Archive for the category “productivity”

01 Feb 2023

ChatGPT

The first SAC for VCE Software Development is to solve a series of programming challenges using a programming language and GUI. I pose a series of challenges to assess the students’ knowledge of the software.

This year I’m working with Python and PyQT6. When the whole ChatGPT conversation started up I thought I’d see how well the AI could complete my course.

It turns out, quite well!

So the first challenge is to create a simple program that takes three grades and has buttons for average, sum and one that tells you whether the students passed or failed.

I thought about the language and gave ChatGPT this prompt:

Aquinas College has requested that I develop a prototype reporting system using PyQT6 and Python 3.10. The GUI should take three scores (each out of 100) entered into a form. The form should also contain the following:

Sum button to display the sum of the three scores in a label when selected.

Average button to display the average of the three scores in a label when selected.

The program must ensure that data has been entered into all the score textboxes.

Pass/Fail button to display Pass if the sum of the scores is 150 or over, Fail to be displayed if the sum of the scores is less than 150, when clicked.

Clear button to clear all the textboxes and the label when selected.

Exit button for the user to exit the application when selected.

ChatGPT responded:

To implement the reporting system using PyQT6 and Python 3.10, follow these steps:

Create the GUI using PyQT6 library, add three textboxes for the scores, and five buttons for sum, average, pass/fail, clear and exit.
Connect the buttons with the appropriate functions using signals and slots mechanism.
For the sum button, implement a function that reads the values from the three textboxes, adds them and displays the result in a label.
For the average button, implement a function that reads the values from the three textboxes, calculates the average and displays the result in a label.
For the pass/fail button, implement a function that reads the values from the three textboxes, adds them and checks if the sum is 150 or over. If yes, display “Pass” in the label, otherwise display “Fail”.
For the clear button, implement a function that clears the textboxes and the label.
For the exit button, implement a function that closes the application.
Implement data validation for the three textboxes, to ensure that data has been entered into all the score textboxes.

This is a high-level overview of the steps to implement the reporting system. The actual implementation would require writing code and making use of PyQT6 and Python 3.10 features.

Cheeky me:

ChatGPT:

Yes, I can write the program for you. Here is an example code for the reporting system using PyQT6 and Python 3.10:

Lots of code later. I pasted into Python and ran it. It worked, but was a bit dodgy, so:

And it just worked!

I want to take this further. I could ask the AI to fiddle with the layout. I could try to add in images. I was going to ask it to add in internal documentation, but thought I’d given it enough to do.

I also want to have this conversation with the students. Explain that completing programming challenges in this way won’t help them learn the basics behind the code. But once they have the basics, this could be an awesome way to learn to debug code. It’s a great way for students to break down a problem (so they can give it to the ChatGPT).

I am actually excited about ChatGPT. We can only hope that it is an evolution for education rather than something the government/education departments just try to squash to keep the status quo.

I’m not overly optimistic:

Posted in conversation starters, curriculum, education, ICT, perryperrysource, productivity, School, STEAM, Teaching, tech tips and tagged AI, artificial intelligence, chatgpt, cheating, education, programmming | Leave a comment

26 Jul 2016

1 Comment

All the extra reality

pokehate Pokemon Go has polarised my Facebook feed. Half of my friends are right into it. The other half are groaning over the next Bulbasoar picture. I downloaded the app four days after it was released in Australia, got my wife and daughter hooked and haven’t looked back. I justify this because as the Head of IT at my school I need to know what’s popular in technology. I justify this because as a father, I am looking after my daughter’s health by increasing our exercise while hunting for new species of Pokemon.

I justify this because it’s a very engaging game with a strong community of followers. And it’s fun.

But it has brought to the forefront a conversation that I have been having for years about the value of AR and VR. That’s Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality for the uninitiated.

