff (which is not much) the app planet really is your oyster. It is amazing that such an open world is such a closed book to most of the population. It's like learning the basic grammar and structure of a new language. The prettification, for instance, uses a program called CSS, which - a bit like desktop publishing - allows the designer to make the font different, change the colour and size it for the varying screens of a mobile, laptop and so on. Linking to a database and getting the app to calculate a position based on longitude and latitude, however, needed a different language: JavaScript. These elements all link into a central code document written in HTML (hypertext markup language) the language that allows computers to talk to one another over the web. HTML was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee - a Brit. It is partly because of Berners-Lee that our government has decided there is an onus on all of us not to let other nations overtake us. The British have a huge advantage when it comes to coding: English. Our language is the lingua franca of code. We are an island famed for our creativity - our fashion, computer games, music and graphics are global leaders - and once the basic grammar of code is mastered, it is a truly creative medium. Rather than hiding away coding in computer rooms decked with Star Wars posters, we need to sell it to kids - especially girls - as another kind of craft or art. The beauty of it is tinkering around, drafting bits in, seeing what you can do ... Now I'm not sure that I could replicate my app on my own - but after just a few hours, I'd know where to start. I learnt with a group of 15 other women - including the supermodel Lily Cole and the Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts - and despite being novices we all managed to make an app in a day. What was striking was how female our ideas were: we came up with a program to locate errant children, a means of exchanging tickets bought online at a safe location, and an app that checked a potential date had turned up at a restaurant. These all dealt with female anxieties around personal safety. But if the majority of coders are male, ideas that are useful or intuitive to women will not be created. So, if we want the cyberworld of the future not to exclude half the population, we need to get girls coding. At present, they aren't. In 2012 only 297 girls took computing at A-level compared with 3,512 boys. When it comes to jobs, only 5.3% of working women are employed in science, engineering and technology, compared with 31.3% of men. This matters because by 2015, 90% of all jobs will need computer skills and by next year there will be up to 700,000 ICT jobs unfilled because of a lack of skilled personnel. So, if you want a good job, or you want one for your child, teach them to code. We all need to get cracking. Do you agree? Email me at [email protected] or tweet @eleanormills Page 3 This mum says: Here's looking at you, code; As more IT jobs go unfilled, the government has put coding on the curriculum. Parents should get techy too: after only a day's tuition I built my own app The Sunday Times (London) February 9, 2014 Sunday

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GRAPHIC: Cole put aside her glad rags to mug up on software

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The Sunday Times (London)

February 16, 2014 Sunday Edition 1; National Edition

Think smart and stop the robots gobbling you up; We cannot prevent computers from taking over many manual and office jobs, but that need not spell ruin for the next generation, writes Rohan Silva

BYLINE: Rohan Silva

SECTION: NEWS REVIEW;FEATURES; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1295 words

