Why write for Hello World?

Have you ever considered writing for Hello World magazine? Do you have an idea, experience, or opinion you want to share? In our final episode of season 5, James and Gemma are joined by three experienced writers of Hello World articles to discuss the various benefits, motives and tips for sharing experiences in Hello World.

Full show notes:
https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/articles/why-write-for-hello-world

Transcript

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Sway Grantham: 0:02

Now it's really hard to know what you're passionate about when you're looking at a blank page going, let's be inspired!

Ben Hall: 0:07

Teachers who are in the classroom now, please please please do reach out and offer to write Hello World.

Josh Crossman: 0:12

I know not everyone is lucky enough to have someone as enthusiastic as Sway to support.

Sway Grantham: 0:16

Not everyone wants to write but that doesn't mean they don't have something to share.

James Robinson: 0:23

Welcome back to Hello World, a podcast for educators, interested in Computing, and digital making. I'm James Robinson Computing educator and occasional Hello World contributor.

Gemma Coleman: 0:33

And I'm Gemma Coleman. I'm the editor of Hello World magazine. Thank you for inviting me back, James, thought you'd never ask.

James Robinson: 0:41

Well, it's been a little while, we thought we'd give you another go Gemma.

Gemma Coleman: 0:45

Do you remember that if you have any comments, feedback, questions, fan mail, you can get in touch at helloworld.cc/podcastfeedback.

James Robinson: 0:55

For our final episode of this season.

We wanted to sit down with some regular Hello World contributors and ask: 0:57

Why should I write for Hello World? Now Gemma I think you're well placed to share why you think our listeners and broader community of Educators should want to write for Hello World. Why do you think our existing contributors do it?

Gemma Coleman: 1:15

For most people I think it's as simple as wanting to share a really great idea that they've got with the community. I think over the last few years of working with Computing Educators, I've learned that they're a pretty friendly bunch and they all know what it's like to be navigating you know what's still a newer kind of subject which perhaps as a bit less support in their in their school or whatever their context is. So I think that's largely what motivates a lot of our contributors but something else that I've heard quite a lot for others is that some people find writing an article a really effective way to reflect on their own practice. You know it's a chance to sit down and really look at an approach and critically analyse it which isn't something that you're necessarily always going to be doing, you know, looking at, you know what went right about this. What went wrong. What would I do differently next time? You know, it's a really kind of useful exercise, putting that down.

James Robinson: 2:18

Forces you to reflect doesn't it I think. Yeah.

Gemma Coleman: 2:20

Yeah, exactly. And it. Yeah, that might just be something you're used to doing, you know, once a year or whatever. But this is a real, really good chance to, you know, just sit down properly and be able to share that with share that with someone who doesn't necessarily know all the ins and outs of something that you've tried out. And yeah, I'm sure having your name and face printed in our world-class magazine doesn't hurt either.

James Robinson: 2:47

No, absolutely.

Gemma Coleman: 2:49

But we have three fantastic guests, joining us today who are probably better placed at answering that question. Sway, Josh and Ben welcome to the podcast. You've all had you all have experience of writing for Hello World, particularly from a primary perspective which is the next the theme of our next issue that wasn't planned at all, so why don't you guys introduce yourselves?

Sway Grantham: 3:18

Hi, I'm Sway. I was a primary school teacher for almost a decade. I claim the decade, but it's actually rounding up. And I now lead the team at Raspberry Pi on content and training for teachers around the world in Computing education. And I also write a lot for Hello World and have done since it started.

Josh Crossman: 3:40

Hi, I'm Josh. I am a program coordinator at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. I was a primary school teacher for around four years whilst leading Computing for three of those years. I've contributed a few articles now, one upcoming which we might mention later on as well.

Ben Hall: 4:00

Hiya, I'm Ben like Sway and Josh I was also a primary school teacher for my, in my case, about eight years. And for most of that time, I was Computing coordinator as well. I actually specialised in teaching Computing towards the end of my teaching career. I'm a learning manager at Raspberry Pi. So I'm responsible for development of content so things like lessons, lesson resources, lesson plans and also online courses as well.

