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Posts Tagged ‘A2 ICT’

What do they know?

09 Feb

 

The Freedom of Information Act was passed in 2000 but didn’t come into full effect until 2005.  It is an important Act that has enabled us as individuals to access official information from over 100,000 public bodies and organisations.  This information can include things such as e-mails, minutes of meetings, research, reports or bids for contracts.

Most A level syllabuses require that students learn about this Act but trying to excite and interest students in any of the essential Acts can at times be an uphill struggle.

However, there is a website called whatdotheyknow.com which allows people to explore the FoI requests made to UK government departments and public authorities.

How about setting your students the task of trying to find the most bizarre FoI requests?  Here are a couple of suggestions you can use to demonstrate this idea:

- How much the BBC spends each year on chocolate digestives Click Here

- How many soft tissue toilet rolls the BBC uses each year  Click Here

One of the problems with the FoI Act is the cost to the organisation of having to deal with so many requests and in particular obvious time wasting requests.

You could set a second task asking your students to find the most bizarre time wasting requests.  Here are a couple of examples you can use to demonstrate this to students:

- How many employees at the BBC have stated their religion as Jedi?   Click Here

- What percentage of the BBC license fee is spent by BBC employees on illegal drugs?  Click Here

Whatdotheyknow.com

 
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Posted in Freedom of Information Act

 

Could the Internet be shut down in the West?

07 Feb

Unless you have been on holday on a desert island (I wish), you cannot have missed the 24 hours media coverage of the developments in Egypt.

Notwithstanding the political developments, what has become apparent is that the Internet in Egypt was shut down for some days.

But could a government, say the USA, shut down the Internet? The answer seems to be yes. And plans are afoot to make it law that it is able to do so.

 

In Egypt, there are only a handful of ISPs and it seems they were told to effectively re-program their main routers so no IP traffic could find its way into the country. Traffic is directed through a router by a protocol called ‘Border Gateway Protocol’ or BGP. A quick change to the routers and the country became an Internet black hole.

Senators in the States are now pushing for legislation to have their own  ‘Internet off switch’, one that may give their government authority over privately owned computer systems.  Is this a good thing?

There has been such a furore over civil liberties that a statement has been issued to refute the implication.

It seems the Internet is now right at the centre of our democratic process in the West.

This could be a topic of discussion when discussing Society and ICT.

 
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Posted in Ethical issues, Government, Impact of ICT, Internet, Social effects of ICT

 

Programming Language Posters

26 Jan

Trying to find good quality, eye-catching and educational posters to display in the classroom can often be difficult.  There are a limited number of commercial posters available for purchase, some better quality than others, but many of them are too simplistic or just don’t engage the interest of students.

If you currently teach computing at GCSE or A Level or you are thinking about offering it in the near future there are a set of 8 free programming language posters that are available for you to print off and laminate for your classroom.

The posters contain the algorithm for a game called ‘Fizz Buzz’ with the syntax on each poster being written in a different programming language.

Download the posters from here

 
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Posted in Classroom displays

 

Why should I choose ICT?

25 Jan

If you had a pound for every time you were asked this question by a student or a parent you could probably retire from teaching (now there is a thought!)  How many times have you wished that you had a set of snappy, ready made answers to such a question?

How about when you have to put together a presentation for Year 9 Options Evening or Sixth Form Open Evening?  I know I have scratched my head in the past trying to come up with a set of persuasive statements that will imbue my passion for ICT to my students.

Thanks to a collaborative effort from a number of excellent teachers using Twitter we have been able to collate their answers and put together a set of statements that should help you when next faced with the question, ‘Why should I take ICT?’

View the statements here

 
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Posted in Education

 

Microwave racing

16 Jan

Learning about how to develop a well designed human computer interface (HCI) is important and it appears in all A level and some GCSE syllubuses.   However, students often find that the theory can at times be a little dry.

There is a short clip on YouTube that could be used to liven up the start of this topic and promote a discussion about the importance of HCI, especially in critical areas such as design of medical equipment and other key systems.

The video clip, Microwave Racing is by no means scientifically rigorous and yes you can pick many holes in the way the experiment was set up. But the key message behind it is easy for all students to grasp, i.e. that poor interface design can lead to all kinds of different problems.

 
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Posted in Human Computer Interface (HCI)

 

‘Software Engineer’ top job in 2011

09 Jan

An official survey of 200 different professions in the USA revealed that the most desired job to have is as a Software Engineer.

