Digital Fluency Intensive - Computational Thinking

Ubiquitous

We started our last session with a quick look at why ubiquitous learning is so important for our leaners. For the community that I work in, this is an important step towards providing equality for all in education. 




Providing our students access to learning, anytime, anywhere and any place helps to 'level the playing field' so that all students, no matter of their social-economic background have an equal footing regarding education. 

We talked about the students who take part in the Summer Learning Journey don't experience the same summer drop off as their peers. This journey is offered to my students and I was reminded to make sure it is part of my term 4 planning. Setting it up during the last weeks of school and trying out some of the tasks from previous years will hopefully encourage more students to have a go during the holidays. We also looked at the latest writing data from Manaiakalani which continues to improve, year on year. Both of these positive results can be linked to providing students with ubiquitous, rewindable learning opportunities.

Following this, we spent the rest of the day in a TRAILBLAZERS workshop called OMGTECH! Pedagogical Framework for Digital technologies in the Aotearoa NZ Curriculum.

10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2019

We started with a discussion about the question "what will be the future of tech and what it means for our tamariki?" In 2019 the range of new breakthrough technologies is mind-blowing! This is the world our tamariki are growing up in. How do we best equip them to live and contribute successfully to this world?

Thinking about this and listening to our inspirational facilitators Zoe and Vivian share their thoughts, effective pedagogy is once again the most important factors. Effective pedagogy, alongside as the Tools, techniques, and applications of technology is needed to support true integrated, inquiry-based learning.  Only then can we  “engage all children in exploring, thinking, reading, writing, researching, inventing, problem-solving, and experiencing the world” to become confident 21st-century learners.  

Key ideas from the workshop:  We looked at some practical ways to introduce students to learn how a computer thinks by using a sorting network parallel algorithm.

Offline sorting networks

• Identify which number comes before or after in a given range of numbers. (Mathematics - Numeracy)
• Organise objects from smallest in size to largest in size. (Mathematics - Numeracy)

The next question that was asked is "what are the things about ourselves we value?" These values are reflected in the machines we use. in other words, the ethics and morals of machines depend on who has programmed them. “In authentic contexts and taking into account of end-users" - a person who uses it last.

An example of this is Sophia the robot. How she behaves and learns is a result of how she was first programmed by white middle age men. We see this in her actions and mannerisms. 

We then talked about the "Science" of technology. Learning how to create involves having an appreciation and understanding of how the applications we use work. The difference between "using Technology" and "creating technology" is the difference between using a game and being able to create a game. Or the difference between using an Instagram filter and being able to create your own photo filters.

NZ Technolgy Curriculum - Building mastery for your students

UNDERSTANDING COMPUTATIONAL THINKING - how does a computer think.

Computational thinking enables students to express problems and formulate solutions in ways that means a computer (an information processing agent) can be used to solve them.

• students develop algorithmic thinking skills
• an understanding of the computer science principles
•  become aware of what is and isn’t possible with computing

UNDERSTANDING DEVELOPING DIGITAL - Digital applications and systems are created for humans by humans.

• skills for designing and producing quality, fit-for-purpose, digital outcomes
• manipulating and combining data, using information management tools to create an outcome

My key takeaways:

• think about teaching students to break down the task into steps that a computer can understand
• teach the language of digital technologies
• teach the binary system
• use programs to teach skills like code hour or scratch

To finish off the day I spent time walking in my student shoes by working through activities in an hour of code then scratch. Fun, easy ways to develop coding skills but it illustrated how important to teach our students the correct way to code using the shortest steps possible.

What a fun way to end the 9 weeks of our intensive digital learning. I want to thank Dorothy, Gerhard and my fellow DFI'ers who have openly shared their knowledge with me. I can't wait to pass all my learning on. 

Digital Fluency Intensive - Empowerment

EMPOWERMENT

One of the buzz words we use in education is 'student agency.' Unfortunately for some of our learner's families, the word 'agency' conjures up negative thoughts and feelings. Using the word 'empowerment' sit better with the message we want to send our community. 


To empower our whanau at home is to provide a digital device that can be brought home and free wifi access. This has the power to be a life changer!

Dorothy talked about how the Manaiakalani community has many challenges to overcome when supporting them to become empowered.

• Most families have an annual income of $19,000 p.a
• Housing that is Government owned - hard to get anything fixed
• Access to consistent medical advice. Don't see the same GP each time so things are missed.
• Preschools hear 1/3 less language is spoken at home compared to higher decile families.

Thinking of ways to support both our learners and their families to become more empowered is my takeaway from today's thoughtful discussion.  

The rest of the day involved taking the Google certified educator level 1 exam, which I passed.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Cybersmart

Words Wound - Make Kindness go VIRAL!  