In the critically acclaimed new romantic comedy Her, Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, who stops dating women when he falls madly in love with the artificially intelligent operating system on his computer. The film is set 15 years in the future, but the question it raises - whether human activity might one day be replaced by advanced machines - is already a pressing concern for politicians around the world. Why are our leaders so worried? According to top economists and technologists, the global economy is haunted by the spectre of computers and robots stealing our jobs. This was the hot topic of conversation at Davos a few weeks ago, where the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, painted a stark picture of the threat to jobs posed by intelligent machines. As Schmidt memorably put it: "It's a race between computers and people - and people need to win." For the past 50 years computing power has doubled every two years, which explains why the smartphone in your pocket is more powerful than any computer on earth a generation ago. This trend, which is dubbed Moore's law, is transformative because it means computing power is increasing exponentially. As a result, machines are becoming more efficient with every passing year and increasingly capable of doing jobs that until recently could have been carried out by humans alone. We have long been used to the idea that machines and automation have displaced blue-collar professions in developed economies. Indeed, where manufacturing still takes place in the West, it is typically far less labour-intensive than ever before, because advanced robots perform so many of the functions that were previously the preserve of human workers. As the old joke goes, the factory of the future will need only a man and a dog to keep it running: a dog to make sure that no one tampers with the machines, and a man to look after the dog. That future, it appears, is almost upon us. Just look at the Nissan factory in Sunderland. It's one of the most productive in Europe, churning out more than 500,000 cars a year. Yet because it makes use of modern robotics, it employs only about 6,000 workers - far fewer than would have been needed just a few decades ago. Page 2 Think smart and stop the robots gobbling you up; We cannot prevent computers from taking over many manual and office jobs, but that need not spell ruin for the next generation, writes Rohan Silva The Sunday Times (London) February 16, 2014 Sunday This is increasingly a global trend. In China the electronics manufacturing company Foxconn recently announced plans to buy an "army" of more than 1m robots to replace much of its human workforce. As computers grow ever more capable, it's not just manufacturing jobs that are at risk; it's white-collar jobs too. That's the view of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who argue in their new book The Second Machine Age that technology is today replacing not just human brawn, but human brains too. Their work shows how artificial intelligence and robotics are being deployed in a range of fields that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago. Take legal services, for example, in which text-analysing and data-mining software is doing the work of paralegals; or the accounting profession, in which algorithms are taking over from human auditors. This is only the beginning. Autonomous vehicles are being tested on roads across America and are poised to replace human drivers outright in the years ahead. Powerful computers are now being used to diagnose medical conditions, carry out stock-market trading and even write news and sport articles. Wherever you look, traditional jobs are seemingly being replaced by technology, with profound implications for our economy and society. According to the American economist Tyler Cowen, the stagnation of middleclass incomes that we have seen in recent decades is the result of technology replacing jobs. He believes that advanced computers are fundamentally changing the demand for different types of job - and the statistics seem to bear him out. In Britain in recent years there has been no increase in the number of middle-income jobs that account for three quarters of our workforce. Meanwhile, low-paid jobs that have not been displaced by technology, such as residential care work, have increased markedly - while salaries at the top continue to pull away as companies can employ fewer people thanks to new technologies. For Cowen this is the cause of the socalled hourglass economy, with more high-paying jobs at the top and more lowpaying jobs at the bottom. Worryingly, he believes that income inequality is likely to widen as technology continues to reshape the labour market, with the middle class hit particularly hard. "The average is over," he says in his latest book. So far, so depressing. But is the future really so bleak? Clearly, if you do a job that is likely to be performed by computers in the years ahead - such as midlevel legal or accountancy work - you might be forgiven for being concerned about what the future has in store. Then again, while computers might excel at big data analytics and brute processing power, they are persis- tently poor at creative tasks, which is why experts believe that jobs in fields such as advertising and design are likely not only to be safe from the threat of automation, but actually to increase in value in the years ahead. Given that the creative industries are one of Britain's strengths, we ought to be well placed to capital- ise on this shift. More broadly, there is a huge opportunity for Britain to respond to the impact of new technologies. After all, it's not as if new jobs are not being created any more - it's just that they are being created in areas, such as machine learning and advanced robotics, that simply did not exist before. It's fascinating to note, for example, that while military drones have done away with the need for a human pilot in the cockpit, they require far more skilled operators - about 300 - to keep them in the air than a traditional aircraft. To take advantage of the machine age, we need to ensure that our workforce has the skills needed for the jobs of tomorrow - in particular, computer programming skills. As the chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov mused after his historic defeat to a computer program: "We can't change our hardware, but we can definitely upgrade our software." Here in Britain the education secretary, Michael Gove, has made a good start by announcing that, from this September, Britain will be the first country in the G20 to have computer coding as a compulsory part of the national curriculum. However, much more work is needed to reform our education system and drag it into the 21st century - particularly our outmoded approach to adult training and apprenticeships, which is still largely based on the needs of the past century. We need to put computer science at the heart of our national skills Page 3 Think smart and stop the robots gobbling you up; We cannot prevent computers from taking over many manual and office jobs, but that need not spell ruin for the next generation, writes Rohan Silva The Sunday Times (London) February 16, 2014 Sunday agenda and ensure that all adults in Britain understand coding, the lingua franca of the modern technology economy. If we succeed, we can move from a world in which we are competing against computers and robots to one in which we are harnessing technology to increase our earning power and human potential. The prize at stake is considerable: ICT jobs pay an average of £18 an hour in Britain, and there is already a chronic shortage of candidates to fill those roles. If we had more people with coding skills, we could create more highly paid jobs in every corner of the country - a prize surely worth seizing. The language of computers is binary, and so is the choice ahead for us humans. Either we can rise to the challenge of the robot age, and radically overhaul our skills system, or we can end up competing against machines and software. We have no time to lose - the race against the machines has well and truly begun. Rohan Silva is chairman of the Year of Code, the new national campaign to promote computer science and technology skills

