As some of you might know (those who've read down a few posts anyway), I'm turning the informal work I do with Code Ed into a PhD with Bournemouth University. This has always been an ambition of mine to firstly do a PhD, but also spread the work I am doing into the wider academic community in the UK. Obviously, the guys at Raspberry Pi are making making cheap 'hacker' style hardware available and accessible to schools, but they don't really look after the software. What I'm looking at is how do we make coding and hacking more accessible to young minds; especially really young minds.
Fine then, I know a lot of people in this sphere, from folks at Computing at School, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Cambridge University, the wonderful Chelmsford Makerspace, 3D printing gurus and many many more - I won't bore you with my connections in this field. I talk to these people, in informal and formal settings, and I capture the best bits to make sense of answering my PhD hypothesis.
The issue is "How do I share this?" I blog a bit, I tweet a bit, but mostly, I am aware I do a lot of the good stuff offline. When I say the good stuff, I mean the contentious or edgy bits really - the ideas I haven't property formulated or are just hunches or opinion. My Supervisor Stephen thinks that this is where the best stuff is, whereas I think I only like sharing when I have something proven. I don't want some opinionated old so and so telling me my research is rubbish, so I tend to dumb down what I share or only share the bits I'm really confident are right.
It seems this is an endemic problem in PG research and I'm not alone in not sharing my stuff enough, as it seems are my peers who are in the same boat. I know previous PhD students are BU have done brilliant work, but would I know where to find it? Probably I could find their thesis if I tried, likely I'd try and get in touch with them directly and ask them. This doesn't help the media or other PG researchers all around the world find their stuff though. It also means you only get the finished article and you don't see the journey they go through to get to the Thesis. A fellow student (who will remain unnamed) had a research blog, who's final post said "I've stopped blogging as I'm too busy with my PhD!" Hey! You just got to the good bit, thanks!
Anyway, I am going to try and share stuff a bit better via Twitter and my Blog, and BU have asked me to look at ways in which I can share good practice on what I discover... Any input would be gratefully received and as I'm a poor student, please send me your ideas scribbled on the back of a five pound note to... Seriously, you can comment below, you just need a Blogger or Google account. Ta.
..I'm now off to teach people how to program with a Raspberry Pi and Scratch. Update soon!
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