Difital Fluency Intensive #8

Looking back at the week that has been

This week I went back and looked at the smart parents resources.  There is a wealth of information there so need to spend some time working out how and what to share with my whanau.  I also used the smart share through hapara to share some resources with my class this week.  I like how it filed correctly for the students, my only concern is that by sharing the resources this way that it may lessen my students engagement with my class site.  I won't share everything in this way with all of my learners however for some target learners this will definitley be a tool I utilise more often.

Week 8: Computational Thinking

Manaaiakalani Kaupapa and Pedagogy - Empowerment

Empowerment presentation here.

Within the Manaaiakalani programme we not only use ICT to supplement our more traditional methods of teaching but we can also transform the way students learn by opening up new and different ways. It also enables our students to make connections.

The new digital technologies curriculum

Presentation here

Although related concepts there is a difference beween digital technologies and digital fluency.

Digitally fluency is about empowering our students to be confident in the digital world.  This means being able to synthesise information across the internet, validate the information and being able to be collaborative online.

Digital technologies is about creating their own digital technology solutions.There are two parts to the new curriculum as detailed below.

Computational thinking - such as programming, unplugged activities, algorithms, robotics, makey makey, scratch coding

Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes - such as making your DLO's, graphics animations, 3D models and films

Explore this site https://rarangamatihiko.com/resources/decoded-for-learners-series 

It is important to use the language with the students. Here is the langauge of the digital technologies curriculum decoded for learners: 

Learners Computational Thinking

Digital Outcomes

Although this is designed for learners it was also helpful for me to understand what the progress outcomes were describing so I can plan activities.

Exploring Coding

I really enjoyed the exploring coding session. I had limited experience with coding and enjoyed exploring the different activities to see the range of activities that can be used to teach computational thinking. Presentation here  Over the holidays I would like to revisit this presentation and explore some more of the links. I found the compute it challenge here really engaging and challenging as well as slightly addictive.  I will defitniely revisiting this to see how many levels I can pass.

Creating with Coding

In this session I explored different ways to use coding within a mathematical context. We explored drawing shapes and discussed the range of possibilities such as creating transformations, particular shapes and exploring angles.  I had used scratch before but had never added the pen tool and explored using the sprite to draw shapes. This was new for me and at times frustrating as I certainly had to do a lot of debugging of my code to get the sprite to draw what I wanted. I am going to run a mini session on this during the next week with my class and see how they go.

 

What next?

Over the next week I plan to spend some time revising for the exam. I am also going to:

1. Scratch: Introduce the pen tool within scratch to my students and get them to explore shape drawing within this application.
2. Watch the Nigel Latta - technology and empowerment video clip here

Digital Fluency Intensive # 7

Looking back on the week that has been:

This week we had a class discussion around our class learning site. what the students like, dislike, find helpful and not helpful.  It was interesting getting their perspective. I anticipated that they would say that the instructions were too wordy however most learners siad they appreciated the detail as if the were away or forgot they could easily go back later and still know what to do. A couple of learners said that audio instructions would be helpful so this is something for me to explore. They said it was easy to find the learning tasks for the week however they also said they would like on the weekly timetable there to be a list of the weeks tasks across the curriculum to refer back to, like I had during lockdown.  This is something I will reimplement. My next step is to create a google form and get some feedback from my learners and their whanau about the functionality of our class site and their engagement with it.  I will do this survey next term to inform my 2021 site planning. I have also browsed a variety of sites in regards to how they put their rewindable learning on their sites so students can easily access it again as an ongoing goal for me is to add rewindable learning and helpful hints on the maths section of my site.

Devices: Week 7

Connecting with Manaiakalani Pedagogy and Kaupapa: Fiona Grant

Fiona Grant spoke this morning about the importance of the cybersmart programme. Cybersmart is being smart and secure digital citizens.  Presentation link here.  The important points were:

• There are 10 categories to focus on.  
• Things to consider - whole school focus, planned and deliberate teaching.  
• Core componenets of the cybersmart programme are smart learners, smart footprint and smart relationships. 
• The learning intentions are relevant across all age groups.  The difference is the way you present the information to the learners that changes.

How cybersmart ties into the Manaaikalani pedagogy

1. Empowering -  Our students are empowered through cybersmart to be connected citizens - Smart learners following the kawa of care. Students need to learn that every time  they connect, collaborate and share online it combines to create their digital footprint.
2. Ubiquitous - is about learning being accessible and students using technology in smart and clever ways.  This relates to smart relationships cybersmart learning.
3. Connected - The key message here is teaching our students about how to engage in behaviours in the online context that "elevate positive action"
4. Visible - Everything we do in the digtial world is visible.  THis is about teaching students to be confident decision makers when sharing and interacting online.

My next step is to: Explore the smart parents resources and think about how to incorporate sharing this with my class whanau.  One idea is to  incorportate one tip each week into my weekly parent email.  I could have a tip for parents or perhaps a family challengeto encourage whanau to engage with their students online learning.

Deep Dive: Hapara Teacher Dashboard Presentation

We looked again in detail at Hapara Teacher Dashboard. My next step is to explore the use of smart share for some activities. Smart share could be a good way to share the class site initially so they can bookmark it at the start of the year.

Devices:  For the next couple of sessions we explored the two main devices used in 1:1 schools which are the ipad and the chromebook.

When using the ipad we particularly looked at the Explain everything app.  This was an interesting session and it seems like a valuable tool for learners to use as it can be used in a variety of ways.  My class are 1:1 on chromebooks so although I enjoyed this session I have no takeaways to implement.

Chromebooks: In our chromebook session today we did the digital dig which I have done many times with my learners. It is a greaat way to revisit the capabilities of the device our learners use daily.  Fortunately staff at my school each have a chromebook as well as a laptop.  I use my chromebook everyday for my planning and teaching so am now quite proficient with this tool. Screencastify

What next?

After reflecting on today's session I have come up with some things I would like to focus on:

1. Look at incorporating some of the smart parents cybersmart ideas into my weekly emails.

2. Experiment with using smart share to share tasks and resources with my learners.