IMA Workshop (online): Python for A-Level Mathematics and Beyond

On Friday 21st January 2022 I attended an online training course hosted by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) and delivered by Dr Stephen Lynch. The course was titled Python for A-Level Mathematics and Beyond, and was marketed at delegates with "no prior knowledge of programming".

At the beginning of the workshop I started to live-tweet...

I'm gearing up to take part in a course from @IMAmaths on "Python for A-Level Mathematics". I'm woefully under-skilled on the Python front so I hope I can keep up...

— Tom⇒maths AMIMA (@TeaKayB) January 21, 2022

... but very soon needed to concentrate too much to be able to continue. As a handful people seemed to be interested in the content I thought I'd write up my experience here.

Mathematics Teaching in Indonesia

My first assignment for my Master's course was to "look at a chosen aspect of education in one country and comment on the socio-economic, political and cultural influences on this aspect of education [using] an infographics tool to present [my] findings."

The country was a largely random choice: I didn't have a particular country in mind so I just sort of broadly read around until I landed on something that struck me as interesting. Could the aspect I chose really have been anything else?

I completed and submitted the assignment at the end of November and have just received my grade* so here it is:

Mathematics Teaching in Indonesia

The Most Important Thing in Your Pencil Case, or Calculators Ain't Bad

I have a friend who's starting secondary school in September. Her mum sent me this:

I need your opinion on something. B████ is laughing at me because I said that choosing a new pencil case is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing about a new school year. I messaged my English dept, but she said they’re bound to agree and I needed to message a Maths teacher. Thoughts?

I responded with:

Research Poster: Digital Mathematics Resources and Museums

Back in September I asked for some maths teachers to take part in the trial of a mathematics resource that I had created and was trialling as part of the work towards my PGCert in Digital Leadership.

With massive thanks to the teachers and students who took part, I completed the project which formed the second assignment towards the first of two modules in the course. Our brief was to present our report in the form of a research poster (with a creatively loose definition of what that means).

Digital Maths Resources: Invitation to Take Part in a Trial

A little while ago a few maths teachers* were kind enough to submit responses to a survey designed to discover what mathematics teachers in the UK want from digital resources offered by museums. This survey was used to influence part of the work towards my PostGraduate Certificate in Digital Leadership, and I went on to provide a brief analysis of the results in my Reflective ePortfolio, which also included discussion around some academic reading I've done on the subject.

The next step is to use the results of that survey to inform the creation of a digital resource and then test it with some students. As a full-time museum educator I don't have any captive students of my own so I would very much like to enlist the help of some of the many innovative and excitable maths teachers that abound in my Twitter network and beyond.

All I'm looking for is a few maths teachers who would like to try out a brand new digital resource with some of their students. Full details and terms are in the embedded registration form below, but some key information in short:

• The resource isn't quite ready yet, but when it is I'll email a link out to any teachers who have registered below, in time for testing to take place during the fortnight between 7th and 25th October 2019.
• It will require around 20 minutes or so for students to complete, followed by a quick survey, so they'll need about half an hour in total. This can take place whenever is convenient for you (and them) during that two-week period, but all trials must be complete before the end of the school day on 25th October.
• Students will need access to an internet-connected computer, tablet or mobile phone to use the resource and respond to the survey.

Interested? Fill in the survey below, and I'll be in touch in the next few weeks. Please do pass this post along to anybody in your personal and professional networks who may also be interested in taking part.

*113 of them!

Digital Mathematics Resources from Museums

If you've been here before you may remember that I recently began to work towards a Postgraduate Certificate in Digital Leadership*. For my first assessment I need to produce a reflective e-portfolio on a digital literacy theme, and I have decided upon a research question for that.

Whilst researching various themes around digital literacy and education, I discovered that there is very little literature that concentrates on a particularly relevant subset of that genre - digital provision in museum education - and even less focusing on the nexus of my two career themes to date: museums and mathematics.

The question I have settled on, therefore, is:

"What do secondary mathematics teachers want from digital museum resources?"

More specifically, I'm looking at digital resources served remotely rather than on the museum site, and the following questions in the hope that I will discover the features that will make digital museum resources truly useful to mathematics teachers:

• Do they want LMS integration?
• Do they want individual activities or full lessons?
• Do they want resources to be explicitly curriculum linked, generally subject-relevant, or cross-curricular?

With related considerations:

• What do they think about museums as a source for digital resources at the moment?
• Are there any really good resources out there already that we (as museum educators) can learn from?

I have some insight into these questions from my own experience as a secondary mathematics teacher, but it's been a while since I was explicitly employed as one and am well aware that the sector changes, as does technology.

