What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
Today Dorothy talked about the "Empowered" aspect of the Manaiakalani kaupapa. Technology is not just a tool - it is a tool that can change lives. This made us think about the Covid Lockdown and how students were disempowered if they didn't have technology and connectivity. Technology should be transforming the way we learn.
The word empowered is favoured to use rather than agency. The word agency has bad connotations for some families. Factors to considered when thinking about - yearly family income (money is empowering), health, housing, etc.
What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Kerry ran a session introducing us to computational thinking and Hangarau Matihiko. It is all about building confidence in the future in an online world - when and where to use a specific digital technology for a task, and being able to create their own digital technologies solutions.
We looked at the two new areas to the technologies curriculum.
We looked at the Design And Developing Digital Outcomes, and Computational Thinking (Programme fundamentals and elements of programming). Don't let the technical jargon be off putting but we need to use these words with the students so they are exposed prior to this getting more difficult in high school.
Computational Thinking - Progress Outcomes decoded for learners - this is really good as it has everything in "kid speak" and it is simple to follow.
What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
Coding - absolutely loved our sessions looking a coding today. Great to have the time to explore and play on different coding websites, like Lightbots, Studio.Code, Kodable. I have now added a sub-page to our team learning site with different coding links for the students.
This is some of my exploring on Lightbots:
Went to a session on Scratch with Latham. I have never used Scratch before, and am now thinking about how I can incorporate coding into my programme.
This is what I created on Scratch.
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What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
Gerhard ran a session this morning about the future of technology and what it means for our tamariki, and we looked at what the 10 breakthrough technologies are. We did a little activity on Moral Machine - a platform for gathering human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, like self driving cars. We had some moral dilemmas and had to decide whether passengers or pedestrians would be killed. Here are my results.
Let's hope they don't use my results for any important decisions.
Looking forward to many hours sitting with my students working through some of the new coding websites I have added to our learning site.
Angela,
ReplyDeleteCompleting the activity on Moral Machine is quite challenging. It is so hard to decide who to save, or what to do. I too hope they never used my responses.
I enjoyed watching your scratch! Love the squares. I hope you have shown your students, I'm sure they would love to see what you have created.
The Coding activities are working particularly well with one of my more challenging students, and him and I are having a bit of a challenge to see how far through the stages we can get. Of course he has a lot more hours of free time than me.
DeleteThank you for all your support over the last 9 weeks Venessa.