Gemma Coleman: 4:28

Well, welcome all of you and it sounds like you're all very busy people. So how do you find time to write for the magazine? What is it that's motivating you to continue to write for us? Sway, do you want to start seeing as you're a super regular contributor?

Sway Grantham: 4:45

Yes. I mean I think you suggested about reflection, and I've always felt that that was an easy an easy way in to do it. But I think the bigger question is, how do you fit it in your life? Particularly when I was still teaching and trying to juggle everything that I was doing and I often I saw it as an opportunity to start a conversation. So I would write something and then people would follow up on Twitter and again, always very friendly but saying oh I read this and it made me think of this and it would kind of lead to these other projects and these other things that I could get involved in. Nowadays, it's also a platform for me in the role I've got I hear from a lot of teachers and often they have questions and when someone asks it to me, I think huh. It'd be good if I could tell more than one person. How can I do that and then I go and see Gemma and she let's me turn it into an article and answer that question for everyone and that kind of gives me that opportunity to speak to a wider audience and then reduce my work. So they don't all individually email us which is great.

Gemma Coleman: 5:45

Very cunning. And Josh, I know you often write articles with Sway. So what, apart from Sway telling you, right you're going to write an article with me now, what is it that drives you to write for the magazine.

Josh Crossman: 6:01

Yeah, no, I think as Sway mentioned and yourself a lot of it is down to reflection. It's about the practice that we have when were in the classroom. But it's also about what we're doing now. And, you know, the work that we are doing with the curriculum and other bits within the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It's just an, it's a way to share that widely and that practice widely. And I think, you know, being able to write with someone who has written so many and you know, is a regular contributor has been really helpful for me and my development in that situation as well.

James Robinson: 6:37

I think that's really interesting as well because I think we've had a really, like busy few years here at the foundation producing, lots of other content and so being able to kind of step back and reflect on what we've learned through developing that content is a really valuable opportunity as well. Ben what does it mean for you? Why do you write for the magazine?

Ben Hall: 6:58

Yeah there's some similar messages to to that which we've already heard. It's a really good opportunity to kind of write outside the kind of confines of our day-to-day job. So when you're writing curriculum, you very much kind of, you know, writing to a set of fairly fixed parameters, but write for the magazine you can be a bit more creative, chuck in a bit more opinion. I do like writing opinion pieces. In terms of sort of finding the time to do it. I'm lucky that I'm really well supported by the organisation. So, writing Hello World articles is in my objectives. That's not the reason I do, but it is and that means that I have the time allocated to actually do it. And I think that's really important. You have to give yourself time to write. It's not something you should look at as a task, which you do on top of everything else. It's for me, part of my job.

Gemma Coleman: 7:48

Yeah. And I think people can see it as part of their, well, I hope people can see it as part of almost as like a professional development thing, where, you know, it's a really good practice to be reflecting and it's a really good practice to be connecting with the community. So, you know, it's a really nice chance to do this and hopefully hopefully when you start writing, people enjoy it. I mean I hope you guys enjoy the writing process.

James Robinson: 8:12

They just do it so they get to talk to you on a regular basis, that's what it is. That's what is it.

Gemma Coleman: 8:15

I am lovely to work with. I am a delight, so.

James Robinson: 8:20

Ben you mentioned there in your comment that you quite like writing kind of opinion pieces and I wonder if across the you know the group of you whether you have preferences for the types of things you like to write about or the style of things you like to write. Maybe Sway because you've written a number of pieces now. Do you have a preference for what you write about?

Gemma Coleman: 8:41

I know the answer.