With this in mind, I would be incredibly grateful to any secondary mathematics teachers who were kind enough to:

1. Submit a response to the following survey.
2. Share with any other maths teachers (or people who might know any maths teachers) in their network.

It shouldn't take more than 5 - 10 minutes of your time, and after analysing the results I will be posting outcomes on this blog. More general comments and discussion on the theme are more than welcome, and probably best conducted over on twitter. I'm @TeaKayB: if we're not already connected do say hi!

Here's the survey (and thanks again for taking part):

* See my other posts related to this course here.

Digital Literacy: What Does it Mean?

An early task in the Digital Leadership course that I'm following was to think about a "definition of what digital literacy means to [me]". You might want to skip to the bottom if you're looking for a quick answer.

What do other people think?

First stop: Twitter, naturally, to see what some of my followers thought. Click on the tweet I posted (below) to see what the raw responses were, and I'll summarise underneath it. Any more responses (either in reply to this tweet or using the included hashtag) would be very welcome.

What does "digital literacy" mean to you?#digitalliteracymeans pic.twitter.com/VRpL0xMpgB

— Tommaths (@TeaKayB) June 15, 2019

Some common themes from these responses (and from chatting to people about it elsewhere):

• Digital literacy isn't necessarily about knowing how to do things with technology, but knowing how to find out how to do things when you want to (paraphrased from @CantabKitty).
• Part of this is being able to navigate technology (whether an app, website, or device) by recognising common features such as icons and menu structures (paraphrased from @RJS2212).
• On a similar theme to these is @neilnjae's suggestion that digital literacy is the ability to use computer-based tools to do the things you're actually interested in.
• @Loumeracy summed things up nicely with the idea that it's all about "understanding the digital environment and how to navigate it competently and effectively."
• A number of responses were along the lines of "not believing everything you read online," which I hadn't considered before asking this question of others.

How about the literature?

There's a wealth of writing and research out there, and we were given some links to browse as part of this task. Some of these include:

The Welsh Digital Competence Framework

Find it here: https://hwb.gov.wales/curriculum-for-wales-2008/digital-competence-framework/framework/

This is a full framework covering all stages of school education in Wales (which is practically the same as for the rest of the UK) and has been structured to be familiar to anyone who has seen the National Literacy and Numeracy Framework. It's massive, and the whole thing can be viewed in parts online or downloaded as a spreadsheet from the link above, but in summary it splits key skills into four strands with elements summarised as follows (table reproduced from https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/hwb-live-storage/6e/7f/33/19/c3494e069deaeab755d4c156/digital-competence-framework-guidance-2018.pdf):

Citizenship	Interacting & collaborating	Producing	Data & Computational Thinking
- Identity - Wellbeing - Digital rights - Online behaviour	- Communication - Collaboration - Storing - Sharing	- Planning & sourcing - Creating - Evaluating & improving	- Problem solving - Modelling - Data and information literacy

In case you're interested, there's a draft available for an updated framework due to begin implementation in 2022. It's here: https://hwb.gov.wales/draft-curriculum-for-wales-2022/digital-competence-framework-draft-curriculum-for-wales-2022-version/

The European Digital Competence Framework

Find it here: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/digcomp/digital-competence-framework

A similar idea to the Welsh framework, I've summarised the information at the link above into the table below ordering the columns to facilitate comparison between the two:

Safety	Communication & Collaboration	Digital Content Creation	Information and Data Literacy	Problem Solving
- Protecting devices, content personal data & privacy - Physical & psychological health - Social well-being & inclusion - Environmental impact of digital technologies	- Interaction - Communication - Collaboration - Awareness of cultural & generational diversity - Citizenship - Identity & reputation	- Creating & editing - Improving & integrating content into an existing body of knowledge - Understanding copyright & licensing - Giving understandable instructions for a computer system	- Articulate information needs - Sourcing information, data & content - Storing, managing & organising	- Identify needs & problems - Resolve conceptual problems - Use digital tools to innovate - Keep up to date with the digital evolution

The main difference is that the European framework splits its elements into five categories, with the final two columns in this table being the final column from the table summarising the Welsh framework split into two. The other headings match up quite well, with a few elements appearing under different columns. An important difference is that "use digital tools to innovate" and "keep up to date with the digital evolution" from this framework don't appear to have an analogue in the Welsh one. They may well be covered in the detail of the Welsh framework, but I think they're important enough that they should be a "top level" skill.