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The Times (London)

March 14, 2014 Friday Edition 1; National Edition

Why children have to be coaxed into STEM subjects; Industry leaders believe the new curriculum will help engineering and science students, writes James Dean

BYLINE: James Dean

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 47

LENGTH: 686 words

The teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths - the STEM subjects -will improve with the introduction of the new national curriculum in September, some of the leading figures in British industry agreed in a roundtable discussion hosted by BAE Systems and The Times. However, they believe that getting children from schools into science and engineering jobs still poses a challenge. Speaking about the new curriculum, Matthew Hancock, the Skills and Enterprise Minister, says that testing children analytically and raising expectations of them builds the "grit and character" they need to succeed with their studies. Led by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, the Government is introducing a "tougher and more stretching" curriculum for maths and English, Mr Hancock says, on the basis that children can be taught these subjects whatever their innate ability is believed to be. The programme will "bridge the gap" between the academic and vocational aspects of education. "Jobs are about being able to do and being able to think," he says. Nigel Whitehead, group managing director for programmes and support at BAE Systems, says that the new, more rigorous curriculum is a "good thing for my business". Getting to children "really early on" is important. "At a point before science and maths gets really difficult, we need to influence the early thinking of youngsters, and indeed their parents, to show that this is worth doing; because there is a potentially wholesome, fulfilling and lucrative career ahead." However, Whitehead admits there is a lot more that businesses can do together to make their message to pupils more coherent. Rhys Morgan is the director of engineering and education at the Royal Academy of Engineering. He says that from very early on, children form their views about whether they want to be engineers or scientists, with teachers and parents their main influence. "If a child comes away with the attitude that they want to be an engineer, it's very fragile. Anyone can displace that." Morgan says that some teachers discourage students from careers in engineering because they were not deemed to be "professional" jobs. He believes that regular coaxing from parents and teachers would help get more students into industry: having family members in the business is one of the biggest drivers putting people into careers as engineers. At the same time, Morgan says that the science and engineering industries have to be careful not to narrow the outlook of young people. "We have a very broad range of opportunities," he says. "All sectors of the economy are driven by engineering." Jonathan Legh-Smith, head of partnerships and strategic research at BT, adds: "Computing does not necessarily mean coding." Jenny Laurie, an assistant headteacher at St Marylebone School, London, says that just by having a lead teacher for a STEM subject, students recognise that these subjects are a priority, and they become more interested. Jenny Body, president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, says that problems remain with schools in deprived areas. "Some are struggling just to keep the kids in the building," she says. "We might be missing a whole population of kids. If we only concentrate on the more successful [schools], then in the less successful ones we will lose a whole generation." What they said ' We need to influence the early thinking in the minds of youngsters. Nigel Whitehead, BAE Systems 'Girls say that it's the input from industry early on that makes the big difference. Simon Decker, headteacher, Rainham Mark Grammar School Jobs are about being able to do and being able to think. Matthew Hancock, the skills minister Some schools are struggling just to keep the kids in the building. Jenny Body, Royal Aeronautical Society All sectors of the economy are driven by engineering. Rhys Morgan, Royal Academy of Engineering Computing does not necessarily mean coding. Jonathan Legh-Smith, head of partnerships & strategic research, BT 'Girls are most influenced in their career choices after their sixteenth birthday.' Jenny Laurie, assistant headteacher at St Marylebone School