Sway Grantham: 8:45

Well we'll see if I if I say what you think. I think with generally I'd go with, write what you're passionate about is the easiest thing. Now, it's really hard to know what you're passionate about. When you're looking at a blank page going let's be inspired and you just can't, but usually it's something where I really agree with and I want to get more people involved in a conversation and aware of it. So often for me that falls into primary, I've got something coming up on EYFS which we'll talk about more in a bit. But also in terms of areas of computing, you talk about less. There's very few articles I've written on programming not because I don't love programming, I do. But everyone else writes about programming and I feel that there are other areas that I could offer inspiration and insights to. Other things I try and do is if it's relevant to the time. If there's been something that we've been really talking about or working on, that's really just pertinent that let's not make extra work for ourselves. If I've already had ten conversations this week about progression, I could just write that down and I've gained an article. So it's really important for me to kind of do something like excited about, definitely, but also do something that is relevant to the work I'm doing and not to add it on as like an extra thing I got to make time to do because I've already got all these great people that I can talk to and work with and get their ideas.

James Robinson: 10:00

Josh, how many you've written what your third article recently something like that.

Josh Crossman: 10:05

I'm becoming a reg regular contributor over the past few issues which is which is nice. I think I don't necessarily have a specific topic that I like to write about. I think for me, it's all based on the personal experience I have from from the classroom. My most recent article is around the turning it off and on again, was the actual title of something along those lines. And, you know, it's just that experience of being in a classroom and having people bug you as the Computing lead for have if they have questions or they can't get something to work and they interrupt your lessons a little bit. And I think that, that sort of, you know, motivated me to write a little about that. And why turning it off and on again works and why it should be the first go-to thing to do. So I think you know it's just areas of personal experience I've got from the classroom and just you know bits that I've had other people's perspectives on also really helps just you know listening to the team that I work in. They've all got such good ideas such as you know, brilliant subject knowledge that it's really easy to then assimilate some of that knowledge and start disseminating it into an article of some kind.

Gemma Coleman: 11:19

I think what I really loved about the last article that you wrote Josh I've got it up on my screen here. It's have you tried turning it off and on again that's the official title. I think what I really enjoyed about that one, you know the kind of process of working with you on that is when you initially message me about it, you said I'm only going to need one page and you know, I'm not really sure how much I've got to say. And then all of a sudden I'm having to cut it down because you've written so much and I think that happens all the time is people think you know when they first got that blank page in front of them they think oh God how am I going to make it up to the word count of, you know, you know, 500 words, one page and then all of a sudden they start writing and they've just got so many ideas that they're trying to get down and fizzing with kind of excitement and passion. So I think that really feeds into what Sway said about, if you write about something that you're passionate about that's a really easy in.

James Robinson: 12:18

Passion doesn't necessarily have to mean, it doesn't have to be like a really positive thing but you could almost argue that, So Josh is article is almost kind of born out of a, this is really frustrating but actually there's a really positive and constructive message in there that actually. Yeah. And so I think it's like that that passion doesn't have to be like this is really exciting. It could be. I really hate this. I need to share it with the world.

Gemma Coleman: 12:45

Those are my favourite articles to edit, you know? So keep doing them.

Sway Grantham: 12:50

On that as well. Like, you know, when you get really passionate and you do regularly over go the word limit, that's why Gemma's great because she can help you with that part. You don't need to spend hours and hours and days of your life trying to get it within the word limit like get there as close as you can and have a conversation. And I think that final bit could be the hardest where you're like, well I've got most of it but trying to work out how to kind of finish it off or form it. And it's really great to have that opportunity and I don't think it's just available for staff, I'm pretty sure anyone can reach out and be like...

Gemma Coleman: 13:20

Oh definitely.

Sway Grantham: 13:21

This is where I've got to like either some guidance on next steps. Or where would you take it, or can you help me cut it down and then have like a bit more of a collaborative process around that?

Gemma Coleman: 13:30

Yeah, I think that's something that I really try and stress is so many people have wonderful ideas, amazing things that they've done in the classroom that I really would love them to share in an article. And I, you know, sometimes when I approach people, they say, oh, but I'm not a writer or, you know, I'm rubbish with grammar. I wouldn't know how to do that, and, you know, that's not for you to worry about that. That's my part of the job. I'll do all the kind of apostrophes and, you know, looking a bit with structure and stuff like that. But the, you know, the most important thing is that you have, you know, you have the idea, you want to share something and just reaching out and, you know, we can have an initial chat a bit like, you know, we're having this nice little chat now and it's just a bit like that I'm, everyone can be a writer especially when you are teaching you're writing all the time. You're writing reports and you're writing feedback and your writing lesson plans. So writing an article is not actually that much more scary especially when you've got you know some, a support system in place with the way that we kind of run that process.

