Minecraft For Education - Teacher Academy - Modules 6-11

Kia ora koutou,

Welcome back to more Minecraft adventures. This post covers units 6-11 of the Teacher Academy. My last post covers the first five units. If you have any questions about Minecraft then feel free to leave a comment, I may be able to answer...

These two questions were part of the course's reflection so I thought I'd talk a bit about them here:

• What tools within the in-game world experience provided opportunity for learners to engage in ways that might not otherwise be possible?

I really enjoyed exploring the chemistry tutorial where you could create elements, combine them into compounds and also break up materials into their basic components. How cool that students can learn about these things in a safe environment where they don't have to worry about explosions and chemical spills?

I also found the concept of redstone (the power source in Minecraft - a bit like electricity) really interesting (as well as very frustrating at times). What an awesome way to introduce concepts of engineering to students.

My first lever and lamps (didn't mean to put them in the wall as well as the ceiling).

• What 'out of game' materials are needed for the learners to use before or during the lesson?

I like how a lot of the lessons talked about having a paper plan/design and encouraged students to discuss their ideas before starting the build. It also highlighted how important it is to have a contract or agreement with students about expectations in Minecraft (just as you would have PB4L expectations for different areas of the school).

Me looking proud with the moat I built (this is the book and quill I mentioned last time).

Collaboration

Collaboration, creativity and communication are key to Minecraft. Students can start worlds and invite others to join. Teachers can also start worlds and host students. When creating worlds it is suggested that you encourage a 'productive struggle,' i.e. you give them just enough information to ensure they are scaffolded towards success without removing all challenges and difficulties.

Classroom Readiness

Here there were lots of great tips to make sure your lessons are smooth and successful:

- Plan in unstructured time to give students a chance to explore.

- Have a non-Minecraft alternative at the ready, just in case!

- Stick to creative mode even though students might be more familiar with survival mode (in creative mode students won't lose their work and they have infinite resources).

- Give strict time limits. Students will always want more time. Encourage them to meet their objectives first then try to perfect builds.

- Changing skins (the appearance of your character) is a good first activity so students feel like their character reflects their identity.

- Another good first lesson is just asking students to build a house. This will help you see what ability levels you have in the class.

Proof of finishing the last module (even though it says up next...)

Test Run 1:

So this was all great learning but it doesn't mean much if I didn't test it out! So thanks to the Kea team at Wesley Primary for letting me try out some of my new skills. I learnt one important lesson in this session: you can't host students who are in a different domain. Luckily the students were confident enough to create their own worlds and host each other.

Test Run 2:

Thanks to Room 13 at New Windsor for allowing me a second shot at the lesson. This time I was able to host students. I challenged them to build a structure with a specific volume. I built an example as a scaffold and provided the instructions via NPCs (non-player characters) and a poster.

In this lesson I learnt how important it is to give a strict time limit (I forgot to do this at the start). I also learnt how important it is to check the settings of a world. This came to my attention as someone started setting other students' builds on fire. I'm still not 100% sure on the settings but now I turn anything that sounds remotely dangerous or destructive off: fire spreads, TNT explodes, friendly fire, mob loot, activate cheats, mob griefing... (I also learnt to flick on 'always day' when learning. It's hard enough to build in daylight let alone in the pitch black).

Some students and their builds. I've not mastered taking screenshots while flying because hitting shift means you start dropping back down to earth.

Final Thought:

Something else that stood out to me during the course was how many links there are to our Cybersmart curriculum. Whether it's being a smart user by being able to navigate the game with the appropriate commands or developing smart relationships by collaborating with others online and offline.

I highly recommend looking into Minecraft. I've learnt a lot but feel like I'm only at the tip of the iceberg...

Ngā mihi

Phil

Minecraft For Education - Teacher Academy - Modules 1-5

Kia ora koutou,

I decided it was finally time to get my head around Minecraft, especially after seeing what some Ako Hiko students were creating. Check out this awesome blog post.