Dactyl Nightmare VR game from 1991

Virtual Reality is the replacement of our reality with another, complete, world. You wear a headset or a helmet and when you move your head, your virtual head moves as well so that you can look around. In the early nineties, this was going to be the next big thing. I spent hours in bulky armour carrying a pistol and shooting pterodactyls on the VR system at a games arcade. I did my major project for my Bachelor of Computing in VRML, replicating the (then) new Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre so that people could go on a virtual tour of the space.

VR and VRML were going to replace the Internet and television and movies would never be the same.

Fast forward twenty years. VRML is nowhere to be seen – a victim of optional plugins and varying standards. VR went into hibernation until the Occulus Rift dragged it kicking and growling from its den.

And now, twenty years after I foolishly specialised in online 3D navigation, we are finally ready to have the VR and AR conversation again.

At this year’s DLTV DigiCon, my favourite keynote speaker was Josh Caratelli, a game designer from Big Ant Studios. The point I took from his keynote was this: VR and AR are not the future of technology. Getting involved in this now isn’t early adoption. We should already be on top of this.

Oh, and holograms aren’t that far off either.

So, racing to catch up to where I was twenty years ago with my MSAC model and my exploding pterodactyls, how can I introduce/use AR and VR into our curriculum?

Here’s a couple of ideas:

Scavenger hunts

We have school tours come through on a pretty regular basis. We have Grade 5 Come and See programs where primary students spend the morning doing Year 7 subjects to get an idea of how the school works. We have orientation days and art exhibitions and parent information nights. If we could enhance the school using AR we’d save on paper and showcase the brilliance of our student modellers and programmers.

My plan:

I’ve made a list of things around the school that could easily be modelled. I’ll hand one of these to each of the students in my Year 8 Engineering and Design class. They’ll create these models. We export them into Aurasma – an excellent AR tool for IOS. We match them to their real life counterparts and as parents move through the school with the app open, 3D models will pop up, with the name of the student next to them. Instant exhibition space.

Exhibition Spaces

Speaking of which…

We have regular art exhibitions at the school. If a parent held their phone up to the picture, an information sheet with an explanation of the work, their photo and maybe some sketches could pop up on the screen to add information to the picture.

qr_code_without_logo Or we could go old school and instead of having the student’s name and homeroom, we simply have a QR code, which links to an online space with their production journal and concept art scanned in.

The boys would set up their own pages, demonstrating competency across a number of DigiTech areas.

Value added Literacy

Book-e-mon. Gotta read ‘em all.

When you use Aurasma on Small Gods, it will pop up a review.

AR book reviews

This is the slogan I want for Book Week this year. I’m going to have my class all create an image with a book review for their favourite book. Add in pictures and their names. And then put each of these into Aurasma. The teachers can do the same. As students return and review books, the librarian can check to see if the book is one of the enhanced versions and if it is, the student wins a prize.

In the near future:

Other possibilities would be having a Microsoft Hololens when they finally come out. The Arts department could run virtual sculpturing sessions. We could add AR instructions to woodwork classes. Minecraft club would suddenly be a LOT more interesting.

I’d also take a look at the new HP Sprout.

And that’s just Augmented Reality. What about replacing reality altogether?

VR

In Year 10 we run VET Creative Industries in partnership with the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. We also run Game Design, using Game Maker and Unreal Engine. My plan is to get hold of a HTC Vive system and start building models that we can import into that virtual world. I’d get the boys to recreate the school and run virtual paintball sessions created by the more active Game Design classes. We could run virtual tours of the school.

Enhancement and Acceleration

All this extra reality is a great way to enhance our educational possibilities. AR and VR give the students opportunities to excel beyond the regular curriculum restrictions. Posters could become multimedia extravaganzas. Teachers could walk through a real life recreation of an Egyptian pyramid. We could split the atom in Science without blowing up half of the school.

I think the other big point I took away from this year’s DigiCon is that we need to stop limiting our students and instead let them learn in the best way for them. The other thing I learned is that I have a LOT still left to learn.