Ben Hall: 14:41

Yeah, I would urge. First of all I'd urge teachers not to bother writing lesson plans because they can use the Computer Curriculum. But I would really stress that teachers who are in the classroom now. Please please, please do reach out and offer to write for Hello world because, you know, I'm conscious myself that I'm over four years now out of the classroom. So a lot of things I write now, are kind of things to do with how things have changed during that period but not necessarily relating it directly back to classroom practice because I don't have that recent experience. There's a couple of things I've written recently. One was how cloud computing will sort of reshape the way that we teach networking because a lot of the stuff now you can't see it, there's no, the physical devices aren't so obvious because they're in a server Farm somewhere in the middle of California, or something, or where ever. And then also, I'm writing a piece for the next issue of Hello World, which is around the reliability of content online and that's a really kind of quickly shifting subject at the moment with things like chat GPT coming along where, you know, there's AI generated content which just makes that whole issue completely different and as someone who has sort of Stepped Back From the classroom, I can sort of take a wide view on things like that. So so yeah if you are in the classroom please please, please do write for the magazine.

Gemma Coleman: 16:05

Yeah and I think we want it's interesting to hear from people with different levels of experience as well. Like it's great to read articles from teachers who have been in the classroom for years, you know and have all this knowledge that they can share, but it's also really wonderful to get articles from people who are newer to the classroom or who, perhaps don't have that, you know, that specialist Computing background. And that's that's what this next issue is all going to be about really, is there'll be a range of different experiences of primary teachers. So, you know, we're hoping to hear from a lot of people that don't have that, that Computing background and how that affects their teaching. And the things that they've learnt because everyone has something really useful that they can share with others and know that there's other people in the exact same position as them. That really want to know how they've dealt with something. So I think, I think that's the thing as well to say is that the magazine should be written and read by people of all different, kind of levels of experience and knowledge in the Computing education world. So, don't let don't let that put you off if you haven't been in the classroom, for years and years.

James Robinson: 17:20

We've touched a little bit in there, as well on sort of like process. And I know that like, I've written a number of pieces for Hello World but mostly for the recent Big books, Gemma. I don't, I think the before that, I don't think I've had many pieces that I've written and had like, you know, a byline by me but because I find the process where I find it quite hard and I wonder whether, you know, and that's a very personal thing. I find it quite hard to commit words to the page sometimes but what are other people's processes look like for writing? Sway.