So I started the Minecraft For Education: Teacher Academy and I'm really enjoying it. If you want to look into it here's the link. For fellow facilitators you can ask your Fusion person to set you up with one of your school accounts.

I didn't think about a blog post until I was well into module 4 but I thought I'd share some things I've been learning.

Camera, portfolio, book and quill 

These are all tools that students can use as evidence of their progress and to document their creations. They are a great way for students to reflect on their learning and they are able to be exported.

A photo from my portfolio (sunrise selfie)

Slates, posters and boards 

These are all ways of providing rewindable instructions for groups or students. The only differences between the three are their sizes. What a great way to scaffold learners into tasks. The is also an immersive reader built in so if students aren't confident reading the text they can have it read for them.

A poster (middle sized) with some instructions. 

Non-player characters (NPCs) 

You can spawn non-player characters for students to interact with during the game. These NPCs can give further instructions, give links to external resources (e.g. YouTube videos) or prompt students to carry out commands (e.g. open the door).

 

NPC before clicking on them.

NPC after clicking on them.

Monthly Build Challenges

These sound like good places to start to introduce Minecraft to students. Also on this screen you can see How To Play which are little interactive tutorials that have been super helpful for me as a total beginner.

So I'm about half way through now. You earn little badges as you go which is nice. Funnily enough this latest one is the only one I haven't got 100% on.

See you later for modules 6-11...

Planting Seeds (part 2)

Kia ora bloggers,

This post is number two in a duo of blog posts. If you'd like to read part one you won't have to scroll too far to find it!

Let's get back into Planting Seeds by Susan Sandretto. One small note, these are not the official names of the chapters (I've now returned the library book so can not check), more a summary of what I learnt from them...

Chapter 4 - Making Critical Literacy Visible

Text selection...

The example Susan used was really interesting: the back of a box of pain killers. It was discussed who is excluded from this text. Anyone who is not confident with English is more than likely to struggle with the scientific and technical language. This just goes to show that you can teach critical literacy with almost any text.

Starting with a slightly simpler text was also recommended so that students aren't bogged down with decoding. This goes really well with the idea of scaffold texts that we use in our T-shaped literacy units. Another idea is to use a text that has already been used with students. So that they don't become bored with it, you can explain that this second reading has a different focus.

Role of the teacher...

Critical literacy and quality discussion can only happen when the teacher  has set up a caring environment for students where they respect each others' opinions. Teachers should also model having a questioning stance and support students to make connections, both between different texts and between texts and their own lives.

Role of the student...

It was interesting to read about literacy circles, with students having time to read a text, then prepare to take part in a dialogue (which may be written or verbal). It made me reflect on how often I expected students to have an opinion or to take part in a discussion immediately after reading a text and how unrealistic this is an an expectation.

Image by Wokandapix @ Pixabay

Reciprocal teaching was also mentioned at length, something I know a lot of Ako Hiko schools use or are experimenting with. What stood out for me here was how important it is for the teacher to model the roles of predictor, clarifier, questioner and summariser before expecting students to be able to do them independently.

Chapter 5 - Assessment

I learnt that assessment comes from the word assidere which translates as 'to sit beside or with.' This made me realise how much we have deviated from this original definition with so many of our current assessments, with the teacher being a long way from the student's side (literally and metaphorically).

Summative (assessment of learning) and formative assessment (assessment for learning) have obviously been discussed a lot but I loved the analogy used in this book. It said that summative assessment is equivalent to when the customer tastes the soup whereas formative assessment is when the chef tastes the soup. It's pretty obvious to see which is the more useful if the goal is to make the soup taste as good as possible!

It also highlighted the importance of assessment AS learning or in other words students being actively involved in self-assessment.

Chapter 6 - Student Voice and Feedback

Again, the importance of self and peer assessment was highlighted here. This time peer assessment was suggested as a scaffold to allow students to move towards self assessment. Other benefits of peer assessment include:

- Students often use language that is easier to understand

- The teacher is freed up to have other discussions (which reminds me of our 'powerful teaching conversations' High Leverage Practice)

This whole chapter reinforced for me how powerful blogging can be as a way for students to post published work but also to reflect on their growth, skills and progress towards goals.

