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You can find previous Brain Dumps here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21. Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Part 32, Part 34, Part 35, Part 36, Part 37, Part 38.

A new trimester and a new topic of study... and for me, I'm starting a couple of weeks behind the rest of the class... well, because I forgot to keep track of when things started, and also because I've been a touch busy in the last couple of weeks with my day job.

Still... I'm looking forward to this particular single unit of study, which is an introduction to ICT for Education Students. My background has involved a good deal of Mathematics, Physics, and a splash of coding... I'm a terrible coder, but the baseline architecture of computational thinking is there. That said, I'm a better coder than the average person on the street... but that says more about the general level of coding in society rather than a bright-eyed assessment of my abilities!

Given that this course is aimed at education students across all fields that generally have had NO coding experience, this should be a pretty easy course from the practical point of view for me. However, the course is NOT designed to make us super-shadowy coders... but it is designed to introduce some basics of computational thinking and coding experience to help us better integrate ICT into our teaching.

So, I've breezed through the introductory module with no hassle... everything there is pretty much background knowledge for me. There were some interesting concepts... but most of it was just codifying ways of thinking that I already know into some complex humanities opaqueness.... you know... acronyms, big words, long sentences, and an air of authority. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if we promote people in the corporate world for their ability to blow hot air... and leave the builders and creators at the bottom of the trash heap instead. Sure seems like that when I get around talking to "business-people"! Or perhaps I just meet the wrong ones...

Anyway, the first project is a bit of a play around in the Scratch ecosystem... it is a block based "coding" system developed by MIT. It is designed with the creative aspect being front and centre... with the code blocks being the enablers of making a creation... such as a story, game, or something similar. So, instead of parsing data sets... you create a little cartoon skit. Much more interesting for the bulk of the population!

I had started my older girl on Scratch when she was younger... and she has since migrated to a text-based coding language/course called Hedy. The little one still enjoys mucking around in Scratch... but now that she can read, I think I will do it more seriously with her.

Meanwhile, I did my Numeracy exam... which I finished in half the allocated time, and I sure hope that I passed! It would be incredibly embarrassing if I didn't! However, when doing it... most of it was easy... but I was astounded by the "trick questions", which mostly involved extracting information from really POOR data representations. For me, that points to shitty data representation being the problem... and not the question of the numeracy of the reader!

Anyway, I have also talked with some teacher's aides and retired teachers about placements and the idea of teaching as a relief teacher. I definitely DON'T want to teach as a full-time (or even part-time) teacher... I think that would drive me nuts. Sure, the teacher would be interesting and fun... but all the crap that everyone else makes you do. Teaching seems to be a job where a million people look over your shoulder, know how to do your job better, and tell you (mandate...) how to do it better... then pay you less and less. Sigh... if it was that easy, why do the people that blow hot air get paid so much to do something useless?

So, it appears that relief teaching might be the way to go... but I will have to do the two placements before that. After that, I think that I will have pretty much finished up the Masters course... and I will be an "accredited" teacher... whatever that means! But first... I will have to start writing around to see if I can get a placement of some sort... apparently, Physics/Maths teachers are in incredibly demand... so, it shouldn't be too difficult... as long as I don't say that I would NOT want to teach as a job!

I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x

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