Sway Grantham: 17:55

So I'm going to tell you about two different routes I go, because sometimes I just don't have time to write a piece myself. And so one of the things I really like to do is find someone else who has all these ideas in their head and get them to no, do all the work. No that's not true. But basically I think one Avenue I go down is not everyone wants to write but that doesn't mean they don't have something to share. And I think it's a really nice combination that I can write it down, but sometimes I haven't had the time to do The Upfront. So that process very much looks like me finding someone who is interested in the same kind of topic or area that I'm interested in and saying, let's have a call let's have a bit of a chat. Download your brain into, like, just say it out loud and I'll make some notes and I'll start just writing down anything on that topic. And then that will lead to lots of different Avenues. And this massive thing that we couldn't possibly, write Because there's too much there. Then what I tend to do, as I start to refine it and I start to chunk it and be like, oh, would you put this here? Oh you would you think this would be here? Okay, you put that up there. You move this down there and we very much get to a stage that I have a page of bullet points, but is an article. And then, my job is to take that and I spent very little time, just writing them in full sentences and then check with the person and they generally might offer a bit of feedback might be like, oh, you could have used this example in there, which is great. But suddenly there's an article written and actually, neither of us have felt the process to be this long thing or that we spent loads of time on. So that's kind of one way. And I really like writing that way and I try and find different people to work with. The other one is if it's just me doing it by myself, where I generally go to Gemma and I'm like I have these ideas because I always start there because you don't know what everyone else is writing. And so I'm like these are all the cool things I want to write about like which one seems like a good direction for me to start thinking in and I get to a bit. And I start with just huh, What does this mean? And I start putting four bullet points in like, I've achieved, I've got four bullet points, basically nailing it and then I'll be like, okay, let's put eight. Can we extend that what's a bit more detail about that thing? What's a bit more detail about that thing? And we've really got into the process of spending lots of time planning as in lots of time being more than the two minutes that you might usually spend thinking about it before you write it, because you're busy people. And so, maybe 10-15 minutes of just keep adding bullet points with more and more detail, wiggle things around so that they're in nice little chunks and then you just take each chunk and turn it into one paragraph and then, if you need to go away and come back to it because got a pile of books to mark or something, you can go away and come back and just pick the next section and write the next paragraph. And then you do a read-through at the end to make sure it's nice and cohesive and stick your introduction on the top and your conclusion on the end. And without having to go right blank page to written article. You have developed an article or at least that's how I work. I don't know if everyone else does it that way. But that works for me.

Gemma Coleman: 20:49

And I also think with that first process, that you mentioned, where you're doing it quite collaboratively, even if it doesn't turn out to be an article in the end, you haven't wasted your time there. You've had a really useful chat with someone and you've unpicked some ideas and maybe it's led to another piece of work completely separate from this. But I don't think time spent, you know, unpicking an approach that you've taken or an idea you have is ever going to be wasted time.

Sway Grantham: 21:17

It also makes room in your brain for new things because then you've got it, you haven't got to remember it all or think about why do we make this decision? Why do we do it this way? It's downloaded to the paper and then you can add new things to fill up your brain.

James Robinson: 21:33

What about Josh and Ben do your process is look the same? Wildly different? What's what does it look like for you?

Josh Crossman: 21:39

Well, I mean, it's, there's similarities, right? And I think, you know, we, we spent a lot of time together as a team thinking about these writing Sprint's that we have some time to as Sway was saying, we have some time to plan, ten, ten or so minutes to really think about what we're going to write to be really intentional about that and then we just set off, you know, 40 minutes, we're not doing it together, but we all doing it sort of roughly around the same time. We've all had that sort of thinking time together, 40 minutes, just to write, it doesn't matter what that looks like. It doesn't matter how that comes out. It's just about getting those ideas down on the page, in some, some format. And then sort of thinking about how we move onto to edit that in a future, sort of timeframe that way in a similar vein to what Sway was saying. We've taken all of that stuff in our head. We've popped it on all on a page, and we can just come back to that and start looking at how that fits together and the cohesiveness around that. And I think for me that's been really, really helpful. That's, you know, that's probably my preferred sort of writing method at this point. Because it is just, it feels collaborative, but it's not necessarily working directly with somebody else and I think that's really nice.

Gemma Coleman: 22:56

And it's quick, I guess as well. It's not taking up a huge amount of your of your time if you've kind of boxed it to one side. Yeah.

Sway Grantham: 23:03

I think there's a there's an added thing with the writing sprints that I found as well, is that So we have a an allotted time in the calendar. Like we all know when that's going to happen as opposed to like sometime in the future when I got some spare time and also there's an accountable a friendly accountability, shall we say, in that we all write our own things but during the same kind of timeframe which just feels that bit that you don't feel like you're completely alone and you actually don't nudge it along. You're like, you know what, let's spend an hour after we've done this thing and just get some writing down. Get it done. And, you know, no one's going to come back and tell you off if you didn't do it. But you just know everyone else is doing it and it makes you make the time and not not prioritise something else.

