Week 7 - Computational thinking

Week 7

This week, we had 2 wonderful people from OMGTech to support and teach our cohort about computational thinking.

To start our session off - we focused on Empowerment. It was really eye-opening using an outside perspective of the term ´Agency´. I often use the term 'Student Agency' with parents and people in the wider community. Not realizing the word 'Agency' could also relate to child and youth services. It is very important to explain any teacher/education jargon to people outside of the profession.
Empowerment - It's not just a tool.  When it transforms the way we learn, offers us new uncharted experiences and opportunities.

The second half of our session was lead by OMGTeach. I found ethics and morals very interesting, using the context of self-driving cars. Scenarios were given to make decisions about what we would do if a life and death situation arises. Personally, I found it very tricky as it does determine your moral and ethics, however, through our discussion, these situations are thought of by a special team.

We later looked at the Digital Curriculum and what it consists of.
Digital technology is defined by creating something with digital technology
E.g. darkroom for photography

Speaking of Darkroom - a very interesting point was raised especially with today's younger generation. Most children have no idea what a darkroom is. This was notable from a popular Netflix series - Stranger things. Viewers had no clue what was supposed to happen inside. This reflects how digital technology has developed over the years. I recall, in my childhood, we had the windup cameras and we only had one shot to take the perfect picture. Only after getting my photo's processed I would be able to see what I have taken. In comparison to the present, we are able to take photos on our handheld devices and view them straight away in our gallery.

Key terms that were defined were

Digital fluency - being able to use the product
Digital technology  - how do we make it on photoshop?

The most enjoyable part of our session was learning about Scratch. I have used scratch before, but it was a good session to refresh my memory and challenge myself. I had to create a maze, I was given an example to work with to familiarize myself with the functions available on scratch. I have embedded the maze I created, it's a work in progress. :)

Week 6 - Google sites

After a wonderful 2 week break, I'm feeling excited to continue my journey in DFI.

This week, we focused on enhancing our Google site.
Some of the key features that need to be considered when creating are site will be explained further. The importance of having a class site is create visibility. Visibility was one of the ideas we discussed about pedagogy and connecting with Manaiakalani. It is important that whanau can see on the site, so they are able to see the sequence of learning. It creates the aspect of shared language as people are connected by visibility and shared language. In the digital world, sharing is so readily available. We are able share with people across the country or the world. We don't need to be face to face.

Google Sites

Children are getting quite familiar with what to expect on the site. As teachers from their previous classes usually have a similar layout.
However there are still very important aspects and ideas that need to be considered when creating a sit. There must be:

A purpose -Think about what your theme is - colour, story → it should be consistent throughout.

Planning - Always layout your site

Theme & Design
Think about colour, layout (not to cluttered, sharing permissions) and font ( Have a consistent font, looks nicer) when creating your site.

The three click rule
When you are working on a site → if it’s more than 3 clicks, children will hardly engage.

Use the google layout as it helps with images and the buttons sit neatly.

For todays task, we had gave feedback on each other blogs by using google forms and used that feedback to make improvement on our site.

Some of the things I worked on were:

Document permissions - allowing access to documents

Site

I also added a link to school site and images of the children and teacher(me). The media album, has pictures of the children only viewable to people in our domain for safety.

I have updated the Reading and Maths page. I have added pictures to the reading slide to make it more appealing to the children and added links on the Maths page and removed the slides to make the page more user friendly.

This session was very valuable as I received peer feedback on my site from other teachers. I was able to use the information obtained and make changes accordingly!