Our sessions with Dorothy looking into the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa have always been really good reminders for me personally. Even though I'd already heard most of it before, it is great to hear and be reminded of where this pedagogy came from, its back story or history. Today was all about empowerment. Great reminder that being in a Manaiakalani school and 1-1 chromebooks is NOT just a tool. But rather something that empowers learners, who then empower our whanau and wider community.
Today's session was all about computational thinking. This is thinking like a computer would, coding directions/instructions and also debugging or problem solving. Our kids have had great experiences with this part of the curriculum in Term 2 when we covered coding using scratch and students were able to use their animations to show their way around the world. Here is an example from Tha Zin's blog.
We all had a go at trying out some basic coding on scratch and Vivian from OMG Tech took us through a simple coding experience that can be used to introduce computational thinking to beginners. This involved 6 players, each with a number (we used the distance from where we were born to where we are now). Rules/code was, whoever has the biggest number goes right (or straight if up against a wall) and the other person goes left. We carried this on and ended up with 6 players in numerical order at the end.
This was a great hands on session so even though it is not something I would personally take interest in (but I learn it for the sake of teaching my students and it being part of the curriculum). Here's another hands on activity we did about the called the zombie lights we used to distract the zombies so we could get away.
The image on the left is what we received in the pack and the image on the right is our completed zombie light.
I really enjoyed learning about the binary number system which is how you represent data using electricity (how computers are programmed) using 1 and 0.
Hi Latini, thanks for sharing your 'bright ideas' from today's DFI. It is interesting to me that we all take different things out of each session. The presenter demonstrated so well an amazing array of opportunities for teachers in their implementation of the two new learning areas of the DT curriculum. The best thing I heard all day was that Minecraft on the Hour of Code site is now in te reo Māori.
ReplyDeleteKiaora Latini, Yes today's session was another great reminder to us as to why we are in this journey and profession. I really am going to have fun delving into coding with my students. It is fantastic listening to awesome ideas from you.
ReplyDeleteCheers