Ben Hall: 23:48

Yeah, and I would stress that if you do this approach, which also works really well for me, quite often, I'd find getting started difficult, but using the Sprint approach that the planning stage is really important and use that time to plan. Inevitably by the end of that process, I've got the outline of an article done in the first 10 minutes, but yeah commit to it. So, turn off all your notifications. Ignore your emails, ignore your slack, or whatever it is you use, turn your phone off and commit that...

Gemma Coleman: 24:17

Rent a cottage...

Ben Hall: 24:18

... 40 minutes.

Gemma Coleman: 24:18

...I'm just imagining you like gazing out to the sea.

James Robinson: 24:22

Ben likes to use an old-fashioned typewriter to draft his articles.

Ben Hall: 24:28

So commit to it basically is the thing and don't have like massively high expectations about what the first draft is going to be Like, it's better to have stuff down on the page than have nothing at all. I kind of differ a little bit to Sway where I think that for me, I tend to like, writing first and then collaborating with others afterwards when I've got something written down, but that's just kind of a personal thing. So I'd like to get something down before I start talking about it. But yeah, it's very sort of personal individual process but I have found Sprints, really useful.

James Robinson: 25:04

I think it seems like a process as well, that could be relative, you know, relatively easily adapted to that to a school setting, you know, taking some time out of a staff meeting or a team meeting to do something that isn't book looks, and, and data, and all those kind of things. But to kind of say, actually like this term, what would you like to reflect on? What could you share? What could you write about is really really good. And you think saying, I think I was just reflecting as Ben was talking there, I think one of the my personal kind of approach to some of this writing is that I'll often might, I have to, I start with something blank and then I get something done and I send it to somebody else to read, and then once it's done, I'm like, it's done. I'm not very good at the redrafting process necessarily. So I can see a Sprint kind of being quite useful because starting with like a crib of what I'm going to write and then just sitting down and bashing the thing out and then handing it off to somebody else to kind of do the editing and the, because I, yeah, I get bored quite easily. I like to move on.

Gemma Coleman: 26:09

I also think that once you've got a first draft even if that is, you know, bullet bullet points. I feel like you have done most of the work. When you've done that first draft, I very rarely do more than one set of kind of feedback. So generally, I will get a first draft in. I'll do my edits and comments, send it back and then the person works on it. Sends it back in. Then that's generally it, because my kind of role in this is that I'll read your first draft however Kind of polished or unpolished, that is. And then I will add in all of those kind of comments, where I'm saying. Can you just expand on this a bit more? Could you give an example here? You know, what does that mean? Could you just unpick that for us a little bit? So that's, you know, that that is part of the process is you're going to have an, you know? However, perfect your first draft feels, I will always have some comments so it's, you know, it's never going to be this perfect finished thing once you've just sat down for, you know, half an hour, 40 minutes, whatever it is, and written your ideas down. So I always try and urge people if they're thinking I, you know, I've got some ideas down, but I'm not quite ready to share it, just share it with me and I can I can give a bit of feedback and hope you know or give it to a colleague for example and get some feedback from them. And you know, if you're having somebody else reading what you're writing, it can just give you that little bit of inspiration. It's it is all about the process, really, I think that's, that's the reflection kind of part of it. And that's where you reap the benefits of doing something like this.

Ben Hall: 27:51

Yeah, something outside the scope of computing here. And I don't know if it's relevant for this podcast, but I'm going to say it anyway. So this has interesting implications of the way we teach writing for young people, because quite often we'll see, I can remember when I was in the classroom, you'd say, you know this is a really important piece of writing and it's got to be really, really good. And you wonder why children stare at a blank page thinking that don't know where to start and maybe that maybe we're missing a trick. So you know, just get some ideas down and then we'll look at the redrafting, just that just a thought.

Gemma Coleman: 28:20

Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And I do also have a, like, a little template that I sometimes share with people that, you know, is a very basic obviously not all articles are going to work like this but I have sort of boxes that people can write in that say, right, here's your idea. Now, I want you to talk about the benefits of this, the challenges of this. How you overcame this now? Now can you share some top tips? You know, that you can have a really that can be a very basic sort of outline that generally works for most pieces. So if you're, if you've got an idea, but you're not really sure how to structure it and how to get started. You can just get in touch and I can kind of help with that, but that's a really nice way of doing it just thinking well you know what's going to be useful for a reader? I'd probably like to hear what went well, what didn't go so well what are your tips? Did you use any particularly interesting tools? You know that those those kind of things and very quickly you find that you've got four or five paragraphs and you know, you're away.

