Digital Fluency Intensive - Session Eight: Computational Thinking & Empowerment

 

Empowered

Creating empowerment is such an important concept to put into practice - people in our communities have felt like they don’t necessarily have the power to influence, and the ability to affect change, and so giving them that power is critical to building communities that control their own success and outcomes (rangatiratanga). 

Power gives you choice - many of our families do not have choices in what happens to them. By providing quality education and opportunities we can give these families the opportunities to get/create jobs which can provide them with an income to give them choices. Choices are powerful.

The Number 3 - Our new-entrance students are performing at the age of 3; not just academically, but socially, medically, and psychologically. Students at high decile schools hear 32 million more words than student’s in low-decile schools. The development of language is so critical for learning, and has to be modelled to our students, because they may not be getting it at home.

Equity; How can we give access to effective teaching, digital equipment and infrastructure to help them overcome difficulties which they have no power over to disadvantaged students?

Computational Thinking

We began the discussion with a game based on block coding where we had to guide a

“robot” through a maze using explicit instructions. This is the foundational learning level

for our students, and in school we have been working with Scratch - a program which allows

students to create their own animations and games where sprites are given instructions to follow.

Being Digitally Fluent in a LCS World

The Manaiakalani Programme aims to…

• Support teachers to acquire digital fluency

• Have teachers learn how digital tech can accelerate achievement

• Support teachers to be confident delivering curriculum in a digital context

Thinking about how we practically apply these skills is critical - this is not just theoretical learning,

there has to be a tangible outcome for our students based on the learning we have done in DFI.

Curriculum Connections

1. Computational Thinking for Digital Technologies

1. Students develop an understanding of comp sci principles; learning programming  so they can become creators

2. Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes

1. Students learn how to design fit-for-purpose digital solutions

Technology Strands

Practice Planning Outcome Outcomes and Evaluations.

Knowledge Modelling Products Systems

Nature of Tech Characteristics of technology Characteristics of outcomes

Starting with teaching students the language necessary for students to comprehend the ideas and concepts they will be learning is critical.

Coding

In our last two sessions we explored different coding tools online - in particular Scratch, which is a program our students at PES are quite familiar with. They have been working on constructing their own Scratch game in their Creative Space time, focused on exploring, and discovering more about our school, and offering visitors the opportunity to learn more about our school.

The tutorials on Scratch are incredibly helpful, and give the students loads of useful tips and tricks for using the different blocks to control, and animate different “sprites'', the objects that can be interacted with, as well as creating their own backgrounds (or they can use their own). The tutorials are pretty critical for the learning process as they provide context to what otherwise might be pretty vague instructions for them to follow.

Scratch is a wonderful tool because it allows students to cover the absolute basics of computational thinking, and instruction giving, but it also allows students who are more confident with it to really push the boundaries, and create immersive, and super interactive games and concepts.