What a pleasure it was to attend the EdTechSA AGM on March 19th.
Now there is something you don’t often see in the same sentence, pleasure and AGM.
Whilst the AGM did provide some highlights it was the opportunity to hear the insights of Stephen Heppel leading in to the AGM that was the main drawcard. This time around we were treated to the opportunity to have “Heppel in Stereo” with Stephen’s daughter Juliette sharing the wonderful things that have been happening in her school.
Stephen introduced us to Sniff (www.sniff.org.uk), the next step on from Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/).
Scratch was created by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is a graphical programming language for kids and is a fantastic way to get children to start programming. Year 3 to 7’s at my school have created some amazing games and the Year 2’s are clamouring to have a try. If you haven’t tried it yet have a go.
Sniff is a “Scratch-like” programming language that’s designed to help Scratchers move gently from Scratch to more conventional languages. They can start writing programs, without having to learn a new language because Sniff is based on Scratch.
Juliette ‘s sharing had Stephen referring to “Feral projects” and how important it is for schools to have feral projects that offer the chance for teachers and students to take risks and explore new things with the support of Leadership within the school.
Finally Stephen reminded us of the importance of staying connected and sharing our insights. As he said on the night “Nobody is saying do it all yourself but rather use the ingredients that work all around the world to create your own recipes. Share your ingredients and recipes.”
Thanks to Jacqui Knipe you can have a look at some of the tweets at the event. You might find some people to follow or some ingredients that you can use in your own recipes!