James Robinson: 29:24

And we've mentioned a couple of times like how people can get in touch and they can what you know, work with you Gemma, but what we probably haven't done is, so how do we start this process? If I have an idea or a teacher listening to this or, you know, someone in the,

you know, in our audience, listens to this and thinks: 29:36

I want to, I want to write, how, where do they start? How do they get in touch? Where do they share their idea?

Gemma Coleman: 29:44

So we've got a lovely little form that you can fill out at helloworld.cc/writeforus. It's very quick and easy and it's not you're not committing yourself to something, if you change your mind. But you basically just fill in you know your name, how I can get in touch with you and then what your idea is and it can be as basic as you know, I want to write something about my coding Club, you know, it can literally be that and then I can get in touch and say, okay, well, you know what kind of things are you interested in talking about? And that's how we start a conversation over email and, you know, very often, I will set up you know, if somebody wants to actually talk to me, not through email. You know, I've set up calls before, if somebody wants to, you know, bounce some ideas off. But that is the the starting point. It's literally just writing, you know, here's what I'd like to write about. Here's how you get in touch with me and you know, it begins and sometimes that process can take a long time, you know, sometimes somebody might have an idea and then say, actually I'm really busy now, and I'm not gonna be able to come back to this for a few months or this, this is going to take me five months to write, because I've only got this much time and there's lots of stuff going on in my life and that's absolutely fine. You know, we've got plenty of issues. And, you know, we can always push things back to another issue if you're finding that the time scale isn't working for you, you know, it's we're pretty friendly it's, you know, it's quite a nice laid-back experience. Yeah.

James Robinson: 31:20

You're all clearly writing or have written lots of content in the past. What are you what are you working on at the moment? What's an article that you're developing for Hello World right now?

Ben Hall: 31:29

I'm writing an article at the moment which is about the reliability of online content, and that sort of spans the number of kind of media and platforms. So everything, from what young people might see on social media TikTok Twitter, Instagram, Etc, to how they might see news presented to them. And the, the balance of that news and how they can distinguish between, what's an opinion piece and what's fact. And then also, as I mentioned before moving more into the AI sphere of things as well where we've got things like chat GPT, where content's auto-generated. And there's a whole load of other things to consider when looking at if something is reliable or if something is even like human generated. So there's quite a lot of scope for discussion around that. So the article at the moment's got quite a lot of questions in it, it cites sort of reports and stats from from various different sources. So I'm sort of like the still the ideation stage and I'm just trying to get it to a point where it presents kind of a coherent flow at the moment. But I've enjoyed writing it so far.

Sway Grantham: 32:38

So my article is not that far along, but as I said earlier, it's going to be around EYFS. So the Early Years Foundation Stage in primary schools and how technology can enhance learning and education in an early years setting throughout their curriculum. Not in one specific area supporting kind of the early years framework. But also helping teachers to prepare their learners for when they get to National Curriculum Computing because there's quite a big expectation on Key Stage 1 Computing, and some of our early years Learners have never used technology before. So there's some tips around how to get started, how to make it part of your curriculum. But also, how to help with that digital divide that is so prevalent in an early years setting.

Josh Crossman: 33:22

Yes. So I'm laughing because I think my the level at which my article is at the moment has been a bit exaggerated. It's coming on, it's going. It's going well, but it's definitely not that far along in terms of completion. And but this, this article is focusing on algorithms at the primary level. It's looks a bit at what they are, what they look like, how they're represented, particularly utilising some of the Computing Curriculum work that we've done and how they are represented throughout the primary strand primary units for this curriculum. And then just looking at how to choose which one to use, you know, which is the best one to utilise for a specific unit. Which one is the best one to use for a certain age or, you know, looking at certain construct, things like that. So little bits of tweaks still going on, but it's it's definitely coming along at some some point in the future.