This term we have a big focus on Smart Relationships which spends a lot of time on Quality Blog Comments. For the first time I started to think of blog commenting with a critical literacy lens. I'm not sure how or where to work this into lessons but I'm interested to explore ideas around:

- How am I making the blogger feel with this comment? Am I making them feel like they are an expert? Or that they are deficient?

- How will they consume this feedback?

I'm now rethinking how I get feedback from students on my sessions. In the past I've got some classes to fill in a Google Form. This was a bit time consuming and ate into the already busy sessions. I also realised (after reading this chapter) that I was excluding some people's voices from this feedback. For example, it was typically the more fluent and settled classes that got round to filling in the feedback. This probably gave a skewed view of how successful the lessons were. The voice of those students in classes who didn't get round to finishing the lesson was probably more valuable but was missing.

Image by Gerd Altmann @ Pixabay

Moving forward I might experiment with ending sessions with questions like:

- What did you learn about _____?

- What did your teacher do to help you learn 

about ______ today?

- If you were the teacher, how would you teach ______?

Chapter 7

My notes on this chapter were brief but pretty important I think:

"It doesn't count as critical literacy unless there is social action."

The book suggested a continuum which might be useful as Ako Hiko schools develop on their T-shaped literacy journey.

1. Shift thinking about texts

                2. Reconstruction of texts (writing our own)

                                3. Localised action (the example in the book was a group of students                                                         choosing to stop using the word gay in a negative context)

                                                        4. Global action

This continuum really resonated with me as someone who is passionate about the environment and does a fair bit locally. It was also a timely reminder at the end of the book that learning all of this content and reflecting on these ideas from a text is great, but it's pointless unless you act on it. This reminds me of a quote I heard this week....

"Knowledge without action is like a bird without wings."

So what next? (not a chapter anymore - just my thoughts)

Something I'll do straight away:

In my sessions on quality blog comments I'll make sure there is discussion on thinking about how people will consume our feedback. How will it make them feel?

Something I'll do soon:

Our Ako Hiko ambassadors are already creating podcasts. I'm now wondering if these could be used as shared books/texts in classes.

Could critical literacy be used as the focus for shared books for one day of the week? e.g. Monday = new vocabulary, Tue = punctuation, Wed = critical literacy?

A slow burner:

After reading Planting Seeds I feel like I'm in a far stronger position to support teachers or schools who want to dig deeper into critical literacy. I also feel more confident to offer PLG workshops or toolkits on critical literacy using many of the ideas I've discussed here.

Thank you for reading this far. I'd love to hear where you, your class or your school are at on their critical literacy journey. What have you tried? What's worked? What are your challenges? Let me know in the comments...

Planting Seeds (part 1)

Kia ora koutou,

With it being non-contact time, I finally had the chance to finish a book without it being a case of two painfully slow pages a night before I fell asleep!

I really enjoyed Planting Seeds by Susan Sandretto and thought I'd make a blog post out of the notes I made on my bookmark a) in case I lose said bookmark and b) in case other people may find these insights useful (and maybe don't have time to read the whole book).

Disclaimer: These notes are often more ideas that reading the book prompted rather than direct quotes. Even those parts that are quotes have more than likely been mangled by my hasty note taking.

Chapter One:

I found this opening chapter very useful, just to reinforce my understanding of what critical literacy is all about...

- All texts have designs on their audience

- How a reader, listener or viewer takes to a text is an index of its effect

I also liked the phrases used for the unpacking of critical literacy that could easily be used with students...

- It enables consumers to be savvy in their engagement

- ...so you can appreciate the potential social effects of subscribing to a viewpoint

Chapter one explained that students can be:

code breakers -------- text participants -------- text users --------- text analysts

What really resonated with me is that these don't have to be taught in this order. This fits in nicely with what we are trying to achieve with critical thinking and T-shaped literacy skills in junior classes. Students can still be analysing texts even though a lot of their reading time is still focused on code breaking.

