Computational Thinking: DFI Week 4

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I always enjoy joining the hangout with Dorothy first thing in the morning. Today she shared with us the importance of the Share step of Learn, Create, Share. Giving students an opportunity to share their learning and creativity with a genuine audience is such an important part of the process. I was particularly struck with the student voice around this and how their blog posts facilitate conversations and bonding with family about what they have been doing at school.



from https://sites.google.com/manaiakalani.org/dfi/connecting-with-manaiakalani/share-pedagogy

Too often I ask my own children what they have done and school and get a grunt of "Nothing" in return. The beauty of a blog is that this can prompt rich conversation around what our children are creating as a result of their learning.

I like the idea of both the presenter and the audience being genuine and how the global nature of blogging means that students can read blogs to see what students have been doing in other classrooms or other schools rather than sitting through a presentation about learning they have already done themselves. Keeping in mind that we still need to teach our students to be respectful, active listeners even if the content is something which they are not interested in!

Kawana from OMGTech! was a very engaging presenter who challenged us with questions about the future of technology use in our lives and how we think technology can handle ethical dilemmas or show true creativity.

When we consider our inclusion of Technology in the curriculum it was great to see what examples and ideas Kawana had for students to engage both online and off. It is possible to include all those multi modal aspects which include movement when looking at a site like https://csunplugged.org/en/


This along with Scratch Junior and Hour of Code (especially the Minecraft version) would be things that would definitely capture the minds and imagination of my students. https://trailblazers.pamfergusson.org.nz/home


Mark also introduced us to the site https://kiatakatu.ac.nz/ which is helping teachers to become more confident and prepared to be incorporating the new Technology Curriculum into our classrooms.

We had the opportunity after lunch to play around with Scratch ourselves to discover some of the possibilities. Here is my very beginner maze game https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/323992118



I'm looking forward to learning alongside my students!

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