When it comes to Computing, where are the girls?

Digital Education cover April 2014“Where are the girls?” is one of the articles in the latest issue of Digital Education, the free newsletter for those with a professional interest in educational ICT and Computing. This article looks at what the issues are and, crucially, offers practical solutions and suggests several resources that you may find useful in this context.

Other articles include:

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The trials and tribulations of blogging as a SWOT analysis

There are people like myself, Steve Wheeler and others who think that blogging is a good thing to do for a number of reasons. I won’t rehearse theme here because you can read them in the articles referenced at the end of this one. However, blogging is not necessarily easy. Even if writing itself is not a problem, there are several other factors that need to be taken into account.
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Computational thinking? Algorithms? Why all the jargon?

Creative Computing SymposiumThe new Computing Programme of Study has been criticised not only for its content, but also for the terminology it uses. In particular, it speaks about “computational thinking”, “algorithms” and “decomposition”. “Surely”, the argument goes, “they could have used ordinary everyday language?”

Had “they” decided to do that, there would no doubt have had so many people panicking about it all. So, it’s a compelling suggestion. It just happens to be wrong.

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The Internet of Things - The Inevitable Future?

Zaneta Stepien explains what the Internet of Things is, and why we should be excited about it.

Technology never fails to bring us exciting developments and always promises to make our lives better. In recent years, there has been an explosion of technological creativity and innovation, with bold projects being undertaken in all corners of the Earth: from wireless power, 3D printing, gamification, autonomous vehicles and Automatic Content Recognition, to mobile robots and -- the topic of this post -- The Internet of Things, or, as some call it, The Internet of Everything. Sounds grand? Well, it's probably because it is. The promise of this enterprise is nothing short of game-changing,

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Useful ICT and Computing Conferences coming up

FerMUN: Model UN conference: Press BriefingWith the new Computing Programme of Study looming on the horizon, there are a number of conferences and other events coming up in the near future. Here’s a list of some of them. The Education Show isn’t specifically about ICT or Computing, but there are seminars in those areas so it’s definitely worth looking at.
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Safer Internet Day: Time to turn to pawnography?

Today I sent out my newsletter, Digital Education, and because today is Safer Internet Day the word “pornography” appeared. And guess what? The newsletter was blocked by a Local Authority’s filtering system. I’m not sure whether or not this is worse than the time I was told my website was blocked – because it featured an article about social networking.
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The hidden messages behind the launch of the Year of Code

I had the pleasure of attending a summit at the Royal Society of Arts last week. Entitled Skills for the 21st Century Summit, the event was designed to launch the “Year of Code” with as much razzmatazz as could be mustered.

And it worked. There was a great buzz throughout the day, and I came away buzzing and full of enthusiasm – though I suspect not for reasons that the organisers had in mind.

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