Posted in conversation starters, curriculum, Differentiation, education, ICT, perryperrysource, productivity, tech tips and tagged AR, augmented, digicon, future, occulus rift, virtual, VR, vrml

03 Aug 2015

Digicon15

DLTV DigiCon 15 (the #digicon15 summaries)

Twitter is a marvellous beast. We can only go to one session in every slot during a conference, but thanks to Twitter (and the teachers using it) I have resources from dozens of sessions that I couldn’t make.

Over the two days, we discussed a number of technology issues and heard from some very clever and entertaining educators. I’m going to philosophise about a few things and post some links about the things we found out as I try to unpack all of the information shoved willy nilly into my brain. Please feel free to add to/dispute any of the information I place on here. And enjoy.

First up, something I picked up from my first VITTA conference: Storify. I typed digicon15 into the search bar, pressed SHOW MORE about a hundred times and then stuck all 2000 tweets into a storify article. From that point, I could start to order what happened over the two days and create:

https://storify.com/DamianPerry/dltv15#publicize

WHAT I LEARNED DURING DIGICON 2015.

Teachers in general are a risk-averse bunch. And fair enough – we are providing a product to parents and we are accountable for our stuff-ups to a number of different groups. However, technological innovation is all about risk taking. And surprisingly, people rarely die from taking risks in this arena. So go for it.

Similarly, we are scared of letting our students take risks. But we need to relax and let them free. Just make sure you’re a member of the union first. Wrapping your students in bubble wrap means that they are ill-equipped to deal with the outside world.

Don’t tell your kids “Be risk takers!” and then “…but don’t do this because you might get hurt!” Schools have too many rules. Set them free. If they fail, if they get hurt, they’ve learned something and will do better next time.

On the subject of failure, Anne Edmonds performed for us. She’s a very funny comedian and she extolled the virtues of failure as a learning device. Risk and failure = success (eventually). But only if you learn from your failures and don’t let them beat you down.

Hamish Curry played games for us, ate a banana on stage and was from that point on part of #bananagate, which I still don’t completely understand. During his keynote, the sales of Duet, Paper Fox and Monument Valley shot through the roof.

When you’re planning lessons, Corrie Barclay (@CorrieB) introduced us to the 3 Russian Brothers and their cousin:

Morov, Lessov, Ridov and Tossin.

What do you do that works that you can do more of (Morov)?

What do you need to do less of (Lessov)?

What do you need to completely get rid of (Ridof)?

What else can you toss in (Tossin)?

He made some excellent points about authentic assessment and enquiry learning. His Doomsday website shows what students can come up with when they aren’t limited by teacher expectations.

The philosophy of being a teacher came up over and over. One of the better quotes that popped up on the screen during keynotes and Spark events was: There is no such a thing as a teacher or a student; there are only co-learners. Especially in IT, we learn as much from our students as we teach them, and the successful teacher is the one that is willing to take the new on board and have a student explain it.

As for the venue, Swinburne is a great place to hold a conference. The wi-fi was flawless, which is usually where these days fall down. The food was delicious and plentiful. Winthrop provided us with free “real” coffee for the two days. And apart from getting up way too early on a Saturday morning, the public transport was a doddle.

And I reinvigorated my company pen collection:

Specifics

ICT v Digital Technologies

My instructions

Digital Technologies = Producer. ICT = Consumer

In one of our sessions, we made the distinction between DigiTech and ICT by making paper planes. I had to make a plane, write down the instructions, post the instructions to Twitter. Then I found instructions from someone else and followed their instructions to make a plane myself. Digital Technologies involves the creation of a product. ICT involves using a product that someone else has created. This activity allowed us to do both.

Implementing Digital Technologies presents the age-old problem of where to stick it. Do we create a separate Digi-Tech class at a year level? Or do we break it up and stick it into a number of different classes?

The instructions I had to follow.