Gemma Coleman: 34:22

Well, I just know that I'm going to get a super long article from you Josh so you've got so many...

Josh Crossman: 34:26

It is already over the word limit.

Gemma Coleman: 34:29

Well, I'm very excited to read all of those in the next few weeks. So I guess as we're getting to the end here. It would be lovely to hear from the three of you. What advice you would give to people listening that want to get started with writing whether that be for us or just for themselves? So, could you each give a a top tip?

Sway Grantham: 34:55

Yep, I can give a top tip. I mean one is Harsh. So if there's spare time I'm gonna double back and add some others. But the first one that I will share is that what is in your head is interesting and relevant. Because the amount of times I hear oh, well, nobody will no one needs to know what I'm thinking about or well, I don't have anything to say anything important and like Ben touched on this earlier when he was saying, like, you're in the classroom, you have to reflect and make decisions every day. Lots of people are wondering the same things as you, is this the right way? Should I do it this way? What else could I do? The more people that share that, the more ideas you get, and the better you get at your job, which is always helpful and minimum effort. So that's my top tip.

Gemma Coleman: 35:41

That's a great, great tip Sway. Can anybody top that?

Ben Hall: 35:45

I don't know about topping it. But I would say, I would say if you've never written an article or for a publication before, don't be afraid to give it a try. The support you'll get from Gemma is like, really good and she's turned around many a disaster that I've submitted to her, so yeah, just just give it a go. It's a really, it's a really sort of collaborative, fun, fun process. And I personally get a lot of satisfaction from seeing things that are actually published and printed with my name on it. So there's a bit of an ego thing there, but you know.

Gemma Coleman: 36:22

You gotta get something out of it.

Ben Hall: 36:22

Exactly.

Josh Crossman: 36:24

Yeah for me, I think one just, one piece of advice is just to utilise people around you, you know, speak to them about what you're trying to get down on the page. You know, go to them, if you've got something to share and share that with them and see what their thoughts are. I know not everyone is lucky enough to have someone as enthusiastic as Sway to support but it is you know, just use the people around you to get that that information that you need to either to, you know, help you write more, to help you write less, or, you know, in between. So, yeah, definitely utilise people around you to support you with it.

James Robinson: 37:00

And sway. You mentioned, you had more. I'm going to give you one bonus piece of advice, purely because you'll make my life, life hell, otherwise.

Sway Grantham: 37:06

I know. See, you've got Josh telling you that I'm a great person. And James telling you I'm a horrible person, so you can like, make up your mind, read all my articles see if you can tell from that. My other one is two birds with one stone, which obviously is an idiom, but it's really hard to make time in your life, no matter what you do, but particularly as a teacher. So as much as you can do to make it, relevant to the setting and the work you're already doing. If you are already trying something new and you need to feed back to leadership about how something's gone. If you are already in a subject Network, and you've got a few schools that are trying something you're already doing the work, just spend a little bit of time, writing it down with some colleagues, and you will have got an article done. Got all of these great reasons for why you should and it won't have been this extra weight or burden for you.

James Robinson: 38:02

Great. And I think that's been a really valuable conversation today. I've really enjoyed hearing about the upcoming articles, about the tips and tricks and about your own individual experiences and motivations for, for writing. So if you listening have a question or a comment for us about our discussion today, then you can email us via podcast@helloworld.cc, or you can tweet us @HelloWorld_Edu, my thanks to Ben, Josh and Sway for showing their time experience and expertise with us today. That's it for this season of Hello World. But we'll be back later this year with more conversations about Computing and digital making. And we hope that you'll join us then. So Gemma, what did we learn today?

Gemma Coleman: 38:47

I've learned, I probably need to rope you into writing a few more articles, James, it seems that you've been hiding from me, So No more excuses, you've got so many tips.

Sway Grantham: 38:57

And I've learned that I can just get Sway to do it.