Don't call this a computer class.

After nearly 12 years of teaching a computer and tech class, it's turning into something else. What me worry?

Over the past five years, my computer class has cruised down so many other avenues and off-ramps, I sometimes wonder if I should rebrand it as a communications class. Or hey - a Kickstarter lab.

Sure, I’m being slightly flippant. But this struck me as I was grading my finals this week, wrapping things up. With about 125 students across six classes I’ve been to (a) Reading/grading their eBooks (b) Mixing down and uploading a slew of class podcasts More on this in a bit (c) Planning a photography 101 class on the last day of school. That, in addition to teaching keyboarding, and discussing relevant news each week whether it’s cybersecurity or crypto. Or the usual, abhorrent social media’s hiccups we charitably call ‘teachable moments.’

Keyboarding used to be a big focus in most computer labs. It still is something we do teach. But we use keyboards for so much more now. Than this:

This picture, from 1923 is how ladies at the BBC were trained to be ‘secretaries.’ They moved on, and up past being type-writers.

Fun fact: One of them was a lady named Margaret Douglas, who ended up being a stellar TV producer, political advisor, and assistant Director General of the BBC. She was someone I had a chance to ‘interview’ for a radio show during my training there. I recalled this as I was pondering on how we must move students away from ‘hardware’ (and mechanical skills) into leadership roles.

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THIS WEEK, FOR A FUNZIE PROJECT I asked if there were any takers who’d try their hand at podcasting. I didn’t expect the hands that went up - ending with 19 podcasts! (Last year I had about 10).

Here are the topics: One on screen Time, a ‘History Nerds’ podcast, Global pollution, Books, Secrets Of The Amazon, Symphony Wars, Is Dance a Sport?, Economics Breakdown, a show discussing J.K. Rowling’s Genius, Life of The Black Widow, Akinator, Wrestling, Game-show, a show about the Rubik’s Craze, and one on the Charger Lifestyle (our school culture), and Sports.

This fired me up to make it a subject of my class podcast - Radio201.

I gave them an exit survey about their experience in my class. Here’s what they said to one question. I use the exit survey each year to tweak my curriculum, or adjust how much weight I give to a unit.

THEN THERE’S A HUGE INTEREST IN DESIGN. I had given them a logo design challenge - to recreate a popular logo using only a Google Slide. (No Photoshop of graphics lifted off Google images.) Here’s how one student responded. Mind you, on just a Google slide using the shapes tool.

How in the world did a 13-year old achieve this? Especially getting the gradient? She said she looked up the gradient number, and then plugged it into the gradient field when choosing colors in the shapes tool. I hadn’t realized that there was a published gradient in Instagram’s brand guidelines. (I subsequently found it here.)

Now this is what creativity looks like. Not just teaching them to produce cool ad campaigns, or snarky memes. This is what makes teaching so rewarding.

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THEN THERE’S THE EBOOKS, a capstone project. Reading through 125 eBooks is grueling. Also rewarding! I learn from them. I just found out about about Beatboxing and Barrel Racing. Here’s one of those exquisitely designed and well written eBooks. I will be uploading links to the best eBooks here, shortly.

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AND TO END ON A LIGHTER NOTE, here’s something worth analyzing. How to tell a story with just two images. I recommend turning up your speakers.