News

The UKRI GCRF Urban Disaster Risk Hub project have launched their website www.tomorrowscities.org

Tomorrow’s Cities is a 5 year $25m interdisciplinary research hub led by collaborations of local experts and practitioners based in four rapidly developing, multi-hazard-exposed cities, and is supported by an international network of specialists.  

The four focus cities, Kathmandu, Nairobi, Quito and Istanbul, face multiple hazards including earthquakes, landslides, flooding and volcanoes.  

Ana Hibert of the Centre for Research in Digital Education, supported by Dr Michael Gallagher, recently organised a 24-hour hackathon at the University of Edinburgh to explore new approaches to some of the challenges faced in digital education today. The University of Edinburgh was joined by more than 1700 participants in 21 separate countries solving 60 challenges in 24 hours as part of DigiEduHack.  

We are delighted to announce that Greg Michaelson this week joined the Centre for Research in Digital Education as an Honorary Professor.

Greg is a proponent of strong Computational Thinking, as a principled discipline for systematic problem analysis and program construction. He has recently published critiques of classic Computational Thinking as too computation oriented, and of the Logo/Microworld and Objects First approaches. He is a regular contributor to ‘Hello World!’, the magazine of Computing at School and the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Every learner should have the opportunity to learn about computing science, not only about how to code but also about information handling with computers, and data citizenship - how their personal data is used, their legal rights and privacy implications.  

Women in Data

Celebrating women working in data and challenging industry to promote and retain women are core priorities for the Data Driven Innovation 'Women in Data' project.  Professor Judy Robertson, Chair in Digital Learning, has taken part in the project as one of 50 women interviewed about their work in the tech sector. 

'Effie St John' (the robot) joins the Centre for Research in Digital Education

This week the Centre welcomed our new ‘robot colleague’ (mentioned in our teaching Manisfesto) Effie St John is a telepresence robot, which we are trialling over the next few months on behalf of the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI - hence the name!).