Chapter Two:

Another definition of critical literacy...

'Uncovering perspectives and positions that underpin texts and asking/judging what these perspectives mean in the social context of our world'

What else stood out to me in this chapter was that you can teach critical thinking without critical literacy but you can't teach critical literacy without critical thinking. Even critical thinking can easily become just 'thinking' if you take away cultural and political contexts. 

Chapter Three:

This was the most useful chapter in the book for me as it focused on discussion. Student led discussion is one of our High Leverage Practices and last term I was privileged to go into many classrooms as part of our observations. Discussion was one of the aspects of the lesson (as well as the associated planning) that we were looking at. So I found lots of the information in this chapter relevant and useful.

Here's a little visual I made to remind myself of some of the ideas I hope to experiment with in the future...

 

*to add onto not having a right answer in mind... I realised how often I do this. Even if I'm asking an open ended question, I still have an answer in mind and am therefore biased towards that answer. Do I give enough credit to answers outside of this? Some tips related this this that are shared in the book include:

- At the start of the discussion explain that you're only going to respond to ideas with a 'thank you' or 'ok.' This way all answers are validated and you're not suggesting, by your tone or body language, that some answers are more valid than others.

- It's still ok to share your opinion as a teacher but you can do this at the end so that you don't shut down other ideas because they are not in line with what the teacher thinks.

**to add onto the idea of a shift in power... I really liked the analogy of the ebb and flow of the tide to demonstrate how the power can shift between students and teachers throughout the day. For example, a student can hold the (majority of the) power by being the expert during a discussion without this meaning that when it comes to managing the class the teacher doesn't have any power or has lost control.

So that's the first three chapters of the book which is probably plenty for now. Hopefully I'll cover chapters 4-7 in another post.

Ngā mihi

Manaiakalani TOD - Term 1 2021

Kia ora koutou,

I hope everyone is enjoying their non-contact time. In the last week of Term 1 I was fortunate enough to attend an end of term hui with other facilitators from around the country. I always find these meetings inspiring and motivating. This year we ended the four day hui by joining the Manaiakalani teacher only day. I felt extremely privileged to be able to hear so many amazing educators share their effective practice. So I thought I'd pass on some of my learnings.

The TOD was kicked off by a key note by Dr. Rae Siʻilata and Kyla Hansell. This was truly inspiring but also humbling as it challenged some aspects of my practice that I hadn't considered before. A few simple take aways from this session were:

- Don't call them ESOL students! ESOL is a programme not a student.

- Privilege the people in the room e.g. next time I'm starting a staff hui with our karakia I will offer any Te Reo Māori speakers the chance to lead us.

Photo by Fiona Grant

Digging a bit deeper into the keynote (the full presentation can be found here), another message that resonated with me was that we do not have to be bilingual ourselves in order to allow students to use and utilise their first (or second or third...) language. 

There are lots of resources out there including dual language books and websites like The Coconet that could be extremely valuable. We can also give students opportunities to output (speaking, writing, presenting) in their first languages. It's about showing that their language has value and realising that getting stronger in a first language also helps develop the second language.

The input and output approach got me thinking about our pedagogy of learn, create, share and then this slide appeared:

While planning Cybersmart sessions I'm always thinking about the balance between the learn, create and share parts of the lesson. This got me thinking about giving students more opportunities to their thinking, creating and sharing in other languages.

In our Inquiry PLGs in Term 1 we looked at creating texts sets using authentic texts. My plan at this stage is to move onto other HLPs this term, in particular discussion and critical thinking. Unpacking students' prior knowledge will fit really nicely with this. It was interesting to hear the discussion about the following book cover and how students predicted that the text was going to be about praising the lord! It shows that students' prior knowledge comes mostly from the language and culture most familiar to them.

If I had to summarise my takeaway from the keynote in one question or provocation I guess it would be:

"Whose knowledge are we valuing in the classroom?"

Workshop One:

For the first session I had a refresher on Explain Everything from Clarelle and Khismira. It's always good to have a play on Explain Everything and see what ideas other people have when creating projects.