Technological Innovation

I attended a session about getting students out of school using technology. The idea is that one a couple of days each year, or semester, whatever the school is comfortable with, the students stay home from school and the teachers present classes digitally. There are a great number of reasons why this would be a good idea. Just as many reasons not to do it, especially in our risk-averse teaching society. But it’s an interesting concept.

The teachers at Nossal High School send their students home twice a year for a school free day. The teachers timetabled on for that day teach their regular period via online teaching. They use webcasting, pre-recorded content and online assessment to present and assess their classes.

This was a daunting task for a number of teachers, but through collegiality, a bit of courage and a good implementation plan, the program worked – and continues to work – well.

I’m not saying that we should all send our students home for the day twice a year – I think our parents specifically would have a kitten over the idea – but there is definitely merit in using a collegiate approach to upskilling the teachers in our schools and getting them to embrace technology. Maybe a Digital Day twice a year where students take classes digitally at school. Something to think about.

Coding

I didn’t make it to any of the coding sessions, but I got a great deal of feedback from the other teachers from my school, as well as a friend of mine and of course the multitudes of Tweets.

Some of the better results:

Coding = repetitive failing until you get something that works. – @rissL

Programming, or “coding”, is simply making a list of instructions and having them executed.

I saw someone “coding” a human being. This sounds like a great introduction to the concept.

3D

A 3D scanned me.

The 3D offerings at DigiCon15 were phenomenal. The ideas I saw put forward will completely change the way I run the curriculum next year. There’s too much to go into here, so I’ll put up a separate blog post on the subject (and link to it when I’m done).

Questions without answers

How can we shape lesson and curriculum design that keeps us as teachers engaged, creative and innovative? – @CorrieB

So many benefits for teaching students the Arts. How can we make schools value this more? – @wongmichy

Links

Corrie’s session: Redesigning Curriculum for the 21^st Century.

DigiCon15 on Youtube

And finally, the teachers at Northern Bay being superheroes for the sake of education:

Posted in conversation starters, education, ICT, perryperrysource, productivity, tech tips and tagged computers, DLTV, flipped classrooms, innovation, programming, risk, technology | Leave a comment

09 Jun 2015

Break the Shackles of Badge Oppression

This is my games folder. It goes on a bit. This is my work iPad. I don’t see a problem with having a games folder on my work iPad. Of course, I’m an adult rather than a teenager with all of the impulse control of Winnie the Pooh at the Barnes Honey factory.

But games in themselves aren’t the problem. Time management is the problem. There have been times, dark times, when I was ruled by the little red badge on the games icon. Or on the Facebook icon. The little red badge and the drop down notification bar were my masters and I pandered to their every will. ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY RED BADGE!

I’m better now.

We are humans. We are not ruled by the robots. That is still coming. For now, we are the ones that should be in charge of the little “smart” phones and other devices we own, not the other way around. To that end, I say:

Take charge! Invade their homes, find the evil time-suckers and kill them and their smug little red, round, everlasting requests for attention.

No, I don’t mean your kids. I mean that there are very few apps on your device that have a legitimate claim to your immediate attention. The rest can wait until you choose to open them and have a look.

Do this, if you are in possession of an iDevice:

Go to Settings. Click on Notifications
Choose a particularly annoying app.
Strip it of all of its power.

Honestly, on your iPad, you might need to know when someone has sent you a Mail. You possibly have a valid reason for knowing that someone has sent you an iMessage. Beyond that, the iPad needs to get its grubby mitts off your life.

It’s time. Time to take back your life. Throw off the red circles of iPad oppression! Break the bars of Banners. Tell Homer Simpson and the Smurfs to get back in their boxes. You’ll get to them when you’re good and ready.

Your homework: go through your apps list in the Notification Center. Decide, with all seriousness, how many of these apps need notifications. And turn as many of them off as you possibly can.

Enjoy your newfound free time.

Posted in ICT, productivity, tech tips and tagged apple, badge, banner, ipad, iphone, notifications, red badge | Leave a comment

Finding Damo

The story of a man, his job, two cats and the meaning of success.