Computer science taught as an art

I've been involved with learning, teaching and creating for all my life. During my formative years (in-utero to shortly after high-school graduation) I was focused on getting what I needed to finish. I was also involved in a lot of art (music, graphic design, crafts, dance, theatre) but my socially encouraged (my parenting) focus was on math and science. Needless to say, I have had my feet firmly planted in both art and science my whole life. I guess most people are this way, with different ratios of art to science. I really feel I continue to straddle both these areas as I pass my 1/2 century mark. What this has given me is a deep appreciation and engagement in both art and science. This is why I am more broad than I am deep. And this is why I have learned art as much as I have learned math and science.

Now I am an enterprise architect, educational technologist, computer scientist, teacher, visual arts performer and all around nice guy (well I hope). I still draw and paint, play music (the best I can) and dance in the open. I encourage my kids to engage in art more than science. Surprisingly, my kids math and science skills are good. I do think there is a connection.

I also think computer science can be taught very well as an art. Particularly, in the early stages of learning computer science. Why? Because, it needs to be done with reckless abandon and with the freedom to make a mess. You need to be able to stop half-way and throw it away. You need to be able to change it into something never planned. You need to be able to break something, and then fix it. You also need restraints through assignments (or learning themes), focused subjects, a palette, skills and abilities, uncertainty and little preparation, it all needs to be inspired and interpretive. I also see taking risks and "feeling stupid" is safer with art than science. Doing a scientific experiment seems more serious than dancing like no-one is watching or painting for yourself. Art seems more reckless than science. It is this recklessness that makes art more accessible to learn than science. I also think there is a lower barrier to entry for art than science, though I don't think it needs to be this way.

How I perceive creating and learning art.
My participation in the arts comes in two themes; the visual make things (graphics, painting, architecture, woodworking, and building) and in folk music and dance. How do I learn new things within these realms; by doing, with a whole lot of reading, research and seeking out those who have done it before. How do I believe it best assist to others learn; by involving them, and pointing them toward understanding how they themselves learn and encouraging their own research practices. Together we do things, I've built and created many things with others and the conversation and collaboration is a beautiful thing. Bringing together music and dance is an amazing collaborative effort. Best done with a willingness to fail, and the patience to persist. One of our best dances is tri-martal-o (it took two years to develop), is hauntingly beautiful, the music is inspired and the piece is way fun to dance. The important aspect of learning art is to dive in, create and participate as soon as you can. And remember, make a mess.

How I perceive creating and learning computer science.
Immediate feedback is the way! Being able to get something working by using the tools and techniques immediately is paramount to learning computer science. Programming something and then seeing it run, render, compute... is preferred for learner engagement. Once this immediate feedback has been experienced, the opportunity to create has been fulfilled, and a good number of computing science tasks have been completed then the deepening and complexity can begin. And this deepening and complexity needs to grow iteratively with continued immediate feedback and fulfillment. It should almost be like playing an instrument or creating art; repetition, creation and fun.

I believe it is also important to understand computing science as a creative and where it fits within the big scheme of things (historically, culturally, epistemogically, and algorithmically). This helps to put computing science into life context. Where it fits with being a human being, and this is where it gets interesting. The ability to take working ideas out of your brain and use them (in other ways and experiments) within a device outside of your head. This is computing science, and it is unique in history. For thousands of years we have taken ideas out of our heads and created things; first, wall paintings, then tools and writing, then machines and engines... but now, we can re-incarnate a working idea in another device that can process the idea, and use it with other peoples ideas, or more of our own ideas. And we can process these ideas as experiments and run a collection of ideas for days with different inputs which influence further ideas.

How do I see teaching computer science as an art? 
Create, make a mess, work with others, make... this is why I see the maker movement so positive. And why the webmaking initiatives currently underway as the right way toward teaching computer science. It creates a low barrier to entry and encourages learning with reckless abandon while on a journey of skills and knowledge development. Webmaking also takes learning computer science into the realm of social learning, which I consider more closely aligned with learning the arts than the sciences.

But how would this work for the more complicated computer science topics? The solution is in how more complicated art projects are created. They are more collaborative efforts, where the more experienced are given the complicated tasks and have to be sure their direct collaborators are also engaged. And there is a whole bunch of healthy collaborative critique going on. Look at how a performance art piece is created, learned and performed. What can be taken from this process and applied to teaching the more complicated aspects of computer science.

In my opinion one of the best books when considering the creation of computer software is written by Russell Shackelford and titled "Computing and Algorithms", I've used this book a number of times when teaching entry level computer science. What I fond strongest in this book is how it connects the creation of computer algorithms (software) with art from the scientific perspective. Or at least that is how I read it...

So in the end when teaching computer science as an art it also comes down to practice, practice, practice... if you want to be a good artist, that includes a lot of practice. If you want to be a good computer scientist, that also takes a lot of practice. The key is to find fun, creative and collaborative ways to stay engaged, and treating the learning of computer science as an art will keep it more engaging. Regardless of age. And as the projects and learning become more complicated, increasingly engage others who are peers and mentors. Find the fun individually and as a group.