LOAD-DATE: March 14, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Matthew Hancock wants to see children build the 'grit and character' to succeed TIMESPHOTOGRAPHER CHRIS HARRIS

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The Times (London)

May 23, 2014 Friday Edition 2; National Edition

Schools accused of stifling skills of would-be engineers

BYLINE: Greg Hurst

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 34

LENGTH: 340 words

Britain's shortage of skilled engineers has been blamed on schools snuffing out a natural instinct among children to design, make and fix things. Lessons should instead encourage "messy" learning in which children confront practical problems, design prototypes and tinker with them to improve their designs, a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering said. The engineers urged teachers, especially in primary schools, to allow children to work on projects over several weeks spanning several subjects, such as maths, science, computing and technology, so they could learn to "think like an engineer". Engineers account for only 8 per cent of the British workforce but employers say they will need more than 1 million new professionals qualified in maths, physics and design to work in engineering occupations by 2020. The report, published today, says the answer should be a more fundamental re-think of the approach to practical and creative learning. The call was backed last night by Sir James Dyson, one of Britain's most prominent inventors and designers. He said: "Young people can learn about algebra, angles and forces in the classroom but it's not until they are exposed to industry-relevant equipment that they grasp what engineering is really about." The report found that children, by nature, share many key attributes with engineers, such as creative problemsolving, but they are discouraged by formal classroom teaching. "Young children are little engineers. Yet the primary school system almost extinguishes any opportunities for them to flourish as engineers," it said. Bill Lucas, professor of learning at the University of Winchester, called on teachers to use the new national curriculum, to be introduced from September, to implement engineering concepts. Asked if such learning could lack rigour, he replied: "Problem-based learning comes from the training of doctors in North America. "When it is done well - rigorously planned, monitored, supported, structured - it is one of the most effective ways of learning complex concepts."

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The Sunday Times (London)

August 31, 2014 Sunday Edition 1; National Edition

Back to school for harder lessons; A new national curriculum is unleashed on pupils this week, but are parents and schools ready, asks Julie Henry

BYLINE: Julie Henry

SECTION: NEWS REVIEW;NEWS; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 881 words