Workshop Two:

It was a pleasure to work with Cam Cameron from Kootuitui ki Papakura to present our workshop based on the MIT project of Sarah Daly: Accelerating Reading Comprehension Through Questioning.

Workshop Three:

For the final session I attended T shaped literacy skills for juniors by Rebecca Jesson. It was a real pleasure to see how seamlessly Rebecca connected texts to pick up the big ideas and themes. I'm looking forward to sharing this with the junior teachers in Ako Hiko.

Photo by Fiona Grant

2021 DFI - Day 8 - A Coach's Perspective

Computational thinking day! Always one of my favourites. This blog post is mainly about sharing some resources that I explored today that people might be unaware of.

I love Compute It. I stayed away form it today because I end up doing it for hours! This introduces programming language and is great for students to work away at independently. Super engaging!

Hello Ruby was a new one for me today. This has some great offline activities for juniors. It reinforces the fact that younger students already do a lot of activities that involve computational thinking.

I'm still exploring Raranga Matihiko but I'm enjoying the links to other apps like ClapMotion and Gamefroot. I'd be keen to hear from anyone who has used these in class. I'll also be having a watch of the Raranga Matihiko TV home learning videos.

Let me know if you are aware of any other awesome resources that might be useful.

And good luck to all the teachers in my bubble (and all the other DFI participants) who are taking the Google Level 1 exam next week!

Ngā mihi

2021 DFI - Day 2 - A Coach's Perspective

Another great day on DFI, this time focusing on workflow. I'm so excited about finding new ways to save a few clicks or a few seconds here and there. I'd also love to know how much time I'm saving myself on a yearly basis by using all these tips and tricks.

Ako - 

It's always a great reminder hearing about amplifying and turbocharging the learning. This week Auckland has been back in lockdown and I've found it interesting to have a look at some of the class sites in the cluster. I'm so impressed with the amount of learning that is visible on some of the sites, especially as it's only week two of the year for some schools.

Google Keep - 

I use Google Keep constantly and have it open alongside my Gmail. One thing I hadn't thought of doing is to have it open alongside a Google Doc so that I can add text directly form the Keep note to the Doc.

I also keep meaning to use the grab text and scribble features in Google Keep but never get round to it...

Gmail - 

I have never heard of confidential mode before (even thought the icon is right there). I can't think of a situation where I'd need to use it at the moment but it's interesting to know it's there.

Taming the Tabs - 

I've noticed teachers get very protective over their tab preferences. There are very strong allegiances to Team Toby and Team OneTab. It was good to see another option available that lets you create groups of tabs. It would be awesome if this was developed so that the groups were saved for future sessions. 

I think all these tips and tricks have a time and a place, it's just figuring out which one suits a particular need most effectively.

DFI 2021 - Day 1 - A coach's perspective

Kia ora koutou,

This time last year I was starting the DFI as a participant. One DFI badge, two lockdowns, a switch to full time Education Programme Leader and a lot of Google Meets later I'm back as one of the coaches.

First things first, every member of my bubble was absolutely fantastic today and I'm so proud of them already. Lot's of great questions to keep me on my toes and some wonderful creations using Google Docs.

What stood out for me today is that you can never know everything. Even having done the DFI last year I still picked up lots of new tips and ideas today. Everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner.

For example Dorothy's session on Google Groups made me think about how I use them with different people, especially when it comes to people replying to messages. Do they realise the messages have come through the Google Group and that everyone can see their replies? A conversation worth having.

Google Docs continues to impress and surprise. I'd never thought of sending a link to a specific heading in a Google Doc and I didn't realise that you could increase or decrease text size using command-shift-< or >

I think I'll try using Google Docs when I'm advertising the 2021 Ako Hiko Student Led Toolkits (check out last year's toolkits here #shamelessplug).

Can't wait for session two!