How does the network see your personal brand?

Branding is important. It provides an external (or public) theme for endeavours; business endeavours, professional endeavours, organizational endeavours. Personal branding has become increasingly important in the networked age where the communications technology (read: Internet) reduces the barriers to promote and communicate brand, even personal brand.

How klout perceives me... https://klout.com/prawsthorne

I have gone through my personal branding exercise a few times in the past, and what I now find most interesting is what the feedback loop in my network sees as my brand... when I traverse the keywords/themes that myself and Google+, LinkedIn, Klout, and other social media have tagged to my respective profiles I am left with the personal branding of; Technology, Architecture, and Education. And my network brands me much stronger in the technology and architecture realms than the educational. I know this branding assessment is somewhat a self-fulfilling prophecy as I have been the one who has joined the groups, followed and friended the people and organizations, blogged about subjects, added keywords, created profiles, contributed to discussions, attended events (online or otherwise), etc, etc... but there are also data analytics going into all this. So by giving a broad sweep over ALL my connections to the network and paying attention to the keywords getting bubbled to the top by the network and the related analytics should give you an idea of how the network sees you.

How my linkedin endorsers perceive me... 

Am I OK with this? Absolutely!

Having a brand of; Technology, Architecture and Education? Does my data analysed network perceive the brand I would like to be perceived with? Absolutely! Most of my professional life, over the last 15 years, has focused upon enterprise and solution architecture. I am a technologist first, with proven successes in architecture. I am also an educator with experience as college and university faculty with a number of technology projects in the edtech realm, where I have increased access to education using technology innovation and solid architectural approaches.

How do you create, alter, and promote your personal brand?

This is where it gets interesting. How do you create, alter, and promote your personal brand? This is what I believe are the steps toward branding yourself;

1. What would you like to be? What is your personal brand? Create a vision for yourself.
2. Be that person. Even if you are not there, yet, be that person as best you can given the real world constraints.
3. Set up a Personal Learning Network (PLN) in the subject areas of your personal brand. Read, research, participate, engage, become.
4. Also use traditional approaches to learning, this will also help with building expertise and grow your network.
5. Write and engage with the social network, be broad with your use of tools. It is amazing what you can learn online with a well designed personal learning approach.
6. Be very public with your learning. Also leverage your existing expertise and blog and engage. Curate wikipedia pages or other knowledge bases in your chosen subject area. 
7. Wherever you participate be sure your personal profiles are up to date within that social media.

What if you are already an expert and have an established personal brand?

1. Keep going. Engage the communities and social media, share your knowledge.
2. Push your life-long learning, add to your personal knowledge. Write about your learning, it is one of the best ways to commit the new knowledge to long-term memory.
3. Continue to curate your shared knowledge across knowledge bases.
4. Be a guest blogger and seek out opportunities to write for popular sites.
5. Participate in online learning forums and MOOCs.
6. Don't forget that publishing is not only written. There are many ways to share; YouTube, Slideshare, Google Docs, Podcasts, etc... be sure to attach the correct keywords.
7. Tweet, Message, Promote... all good.

What if you want to alter your personal brand?

1. Saturate your network with the content (created and/or shared) aligned with your brand change.
2. Be very public with your learning toward the brand change. 
3. Publish your existing and growing expertise.
4. Participate as broadly as possible.
5. Find the related online communities, engage.
6. Curate the subjects within your this new subject domain.
7. Create and add valuable new content.

Major Chords 4 Bass with Tabs

As the family band grows and improves I put together this one-pager for some of the major chords on bass guitar. I helps the boys as they pluck around with the bass, it adds another OER to the space, it helps me to deepen my understanding of the bass. All good.

Click this link for listing of major chords with tabs for bass

Virtual Community of Practice Conundrum

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What do you need to consider when building a Community of Practice (CoP) that spans organizational boundaries where client confidentiality needs to be honored. There are a plethora of things to be considered when building an online (virtual) community of practice, these include; the team and the contexts' relationship with openness, the memberships ability to be self-determined, how online communication will be broadened and followed, and how the internet is the platform.

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How does a Community of Practice (CoP) steward itself across organizational boundaries? What are the requirements and restraints to successfully build a CoP when openness and confidentiality are in conflict with one another? What technology platforms support a closed virtual learning community but can integrate with a busy and confidential work-schedule? Can you leverage all the innovative social media technologies, which can be very well applied to learning (CoP), from a closed virtual community? This series of blog posts sets out to answer many of the questions... but first,