It is the biggest shake-up of school lessons since the introduction of the literacy and numeracy hours more than a decade ago. From next week, most primaries and secondaries will be teaching a new national curriculum - one that is harder than before. In maths, for instance, long division, which many primary schools did not teach at all, has to be covered by the age of 11. In English, six-year-olds will be expected to learn and recite poetry. At secondary level, two Shakespeare plays, not one, will be covered, and physics, chemistry and biology must be taught as discrete subjects rather than under a single umbrella of "science". However, many families are still in the dark about the changes and have had little guidance from schools, according to the tuition provider Explore Learning. Its survey of more than 1,000 parents found that almost twothirds were totally unaware, suggesting they could struggle to help their children study. "The new curriculum is a response to fears that England is slipping behind its international competitors and there are some drastic changes," says Carey Ann Dodah, head of curriculum at Explore Learning, which provides tuition in maths and English and has 94 centres across Britain. "Many concepts in the key subjects will be introduced earlier, which will feel like quite a jump when children return to class in September." From this week, children in year 1 (ages five to six) will be introduced to commas and apostrophes and be expected to learn to spell the names of the days of the week. Teachers instructing sevenyear-olds will have "higher expectations of spelling", while older children will be taught the rules of grammar - which could present a problem for parents whose own education did not include that. In maths, five-year-olds will be expected to learn to count up to 100 (compared with 20 under the current curriculum) and learn number bonds to 20 (currently up to 10). By the age of nine, pupils will be expected to know their tables up to 12 x 12 (currently, it is 10 x 10 by the end of primary school). There is a renewed emphasis on mental arithmetic and problem solving - calculators will be allowed only near the end of primary schooling - and more teaching will be devoted to money and time. On top of beefed-up lessons in the 3Rs, foreign language teaching in primary schools will be compulsory from the age of seven. New lessons in computing - which, according to Ocado Technology, 65% of parents do not know about - will teach primary pupils how to write code. By the time they are 11, they should be able to "design, use and evaluate computational abstractions". Changes are also being made to the secondary curriculum. In key stage 3 - covered by pupils aged 11-14 - English and maths content is more difficult, history will have a much greater emphasis on chronology, and new computer science GCSEs will be taught. One of the biggest overhauls in the government's reforms is the scrapping of national curriculum levels. In the past parents were well versed in whether their child had reached a "level 4", the standard expected of 11- year-olds. From 2016, the average score attained in national tests will be set at 100 and each child will be given a score at, below or above that, to show their ability in relation to the average. From this September, however, schools have to come up with a way of reporting yearly attainment and progress to parents. Academies do not have to follow the national curriculum but many do, particularly in English and maths. Hillyfield Academy, a primary school in northeast London, has introduced a "skills passport" that is stamped when children have mastered each part of the curriculum. Westminster Academy, a secondary school, uses a percentage score system. According to Philip Collie, managing director of the SchoolZone website, which outlines the national curriculum changes, parents should ask schools to explain how they measure progress. "Many schools will continue to use 'levels' because they have not come up with an alternative, but Ofsted is going to want to see them move on," he says. Claire Delaney, from Bury, Greater Manchester, whose son Jake, 8, is in primary school but also receives private tuition, is worried that there is no extra funding for the changes. "There are no more resources in schools to implement the changes, so the demand on teachers is going to be even greater," she says. "They already have children in the class who are not working at the required level, and the question is: what do teachers do with them when the content gets harder and there is no additional support?" More than 60% of 600-plus teachers polled by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers union said that their school was not "fully prepared to teach the new curriculum". Some academics say "cramming" children with complex concepts "too soon" risks baffling them and is out of line with other high-performing countries. English children will start learning about decimals in year 3, two years earlier than in Finland, for instance. But the government is adamant that raising expectations will reap rewards. "We believe that children can achieve more," said the Department for Education. "We will not stand by and allow pupils to lose ground with their peers in countries across the world."

LOAD-DATE: September 3, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Primaries will teach computer coding, which leaves most parents baffled STEVE COLE

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JOURNAL-CODE: STS

Page 1 Pupils know more than their teachers about IT The Times (London) January 13, 2015 Tuesday

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The Times (London)

January 13, 2015 Tuesday Edition 1; National Edition

Pupils know more than their teachers about IT

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 97 words

Pupils know more than their teachers about IT Two thirds of teachers admit that their pupils have a better understanding of computing than they do, according to a new poll. The survey by OnePoll revealed that almost a quarter of teachers admit they had no experience of computing, which was added to the national curriculum from primary schools upwards last autumn. Two fifths of the 2,000pupils asked in the same survey said that they regularly had to help their teachers to use technology; 81 per cent of teachers and 47 per cent of pupils said that teachers needed more IT training.

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The Times Educational Supplement

June 12, 2015

Make a virtue out of online necessity

BYLINE: Tom Harrison

SECTION: NEWS No. 5150

LENGTH: 1072 words

HIGHLIGHT: The virtual world is difficult to police and even harder to predict, so focus on Aristotelian ethics to develop good digital citizens