Why cybersmart?

Our learners are growing up in a digital age, they don't know a world without it. So we need to prepare all students to navigate this environment smartly. To be confident, connected, actively involved, life long learners.

Implementation - Planning is collaborative and makes use of deliberate acts of teaching to support learners Learn, Create and Share in a positive relevant way.

We always use positive language!

Hapara Teacher Dashboard - Making Learning Visible

Hapara allows you to focus on teaching, not the technology!

We recapped on the key features:

• How to make groups
• How to check that all doc are shared into the right folders
• How to check emails, posts, and comments.
• Using focus browsing to support on task behaviour.

Manaiakalani 1:1 Journey The principals of the Treaty drove their thinking. Here is a summary of this journey.

BYOD - Bring your own Disaster!

In 2010 Manaiakalani made a conscious decision to no use BYOD as most of the learners would no have equal access to these. They asked the question "how can the children in the lowest socioeconomic 10% of New Zealand’s population have their own, personal learning device?" The answer was Chromebooks.

Now Ipads and Chromebooks are used to support Learn, Create, Share.

For the rest of the day, we had multiple opportunities to walk in our student's shoes by using a Chromebook and Ipad to access our learning. I really enjoyed the digital dig that was shared with us. 

As I was using a Chromebook to do this learning I was reminded that having good fine motor skills are important for our learners to have to these tools successfully. Reminding students that they can use a wireless mouse if using the trackpad is frustrating is something that I need to revisit. 

Going forward: I will use the digital dig with my class. It was a fun activity to remind leaners of all the tools and keyboard shortcuts that can be used. It will also be a great way to take a snapshot of my learners to check how digitally fluent they are and to plan the next learning steps. 

My personal challenge is to use screencastify regularly as I find it difficult to relax and be natural when recording myself. I also find it a challenge to listen to myself talking. This is one of the few situations in my teaching where I don't practice what I preach! Time to make a change.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Enabling Access- Sites

 Deep dive into Effective Sites


We started the DIF by evaluating some of our colleague's sites through TWO lenses: Engagement and User experience.  

On the one hand, the site needs to be inviting and appealing - draw you to it.  
On the other hand, it is a working and learning environment. It needs to be very easy to use.  Effective sites combine both elements.

Here are some of the ideas we came up with:
For visual appeal use:

• relevant images
• large buttons with less writing, very clear message for directing
• white background with few buttons
• simple eye-catching buttons that link to learning
• images in each button which are engaging.
• a clean and clear landing page- easy to navigate and know where to go
• students pics on the home page and buttons

For a good user experience have:

• learning groups accessible from the home page.
• current learning at the top of the page
• just a few clicks to find the learning
• a home page that is  simple, clear and child-friendly
• clear identity and authenticity
• a home/blog/ school website buttons to take you back and navigate quickly through
• a way to navigate easily and have clear distinct buttons to reach relevant pages.

Connected Learners and Teachers

• Manaiakalani has a shared language - the pedagogy and kaupapa language. This is made possible because it is visible.
• Face to face makes connecting easier and shared experience

Here are some of the ways Manaiakalani shares:

@clusternz - our young learners     

@MDTAcohort - our MDTA teachers share their learning

@TeachInquire - teachers share their professional inquiries

@mitSpark - Spark-MIT teachers inquiries

#manaiakalani

Google Sites - Here are my takeaways!

Start with the why.

The Purpose!

Who are your learners?
Why are they using the site?
What is your theme?

Choose and theme and stick to it. There is nothing worse than looking at an overload of colours and layout.






Remember to think about all learning tasks using the SAMR model. This way they will be purposeful.

Layout

Think about keeping page layouts similar as this makes it easier for the learners and you. 
You will want to plan each page and its context before creating it. 

Fronts

Try to keep fonts consistent throughout your site and if possible embedded items. 
You will want no more than two fonts.

Planning Your Class Site

How many pages do you need?
What will be linked off your home page?
What is the layout of each page?

Three-click rule 

When then spent some time evaluating our class sites.
My feedback included: 'Very visually appealing! Love the buttons...', 'super clean and crisp', 'love the images used on buttons', 'Lots of writing (parent well educated) and clear links to WALTs', 'Really like the layout of your home page.' 

A good tip is to check out your site in an incognito tab. This will show you what your learners and parents will see when they are using your site outside of the school domain.

The rest of the day was a chance to used the feedback we got from our peers and edits our class sites accordingly. I checked that all learning was accessible within 3 clicks and shared appropriately.

Going forward - how will I support teachers back at Owairaka? One idea is to support using a shared team site in middle school. Another is to upskill teachers during staff meetings. Both will be easily achievable using learning from the last 5 DFI's as a guide.