A software engineer can mean a multitude of things but it includes the design and creation of new software ideas such as cloud computing, creating apps for mobiles, coding interactive games, creating medical and scientific software.

The survey asked people in various industries about

  • Their income
  • Their stress levels
  • Work environment
  • Physical effort in doing the job
  • What they think of their future career

Then an overall ranking was worked out and software engineer came out top.

In terms of income it is fairly good but not the highest by any means – typically $87,000 (£54,000) compared say to a Historian earning $63,000 or a Biologist earning $85,000

One of things that causes stress is the feeling that you *have* to stay in a job you don’t like because there is little else you can get out there -  software engineer feels quite a low level of stress because there are so many things a trained engineer can do if they fancy a change. The industry is exploding with new areas – cloud computing, mobile apps, web design, online development. Once they have the training and experience they can jump from job to job or even go freelance. This also makes them feel there are good career opportunties in front of them.

Overall, working as a software engineer offers a good working environment, hardly any physical effort, better than average income, plenty of job opportunities.

One thing to note though : You have to have a good level of education in maths, engineering, technology and science.

And yet students taking computing and ICT as a subject has dropped about 30% over the last few years. Maybe two things will help reverse the trend – raising awareness of what life as an engineer is all about along with more interesting courses.

Source story here

 
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Posted in Education

 

CCTV is used to spy on teachers

28 Dec

Electronic surveillance has become pervasive in British society and civil liberties campaigners have long warned us about how the state is aquiring ever-greater powers to track people’s movements and retain personal data. The UK apparently has the most CCTV cameras per head of population in the world.

Most of us accept that CCTV cameras for the most part do have a positive effect on monitoring and reducing the amount of crime on our streets and as such we are able to ignore them in our daily lives.

We also accept that most office buildings or other places of work have security cameras that monitor who comes in and out of the building.

Attitudes however would be very different if CCTV camera were regularly used to monitor our every move whilst at work. Imagine our employers sitting in their office watching what we do throughout the day, what we say to customers, how we say it, seeing what web pages we visit and what we write in our emails.

For most of us, this would be a step too far. However, this is exactly what is starting to happen in many UK schools. CCTV cameras which were once installed to keep a check on pupil behaviour throughout the school are now being used to monitor the teacher’s performance during lessons.

This practice has caused an angry response from teachers and their unions, Chris Keates of the NASUWT said, “No other profession would tolerate this kind of surveillance. Why should teachers be expected to?”

There are concerns that often teachers aren’t aware they are being monitored and that schools have no CCTV policy in place to legitimise what they are doing.

Read the full news report here

And this kind of surveillance isn’t just restricted to teachers. There was a recent furore caused in the US where a school was accused of spying on pupils at home by remotely activating webcams on the laptops they had given them. Read the full story here

Can anyone else see the uncanny parallel with the infamous George Orwell book, 1984 where the State monitored and controlled every aspect of peoples’ lives?

This could be used as a discussion point when looking at the ethical use of technology. It would also fit well with topics such as privacy, surveillance and data protection.

 
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Posted in Education, Ethical issues, Privacy

 

Almost a decade of the iPod – infographic

18 Oct

It’s hard to believe that just 10 years ago we had never heard of the iPod and that Apple was just a computer company creating the niche Apple Mac, much loved by artists and media companies.  Now, most of us can’t imagine a life without our iPods, iPhones and iPads.   Apple’s genius, then and now, is the sheer beauty and elegance of their designs.

There is a fantastic infographic which charts the development of the iPod over the past nine years – it is well worth a look

 
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Posted in Infographic

 

Smart specs unite world and data

08 Oct

It seems like yet another technology previously only seen in science fiction films is about to become a reality. 

A lightweight pair of glasses has been developed which allow you to see and use them as you would a normal pair of glasses.  But these are no ordinary glasses, they are a pair of augmented reality glasses which overlay what you are seeing with digital content. 

Although there have been attempts to make AR glasses in the past they have usually been too heavy to wear comfortably or the digital data being projected interferes with everyday normal life.  These glasses are the first to add a minature projecting retinal display which doesn’t cause problems to the wearer.  The retinal display projects text and images directly into the user’s peripheral vision so they can carry on walking about whilst seeing data about their surroundings.

Even more clever is the use of an acceleration sensor and a direction sensor which is able to detect what you are looking at and then provide the relevant information related to what you are doing at that moment.

No release date has been given so you will have plenty of time to save up those pennies.

Read more here

 
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Posted in New technology, Sensors, Virtual & augmented reality

 
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