Multipliers

Kia ora!
I've just finishing re-reading Multipliers by Liz Wiseman (technically I finished a while ago and this has been sitting as a draft since then). It wasn't my first choice of books to read but due to libraries being shut and having re-read all my Terry Pratchett books I decided to get stuck in. And I'm really glad I did. As I devoured the chapters I stumbled upon many timely reminders as I start my journey as Education Programme Leader for Ako Hiko.

My primary objective for my first term was not to drop the ball on anything. However, a global pandemic somewhat changed the term for everyone involved. Because of the the circumstances, I started seeing innovative ideas everywhere. Something I've been guilty of in the past is rushing into projects on my own, devoting time and resources to them, only for them to receive very little engagement and traction. Re-reading multipliers has reminded me of the importance of the whole team at Ako Hiko. If ideas are going to get traction people need to have ownership of them. And if and when I step away from the cluster the processes put in place need to stay standing without me there.

Some other key aspects of the text for me:

My role is to invest, teach and coach. The book gave the example of a soccer (American book!) coach and how they don't run on the pitch to score a crucial goal in the last minute of a game, even though they have the ability to do so. 

Diminishers (the opposite of multipliers) tell people what they know whereas multipliers help people learn what they need to know.

Multipliers don't set the direction - they make sure the direction is set.

Multipliers look for native genius in people. What spikes their enthusiasm? They then tell the person about this genus to unlock their potential.

Multipliers never do anything for people that they can do for themselves.

It is this last quote that stuck out the most for me but it's also the one I'm battling with the most. On one hand I want to help (and multiply) the school leaders by making sure they have opportunities to grow and learn new skills. The example that comes to mind is blog building. On the other hand I am fully aware of how busy teachers are and I don't want to be adding to their workload unnecessarily.

After talking with colleagues about this balancing act I believe that there is no hard and fast rule. It will very much be a case by case judgement call on whether a task is something I can support leaders to achieve or whether at that moment of time it's a job I can just get done for them.

During distance learning most teachers showed immense creativity and flexibility. It was also noticeable that their own passions and interests were coming through in their teaching. I'm now on the lookout for these gems of native genius and thinking about how I can use them to multiply others.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on multiplying others. Have you found the native genius in someone? How have you resisted taking the reins and doing things for people? What are your tips for making sure a direction is set?

Ngā mihi

Back In Class - Week One

What a fabulous feeling it was to walk into a school again this week. I realised it was the simple things that I'd taken for granted, like chatting with the office staff, having a rugby ball fly past your face on the way to class and of course actually having face to face conversations with our learners.

Delivering Cybersmart sessions during distance learning was an interesting experience. One of the biggest challenges was not being able to easily judge how the lesson was going by doing a lap of the room and seeing students' screens (although Hapara Teacher Dashboard made this a whole lot more manageable than it could have been). So back in class this week it was an opportune moment in time to reflect on the Cybersmart sessions I had planned for this term (it seems like a lifetime ago that I did this planning).

I read an extremely interesting blog post by Mark Maddren, a facilitator in Christchurch, which got me thinking about how I could differentiate sessions. I find planning Cybersmart lessons a challenging juggling act: trying to make learn, create, share visible while also offering multiple texts for students to engage and provide activities that offer choices. When trying to tick so many boxes it was often the differentiation that got left behind. I'm inspired by Mark's idea of having beginners, stepping up and confident sections for each lesson.

As a facilitator this also hammers home how important it is to develop relationships. By getting to know the learners as well as possible during the one hour a week I spend with them, I am more likely to know which learners will pick which option. And at the end of the day I will also have modelled how sessions can be differentiated for the class teacher who knows the learners far better than I do.

Another of Mark's ideas was including a learning pathway for each lesson. My first thought was that this isn't necessary but then I realised that I was thinking of the lesson from my perspective. Of course I understood the flow of the lesson, I'm the one who created it! It made me wonder what else works for me but isn't working for the students.

It was timely that I came across this article on Virtual White Spaces by Ann Milne. This got me reflecting on my Cybersmart resources more deeply. Milne quotes George Dei as saying:

“Today, Indigenous knowledge is about the struggle to retain one’s identity in the call for a global sameness.”