It may sound far-fetched, but I believe the ancient Greek philosophy of Aristotle can help in tackling some of the moral issues encountered by young people on the internet today. Indeed, a reconsideration of virtue ethics and a focus on character could help to counter some of the problems that teachers face daily, such as cyberbullying and online plagiarism. In dealing with such issues, most schools adopt strategies along deontological or utilitarian lines of thinking. Deontological philosophy is based on the principle that it is one's duty to follow rules and guidelines to "do the right thing". Displaying rules in corridors and classrooms about how to avoid plagiarism is an example of this philosophical principle in action. Utilitarianism, meanwhile, is based on the principle that the "right thing to do" is the action that brings the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. This involves calculating what the consequences of any particular action might be. Strategies that follow this principle often involve showing students shocking films about, for example, Amanda Todd, who killed herself after being cyberbullied, in an attempt to elicit empathy and make them aware of potential unintended outcomes. Although teachers report that both strategies have some effect, issues of online behaviour are still very real concerns in many schools. This is why I believe that educational strategies directed at developing good digital citizens, based on Aristotelian virtue ethics, are worth considering. The strength of virtue ethics is that it emphasises good character as the best guide for "doing the right thing", alongside adhering to rules and attempting to calculate the consequences of a course of action. In the cyber worlds that many young people inhabit, rules are particularly hard to establish and uphold, and consequences are difficult to predict. Rules were made to be broken Recent research conducted by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham, where I work, shows that 11- to 14-year-olds in England think the internet is largely unregulated and that Page 2 Make a virtue out of online necessity The Times Educational Supplement June 12, 2015 rules about what is right and wrong are often opaque. Although participants say that their teachers enforce rules in the classroom, these are often broken when they are at home alone, online in their bedrooms. Website giants such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter find it hard (or are sometimes unwilling) to regulate personal profiles or impose rules regarding their use. Furthermore, even when the rules are understood, young people report bypassing them by going online anonymously. The research also shows that many 11- to 14-year-olds are unaware of the consequences of some of their online actions. For example, they post messages that they don't realise will upset their peers because of a lack of visual clues compared with a face-to-face interaction. Furthermore, because the journey of any online communication is so unpredictable, messages that were in- tended for one individual can quickly spread around a whole school, with significant unintended consequences. Many teachers report having to deal with fallouts from supposedly private emails, or "sexting" posts that have been widely broadcast. A particular challenge for schools is that offline strategies can't simply be adapted for online use. A clue as to why this might be the case can be found in how young people describe the internet. In focus groups, they make a distinction between what they believe to be the "real" offline world and the "unreal" online world. Many describe how in the online world they believe that anything goes and all bets are off, possibly explain- ing why they act and behave differently. The research shows that young people have a greater tendency to experiment online, perhaps by pretending to be a different person. Likewise, they report that they are more likely to commit unvirtuous acts online than they would offline: they might bully online but not face to face; they might plagiarise from a website but not from a book; they might download an album illegally online but not steal a CD from a shop. The fact that rules are hard to uphold in the virtual world, and consequences difficult to predict, makes an approach to dealing with online moral issues based on character virtues appealing. Such strategies should aim to develop digitally wise citizens who are able to self-police their online activities. This requires schools, as well as parents, to cultivate attitudes and dispositions in young people that help them to understand what the virtuous action is in any given online interaction. Of course, virtues can't simply be taught in the classroom; they must be learned through practice, experience and the development of what Aristotle called phronesis, or practical wisdom. The challenge, therefore, is to create educational strategies inspired by virtue ethics that can be successfully delivered in schools. A question of character The recent (re-)emergence of character education offers a great platform for the development of online practical wisdom. Character education, delivered well, encourages young people to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and assess their actions and behaviour, with a view to moderating them if required. Character education is mostly "caught" through a school's culture and ethos. However, it can and perhaps should be "taught" through and within all subjects - for example, a reimagined computer science curriculum aimed not simply at imparting computer literacy but also at the development of good digital citizens. This would require teachers to provide time and tools for their students to reflect on and learn from their online interactions. The teaching tools to support such an approach could be hosted on websites, such as structured reflection blogs or moral dilemma games, where students could practise making difficult ethical decisions. Such tools would help young people to develop the capacity to acquire online practical wisdom and take the compassionate, honest or courageous action, even when no one was watching. It seems that the ancient Greek philosophy of Aristotle offers some hope for teachers dealing with some very modern problems. Applying virtue ethics principles to the modern world might just make virtual reality a more virtuous reality. Dr Tom Harrison is director of development at Birmingham University's Jubilee Centre for Character and Vir- tues

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The Sunday Times (London)

September 20, 2015 Sunday Edition 1; Scotland

Cracking the code to future success in digital landscape; Up-to-date computer knowledge is crucial if pupils are to succeed in today's tech-savvy world