Some background
I've been building Communities of Practice (CoP) for over 10 years. It started during my M.Ed where I was bringing together 15 years of professional technology experience with 10 years of college level teaching and online learning. I now see my skills and knowledge being well applied with building large complex information technology systems and being a seasoned educational technologist. I also believe it is important to provide some of my personal background, beliefs, and experience on the subject of CoP. What I believe is particularly relevant to this post is my time spent with both open projects and corporate enterprise projects. These projects include; Mozilla, Mediawiki, WikiEducator, Wikiversity, P2Pu, Bowen eGovernment, UNESCO, Open Data, CLEBC, ICBC, Commonwealth of Learning, and other smaller projects. This experience has exposed me to open democracies, open spaces, open communities, open boards of directors, open, open, open. Where the sharing of information is crazy transparent and all meetings are open to everyone. This experience has also exposed me to large enterprises; closed, locked-down, proprietary, and obfuscated information exchanges. Having other people filter information is the standard practice in many of these other closed type organizations. My work has occurred at the extremes of both of these types of organizations, but also, much of my work has happened in the middle ground. From all this it is my belief that open communication is better than the alternative; particularly, when wanting to encourage learning or when building a community of practice. It is best to let employees be their own filters of information, and exchanging information helps everyone learn. The current and emerging pedagogical approaches also supports openness vs. closed. I believe it is important for learners working within a CoP to be able to reach out to the larger community and draw in resources from these other external communities.

Some history (or key technologies)
What do I consider the key information technologies and attributes of learning communities that have emerged over the last 20 years and have the biggest impact on virtual and online learning communities of practice?

• Communities of Practice - obviously the work of Étienne Wenger is big here. The idea that "most learning does not take place with the master, it takes place among the apprentices" IMO is important to building a virtual learning community.
• Open Approaches - Open Space, Open Leadership, Open Data, Open Etc... In my opinion, and experience, openness is very important to learning and in successfully building a community of practice. New people, new opinions, ongoing mentorship and peer learning needs to be refreshed. Without openness it becomes closed and stagnant. I have yet to experience a CoP that remains active beyond a year without having new people involved and ideas coming in from outside the group. Openness is key.
• Autodidactism / Heutogogy - Participants in CoP need to be self-determined learners. This means you can just lurk in a community, at some point you need to participate. It is the internal commitment to learning in the subject domain that must come first. Then participation in the community becomes part of the self-determined learning. In my opinion this is one of the keys to a valuable CoP. The commitment level of the members.
• Visual Communication - People need to share through a variety of mediums, this should not be restrained within the CoP. Often the results of a visual meeting (or otherwise) can be shared for record keeping, review and to prompt further discussion, etc...
• Social Media - social media is not social learning, but it is important in building community and allowing people to participate online where they want and when they want.
• Tagging - social tagging can be an excellent way to draw a community together by allowing members to share there learning and related reference materials across different social media platforms.
• Platforms - having an online place to host the community is essential. But given a solid tagging approach this doesn't have to be a traditional platform, it could be the internet as a whole. What is important is that it is accessible by everyone - from everywhere, on any device. In the end, you need to consider the whole internet as the platform.

Some assumptions
Most learning occurs outside of traditional approaches, it occurs 24 hours a day, and is a continuous activity that includes (and should not be limited too) the use of open social media tools. A community of practice is social learning and is further enhanced with access to online and virtual communities. Blended learning is important, as face-to-face time (when available) should be encouraged. Even if the face time is among a sub-set of the community members.
Being a self-determined learner is important as it provides the intrinsic motivation to deepen the engagement within the CoP. It is a valid amount of participation to only lurk within the CoP, but there does come a point where members need to dive in and participate. Learning will be deeper and broader, but the motivation needs to be there. And most often for long term commitment to participate comes from an intrinsic motivation.

The conundrum
How do you build a Community of Practice in a closed environment where you can't reach out due to client confidentiality?

In the next post on this theme we will discuss the requirements of a community of practice where client confidentiality is key. The thinking being if we can correctly identify the requirements, we will then be able to identify a platform best suited to cross organizational boundaries.

A deliberate book review

I'm now an autodidact, and one of the ways I learn is to review books with a deliberate practice. The steps of my approach are as follows;

1. kick-start the brain - this means I read the table of contents, skim each chapter (very quickly), and examine each image in detail. I believe constructivism is how many of us learn, I am no exception. So when I undertake a learning task (like reviewing a book) I need to allow my brain to retrieve as much related information it can conjure to assist in my learning and relate it back to my previous learnings and knowledge.
2. read to seek understanding - every passage of text I read I develop an understanding of it. If this requires me to research the themes and topics in the passage of text, I do. I make notes, draw pictures, create concept maps to deepen my understanding...
3. write and reflect - when I have covered a reasonable amount of content I will write about my understanding with the intention of publishing to my blog. I will reflect upon my learning and my writing, and then review it for completeness and understandability.
4. edit then publish - I will usually leave the related blog post(s) unedited for a few days as I continue to reflect upon its content. I will the return to the post and make edits in preparation for its publishing. 
5. review - I will read most new blog posts a few times after their publishing. I will often make further edits where appropriate. During this review I will think about how its content relates to other reading I have since completed.
6. iterate - I will continue to read with purpose and continue with similar practices until the book is finished. Often I will have multiple blog posts underway as I read a book for the purpose of review.

For me this approach allows me to develop a deep understanding of a books content while contributing to the collective publishing platform known as the internet.