Milne also quotes the host of a webinar, who when discussing how schools are preparing for distance learning said :

"...(it's like) having these jig saw pieces, but suddenly this pandemic has removed the picture from the box."

She adds her own thoughts to this:

"That’s a really apt analogy, but even when we thought we did have the ‘picture’ in our learning environments prior to COVID-19, the truth is that many children—Māori, indigenous, and minoritised children world-wide were always absent from that picture and their pieces never did fit."

I'm now contemplating whether my Cybersmart sessions are just replicating practice which hasn't worked for many of our learners in the past. Is my planning culturally sustaining or is it culture-erasing (one size fits all)? I was already reflecting on whether I need to get feedback from students each session. Now I realise this is a necessity not an option. Why have I been asking for feedback about each session from the class teacher but not the learners? They are the people the sessions are aimed at after all.

One of the goals for the Ako Hiko cluster this year is to get whānau workshops up and running. I believe this is the ideal moment to collect voice from our communities. Coming out of distance learning I think we must be there to support families so that they in turn can support our learners. We must do this without making assumptions about what they already know or what their capacity to help at home is. This is why we are currently surveying our communities to see what they would like from these sessions.

Hopefully the more we listen to whānau the greater their capacity to support our learners will be while also providing an opportunity for educators to better understand the culture and context of our learners. This in turn enables learners and whānau to see their culture (and therefore themselves) in the curriculum.

I'd like to finish (thanks for reading this far) with a quote from Lessons From Lockdown. In this article Dr Nina Hood states that we should:

"...meet children where they are and give them what they need, both inside and outside of school, in order for all of them to have a genuine opportunity to be successful.”

To me this is super simple summary of what education should be. But are we currently putting enough effort into knowing where children are? And if we are not, how can we possibly be giving them what they need?

Moving forward I hope to stretch myself in these areas by:

• Differentiating Cybersmart sessions
• Trialing a learning pathway for sessions
• Collect more student voice and feedback about sessions
• Get whānau workshops up and running as soon as possible

Ngā mihi

DFI Session Eight

Tēnā koutou katoa,

Today we heard Dorothy talk about the term empowered. It was a good reminder around why we use this term rather than agency, which has so many negative connotations with some members of our communities. Every time I see this puzzle graphic I'm reminded how interlinked and co-dependant the terms empowered, visible, connected and ubiquitous are. One way of empowering our learners and our communities is by ensuring the other three parts of the puzzle are happening.

The fact that one third of learners in decile one communities are transient is something that I was very aware of while teaching at my previous school. Hearing this again today made me think about the Ako Hiko story and how important it is to capture this so that we can share it to new learners and whānau so that they can gain a deeper understanding of what the cluster is all about.

Kerry's section on the Digital Technology Curriculum was very interesting and informative. We were gifted time to explore a plethora of resources. As Kerry said it is important that we are using a consistent language and teaching programming skills and fundamentals rather than individual coding platforms. The apps and sites will change over time but the language remains the same. A good glossary for me today includes:

Input
Output
Sequence
Iteration
Selection
Variables

How confident are you with these terms? And not just confident in your own understanding but with your ability to use them with students?

These are all resources I found useful. CS Unplugged for the activities that might be perfect for distance learning and for students with limited internet access and Kia Takatū ā-Matihiko for the self-assessment tool that helped me see where I am at on my journey into the new curriculum.

Exemplars

CSUnplugged

Kia Takatū ā-Matihiko

In terms of my workflow as a professional, I've spent some time in the last few weeks trying to create engaging, creative and fairly independent activities for students. Exploring these sites today helped me realise that there are already a vast array of resources out there and that maybe some of my time is better spent elsewhere (warning some of these sites are very, VERY addictive).

Minecraft

Flappy Bird

Toxicode

In the afternoon I had an awesome time creating a game with Scratch. By going through the process from start to finish I was able to appreciate the debugging process. Mistakes and failures are all part of learning and students need to be encouraged and support while solving problems and getting over these hurdles. Enjoy!