Teach Computer Science

I will look at how cognitive load theory (CLT) can help us to teach computer science and particularly coding. CLT is a theory of how we learn and gain knowledge. The principal character in this field is John Sweller who is an Australian educational psychologist. It took a while for his ideas to gain acceptance in the scientific community, but they are uncontroversial and are now filtering down to secondary schools in the UK, but more slowly than they perhaps should. CLT is important for teachers because it identifies the most effective teaching methods for learning. But before I write about CLT further I need to present a simple model for how human memory works. Memory is split into short term and long term memory. Short term memory has limited capacity and can hold between three and seven chunks of information. We are consciously aware of what we are holding in short term memory. Long term memory has unlimited capacity. For us to learn anything it first needs to be transferre...

It is a self-evident truth that the role of teachers is to facilitate student learning.  For students to learn anything there needs to be a change in their long-term memory ( Kirschner et al.,  2006 ).  The problem is that no one really understands what memory is or how to define it.  But undeterred I am nonetheless going to start with a simple model of how memory works and based on what we do know about memory I will then look at how spaced practice, low stakes testing and design of our curriculum can help with long-term memory retention. Simple model of memory There is a simple model of memory that splits memory into two components: long term memory and short term memory (Wallingham).  Our short term memory directly interacts with the environment through our senses and act as a kind of filter that determines what new learning needs to be stored in long term memory.  The problem with our short term memory is its capacity is rather limited (b...

I am currently in lockdown owing to the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the World.  It is apt therefore to present a model of epidemiology that shows how disease spreads through a population. Models of this type, but much more complex than the one presented here, are being used to inform national policies in order to reduce the devastating impact that the coronavirus is having on our societies. The model here is based on a very simple idea.  You have a population that starts off with a single individual who is infected with a virus and sets off the chain of infection.  That person then infects a number of other people according to the transmission rate (more on this later).  Those people then infect other people and so on. Initially the rate of growth of the number of people infected is exponential, that is a doubling of people with the disease for every round of infections, which demonstrates just how difficult it is to contain a virus once is has broken ou...