Kia ora!
The focus for the DFI Day Eight was Computational Thinking.
We began by delving deeper into the 'empowered' aspect of the Manaiakalani kaupapa. It is really important that we are very selective about the vocabulary that we choose to use. I hadn't really thought about it before, but the word 'agency' can have negative connotations for students and their whānau. We want students to have the confidence to take charge of their own learning and approach new learning opportunities with a growth mindset.
I love the Pat Sneddon quote that was shared with us today:
Before our session today, I was not very confident in discussing computational thinking. I have a much better understanding of it now.
A question that was posed to us was, what makes a digitally fluent person?
A digitally fluent person is someone that can decide when, how and where how to use certain technologies. Computational thinking is not about learning to think like a computer, but learning to think like a computer scientist.
We had some explore time after Kerry's 'Chalk 'n' Talk' to look through slides 19-22 on this slideshow. Here are some of the cool things that I discovered:
- I had already registered my school google account on the kia takatū ā-Matihiko website, I just need to spend some more time exploring this site.
- On the TKI site, I found a glossary of terms. Definitely, a good idea to familiarise myself with these - some of them I have not heard of before. Here is the glossary.
- I had not seen this doc before, so I spent some time reading through this.
Following the deep dive, we had some coding and computational thinking explore time.
Things of the interesting things I explored were:
For our create time, we had some time to make meaning of the content we had been given and had a go at making our own code. I have not really done any coding before, so I choose to start with a few Scratch challenges and then had a go at creating my own Scratch project. Check them out!
There are still a few things I need to figure out including how to save a project and how to share a project, I had a few issues with this when I was trying to create my own Scratch project.
Once I am a confident user of Scratch, I would like to explore this more with my learners. This was a really useful session and I certainly felt challenged at times.
Kia ora Katie,
ReplyDeleteThe opportunity to explore and understand the new digital curriculum is a fantastic opportunity. The gamification of new learning certainly has a huge engagement factor.
I am sure you will get the hang of saving and sharing once you are done. I am also pretty sure that some of your students will be able to help you out too! And I am an email away if you need me.
Have a great week!
-Kelsey
Kia ora Kelsey,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your feedback. I will definitely embrace gamification and the new coding platforms that we have been introduced to - some of my students will no doubt already be experts with some of these coding platforms. I cannot wait to explore the new curriculum even more. Thank you for your ongoing support.
I hope you have a great week too.
Katie.