Learning in the 21st Century

Introduction:  I recently completed a project, building a Bot for the Learning Design Module in my Masters in ICT at UJ. It was quite an eye opening experience to see how far the technology has come and how accessible it really is. Below are all the resources that I used to make the Bot, so if you want to build one, this post should at least save you some research time. The Bot that I made with the help of my group members was a Bot for a student Help service.  Initial Research Stage: I started by just reading as much as I could about Bots to get a general understanding. Building a Bot basically boils down to trying to build either a rule based Bot, which is a lot like a decision tree being used as a conversational model. Or trying to build an AI bot which uses existing libraries and tries to match input from the user against these libraries to figure out meaning. I chose the rule based Bot as it better matched the context of my project and because I think an AI Bot w...

I just finished reading Andrew Yang's, ‘War on Normal People’ and I wanted to record my thoughts while they are still fresh in my head. So here it goes ... This book looks at the way in which the the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) over the 21st century  will affect the economy and the jobs of the people in it. A key theme is that if we leave our current capitalist system unchecked during this change, it is likely to end up with many people being left without jobs and massive disruption to the fabric of our society. The book serves as both a warning to society as well as an outline of the changes that need to be made, in order to adapt effectively. It’s written from the perspective of Andrew Yang, a once corporate lawyer and entrepreneur who started the Venture for America Initiative and is now running for the office of the president of the United States of America. Yang writes with a refreshing honesty and grit, from the perspective of someone who has been in the tr...

This is a collection of all my latest training resources for ICT that I have either developed or found through my professional learning network.

I built this for my class to try to understand the difference between simple and compound interest and also how to setup a spreadsheet with good design.

Straight Lines Imagine buying a cup of coffee for a friend that cost $1.50, then imagine buying a 2nd cup of coffee for another friend. Thing about how much extra you spent for that 2nd cup. Okay, buy another cup for a third friend. It total you have spent $4.50 for 3 cups of coffee. The relationship that describes how the cost increases as you buy more and more cups of coffee is called a straight line relationship or linear function. Parabola Consider trying to organise a Round Robin Tennis Tournament with some friends. When you first start planning the tournament, only 4 of you seem to be able to make it. Then the day before, a 5th member joins and then on the day itself, your cousin is in town and he wants to play too! How many matches do you need to arrange so that the tournament could take place with either 4, 5 or 6 players ? The relationship between the number of players and the number of matches to be scheduled is parabolic, or forms a parabola when visualise...

Helpful Slideshows of the Talk Talis 2013 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kpWnYhN0maEzvwNJfWgWmgYQMj8isj2O/view?usp=sharing Talis 2018 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SJQ77GkQsrGu9EDTCmxVmRK8UIClRIbq/view?usp=sharing

GOAL "Create your own digital learning portfolio showing evidence of your individual learning path." A Personal Learning Portfolio is a virtual, personal space that serves as a dynamic planning tool, archive, profile, and showcase of an individual’s lifelong learning experiences, goals and achievements. It is created by the learner, controlled by the learner, and is on a platform of his or her choice. Though the tool is geared to be an open tool that records the digital footprint of the individual, the learner controls who has access to any section of the portfolio at any given time.  Definition Credit Explanation Video Possible Content: ArtsWorks , Writing Pieces , Video Clips , Audio Recordings, Projects, Books read and reviews of them, Online Courses or Programs , Blog component, Social Campaigns, Growth Filled Experiences, Leadership Roles, Projects Initiated , Volunteer Work , Places you’ve travelled or want to travel , Interviews with Interes...

Introduction As a result of doing my Masters and all the academic writing that comes with it, I have been building up quite a set of resources to help me structure and improve my writing. I thought it would be a good idea to put together a concise summary of what I have found, in order to help myself in future or anyone else in a similar position. Academic referencing is really just the Art of letting people know where you found your information. In order to do it in a way that communicates clearly, you need to be systematic and predictable in your approach. A number of recognised referencing systems have been developed for this purpose eg Harvard, APA, MLA, Chicago ... I will focus on the APA style as that is the system that is most common in the Social Sciences and it also the system that I most likely will be required to use, when doing my dissertation. Understanding the conventions of Referencing, efficiently.  So one of the things struct me about referenc...

Recently I have been looking at a lot of frameworks for assessment and learning, due to starting my Masters and one that really jumps out at me,  as particularly useful for mathematics teachers is the depth of knowledge framework (DOK). The graphic below gives a nice idea of the levels involved in terms of verbs and how you could use DOK to guide your learning activities. Additional Theory Doc with useful descriptions

Conceptual ideas are important. In a sense, there is a need to develop an intuitive ‘feel’ for mathematics (e.g. the ability to visualise the ideas of proportion in relation to many settings rather than simply being able to mechanically share quantities in a given ratio), which would probably not be developed via a solely procedural-based curriculum. Teacher Support Material from IB Paid MyMaths Website   Polyup - Experiential Learning  Homeschool Maths   YouCubed - Experiential Maths   Desmos Teacher Activities   Brilliant - Experiential Learning   Introduction With the amount of Mathematics content online now a days,  I often find the biggest challenge is sorting through what to share with my students in class. Often resources appear usable at first, but then as you dig down deeper there are issues with alignment to the curriculum, notational differences or just confusing accents. However every now and again, you ...