SECTION: INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS REVIEW;NEWS; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 819 words

As recently as 20 years ago, information technology did not feel like a vital part of the Scottish curriculum. Despite this, the country saw a thriving computer programming and gaming scene develop, counting colos- sally successful video game developer Rockstar North as one of its biggest success stories. To help support the next generation of students who will go on to seek jobs in an increasingly online world, schools are informing their studies with the latest technological releases and trends. Today's ever-evolving digital landscape has changed the way we work, study and travel, and now more than ever learning about the ways in which information technology influences life outside the classroom is a relevant part of schooling. Last year was declared by many as the year of the code - some industry figures even went as far as declaring that instead of a second language such as Mandarin or Arabic, our children should be taught a digital language such as Java or Python. But one thing that both teachers and experts agreed upon was that equipping pupils with the most up-to-date computer knowledge will not only aid their studies now, but prove invaluable in later life. Fettes college, the co-educational public school located in the heart of Edinburgh, tailors numerous activities around computer studies for all pupils aged seven to 18. The onus for the computer science faculty is that its lessons are not just an important part of the wider curriculum, but also a key component of the future. Head of computer science Andrew Cheadle explained: "Simply put, digital literacy is a cornerstone of future learning. Going forward, students will not only need to master literacy and numeracy but digital literacy too. It is vitally important that in an ever-changing and increasingly technology focused world we equip our students with the skills they will need to keep pace and excel. As well as the ongoing teaching of coding systems already adopted in the prep school, from September every student in the college will learn how to code from age 13." Further north in the granite city of Aberdeen, co-educational Albyn school uses technology as a way to engage pupils in their studies. The school, which teaches about 650 children and young adults aged five and upwards, has introduced young learners in Primary 5 to Scratch - an educational tool used to develop concepts behind programming languages. After two years, Primary 7 pupils then have the chance to join the Page 2 Cracking the code to future success in digital landscape; Up-to-date computer knowledge is crucial if pupils are to succeed in today's tech-savvy world The Sunday Times (London) September 20, 2015 Sunday

Code Club. Part of an online national network for schools, participants are given Raspberry Pi miniature computers, which enables them to further their skills learnt in Scratch and provides a more formal introduction to HTML, CSS and Python programming languages. Francesca Milne, the head of marketing and development at Albyn, said: "These skills help the pupils when they progress into the senior part of the school where they have the opportunity to study computer science. Some will go on to develop professional programming and software development skills at university. "Most young people have easy access to computers, laptops, tablets and such like but they do not necessarily have the understanding of how these technology platforms work. We seek to address this from an early age." Merchiston Castle, Scotland's only all-boys boarding and day school, has introduced a variety of courses linked to computing that support the many different ways in which students learn. Head Andrew Hunter explained: "In line with government initiatives to promote coding from an early age, coding has recently been incorporated into the core curriculum from P6 to S2 at Merchiston, where pupils learn to program in a variety of coding environments, including Scratch, Python and Flowol. Junior pupils can also develop their coding skills in the weekly Raspberry Pi club. "Alongside IGCSE ICT, last year the school introduced the new GCSE computing course for pupils in S3 and S4, so that pupils of all abilities can follow either an applications-based course or a more technical programming-based course, and appointed a full-time teacher to assist with the developing of coding in this and other courses." At St George's school for girls, technology is used not just as a way to further studies, but also as a way to involve parents in pupils' studies. It can even be a source of comfort. Head of the Edinburgh school Anne Everest said: "We are aware that our students need life skills that include information literacy, and IT skills are embedded in many parts of the curriculum. In our nursery we are introducing online learning journals so that parents may have access to the curriculum and see precisely how their child is learning. "Conversely, we encourage the use of Skype in our boarding house, so that our students can keep in touch with their families, especially when they are the other side of the world. Technology has to work humanely."

LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Technology skills are an essential tool for today's youth so at St George's school for girls, as well as directly teaching coding, IT skills are embedded in many parts of the curriculum

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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