11 Mar '20
Reimagine Fellowship UK trip report
I was lucky enough to be able to spend most of February in the UK on a research visit as part of my Reimagine Fellowship—designing & delivering a “creative” coding extension course for ACT students in year 11 & 12.
It was a great trip, and has answered some of the questions that I had ahead of time, and more importantly has helped me pose better questions in the future. A few trip highlights:
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the International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC ‘20) was super-fun, performing at the conference Algorave was a nice chance to show off some of the more recent work in Extempore, being invited to run an Extempore workshop was an important chance to road test some of the “creative coding teaching materials” I’ll be rolling out next year through the c/c/c studio creative code outreach program
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hanging out with Sam Aaron (of Sonic Pi fame) to discuss ways to use creative coding as a diverse & inclusive pathway into computing, the architecture of livecoding languages/environments, and again making some music
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meeting with Simon Peyton Jones at MSR Cambridge to see how the grassroots Computing at School (CAS) organisation (of which he’s the chair) works to encourage, support and equip teachers of computing through a Community of Professional Practice, and to think about how we could provide similar support to teachers in the ACT (and Australia), especially in the context of providing creative code classroom resources & professional development opportunities
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Visiting Quintin Cutts and the Centre for Computing Science Education at Glasgow University to present & workshop ideas for the c/c/c studio outreach course, think strategically about building up our (ANU RSCS’s) capability in CS education research and partnering with them on improving the learning experience for all our existing students, and also attracting new and diverse students who might not consider studying CS at uni
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climbing Dumgoyne in a whiteout, emerging at the top just as the sun broke through the clouds to reveal a glorious view of the countryside, then falling on my arse on the way down and having to put my trousers in the dryer the night before flying out (as shown in the picture)
All of these folks will be important collaborators going forward as we put the creative code curriculum together (next deadline: documents for the ACT BSSS for accreditaion, due at the end of March). In addition, I’m speaking next week at the National Future Schools festival (with Bruce Fuda) on Teaching Code with Music and Teaching Music with Code, so if you’re in attendance you should come along and say hi.