Jisc Fourth Industrial Revolution Response

Find it here: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/digital-skills-crucial-to-the-success-of-fourth-industrial-revolution-28-jun-2018

Jisc, formally JISC (which stood for the Joint Information Systems Committee) is a not-for-profit organisation providing digital services and solutions to the UK Higher and Further education sectors. They do a lot of research and development work into educational technologies, and have a number of interesting things to say about what they're calling "Education 4.0", the educational aspect of "Industry 4.0", or the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Industry 1.0	Industry 2.0	Industry 3.0	Industry 4.0
Much greater mechanisation; steam and water power	Mass production on assembly lines; widespread use of electricity	Modern computers and automation	Robotiocs & biotechnology; ubiquitous use of digital networks; artificial intelligence; the Internet of Things & "smart" technologies; 3D printing

This document starts off by quoting the UK Government: "within two decades, 90% of jobs will require some digital proficiency, yet 23% of adults lack basic digital skills." Jisc believes that digital skills are "non-negotiable" for future generations of students to be successful. They argue that strategies must be put in place alongside staff (and leaders) with appropriate skills. A digital capabilities framework is proposed, with lifelong learning an important part of updating the skills of the current workforce.

They contributed to the development of the Welsh Digital Competence Framework discussed earlier and seem to be advocating that the UK Government develops something similar. As it stands, the UK Government's Essential Digital Skills Framework is much less comprehensive.

There's not much here about what Jisc means by "digital literacy" but they do list a few benefits to increasing it generally. Jisc.ac.uk has a wealth of information

What does "digital literacy" mean to me?

The idea of "digital literacy" clearly spans a vast array of skills, but which are the most important? If I had to list just a handful of prerequisite skills to master before being confident that one is digitally literate, I'd probably pick:

• Ability to recognise problems which may be solved using digital technologies;
• Ability to seek out digital tools which may help to solve these problems;
• Ability to develop personal skills in using these tools, through a mixture of experimentation, research and the experience of others;
• An awareness of the potential risks associated with using digital tools, and steps to take to reduce them.

Whilst clearly of paramount importance, the "not believing everything you read on the internet" skill is not, to me, a specific requirement of digital literacy, but part of a broader and crucial life skill. In many situations this would be covered in specifically "digital" situations by my final bullet point.

What do you think? Comment/ tweet away!

I'm Learning About Digital Technologies and Could Really Do With Your Help

My last foray into the world of academia was way back in the heady days of '06 - '07 when I completed my PGCE in Mathematics (with A-Level Accreditation, dontcha know). This was at the tail end of those dark times when PGCEs didn't come with any Masters credits. I've always been interested in continuing my own education. For the past decade or so, it's been self-directed studying, reading the odd paper and half-completing Futurelearn courses. I've also built up a network of astonishingly accomplished friends and acquaintances in the worlds of mathematics, education, museums and heritage, and all conceivable intersections of them, and I'm never quite sure how they keep up the pretence of being pleased to bump into me at conferences.

Back in the Ring

Now, though, I have started on an actual accredited course! Last week I attended my first online session for the distance learning Postgraduate Certificate in Digital Leadership with the University of Northampton (kindly funded by my employer). It was mostly an orientation session, with introductions to the course leader (the fantastic Helen Caldwell) and the other coursemembers.

The course, in short, "will give you professional recognition and equip you with the subject knowledge, teaching skills and critical understanding you need to lead positive change as a digital leader in your setting" and includes two modules: Developing Digital Literacy, which will involve research into digital technologies and practices with a view to bringing my own understanding of the sector up to scratch; and Developing Digital Leadership, which will empower me to take what I've learnt so far and pass skills, knowledge and understanding on to peers and colleagues.

I'm going to be blogging as I go along and I'd really appreciate not only support and encouragement but also the benefit of your experience.

My first task is to come up with a key research question, so I'm going to be thinking about how digital literacy could impact upon my own job role and those of others, both within my organisation and related roles outside it. That'll probably be the subject of my next post on this subject.

Help!

For now, though, I'd really like your help! Either in the comments below, via twitter, or any other method of communication you may have for me, I'd very much appreciate some answers to the following questions. If you could provide some idea of your own job role or other reason for being interested in the topic that'd be really useful too:

• Everyone:
• What does "digital literacy" mean to you? (Please respond to this tweet!)
• Is there anyone I should be following (blogs, podcasts, twitter, etc) who's really doing this stuff right (or provoking thought)?
• Teachers (thinking about museums, but thoughts from other angles welcome):
• What do you want/need from digital resources? What gets in the way? What's the dream?
• Do you already use digital resources from museums? Which ones/ where/ what?
• Please post links to anything that's getting it right!
• Museum educators:
• What digital resources do you provide?
• What are your main barriers to producing them?
• What digital resources do you want?