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