DFI Session 8: Computational Thinking

-

The greatest joy comes from Empowering students to lift their ceilings on what they think they're capable of.

Empowerment is significant in someone understanding their value within their society. Giving thought to the fact that poverty directly affects a persons empowerment and access to things that directly impacts on your success in life, is something that I question whether I, as a teacher, have any effect on changing.

I love the thought that empowerment promotes ownership and ownership requires choice. This can be a confronting kaupapa to be a part of. In my mind it means that some won't make the choice to engage in learning and opportunities that you, as an educator, provide. But the flip side of that means that some students, could also surpass what you have expected and provided them with an opportunity to learn and do.

Today's learning around Raranga Matihiko and the Digital Technology Curriculum is not something new to me. I teach specifically in digital technology, so this is the curriculum that I design all learning around. I love coding and teaching coding to promote designing digital outcomes and computational/algorithmic thinking, but I am always wanting to know more.

I have spent a lot of time with Scratch this year so I wanted to extend myself and learn something completely different. I chose MIT App Inventor as my create session. This is something I have been interested in but just haven't applied the time to learn yet. Having some support to walk through how the program works and suggest helpful resources was great.

I spent most of my time on the aesthetics of my app, but am going to be spending some time over the next couple of weeks to develop my app to have functioning code that moves between buttons on the home screen to different screens within my app. This is something I am expressly interested in developing for next years Year 8 curriculum.

Comments

  1. JacobSeptember 17, 2021 at 2:48 PM

    Well done here Michelle! I agree with you that sometimes as teachers we do not get to see or understand our impact on empowering students and there is also student interaction to deal with. If students do connect though with what we are delivering there is real possibilities for them to go beyond what we could have imagined and it often can take just one spark to ignite a passion. Keep giving App inventor a go, it is tricky but once you get the hang of it (and I'm sure you will) you will have a new tool which I think engages students with a more realistic and authentic create opportunity.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MichelleSeptember 24, 2021 at 8:13 AM

      Thanks, Yeah I really like the idea of it and it's where I am wanting to go. I am going to be making it my holiday project to build my own app and see if I can track each step to provide more help for my students. Thanks for all your help.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DFI Session 3 - Media

-
 Creativity is something I deeply value. I have grown up in an extremely creative whanau and am a creative myself. Having the chance to connect with and practice the CREATE  part of the Manaiakalani kaupapa was so much fun! I loved using Google slides for something other than presentations! I have learnt to create an app using slides that can allow my students to navigate one of their lessons. I can see how this could become an exciting way for students to present their learning, and as a beginners step to app creation. I would love to see how this also could become a way of akonga reporting back to parents about what they are doing and what their next steps are. Take a look...
Read more

DFI Session 2: Workflow

-
Image
Google has so many functions that can increase work productivity and efficiency. Cleaning up tabs and gmail is a task that I would generally need to do each term however, with changing a few settings (and adding some folders in gmail) it makes it into a much easier process. I have customised my settings and added some filters to sort emails appropriately into the folders which makes keeping up with blogs and google classrooms heaps more manageable. Using Google Keep  I want to try and use Google Keep. I am quite an organised person by nature and I respond well to lists. I have created many notes in different places, but I would love to centralise these so that I don't have to go looking  in  multiple places to find them. I can see where this could also be beneficial for learners in terms of helping to keep them organised with their own tasks whether it be for school, sport, or personally. Using Google Meet This is a really cool tool. I am more familiar with Zoom, however,...
Read more

DFI Session 7: Devices

-
Image
Ubiquitous Learning is something that in the last few weeks of lockdown that I wish I understood more fully. The idea of teaching and learning being rewindable from not just the teaching front, but also from the students learning is something I think is hugely valuable. Lockdown was a good opportunity to create tutorials and record Google Meets for the students to be able to access at any point. I found that the ones who did engage in this learning found it really helpful and engaging. I would have loved to have had some time to take students through some of the skills behind rewindable learning beforehand, but hind site is also a gift, and I am now going to look for opportunities to integrate this more in my teaching.  I love the idea about Participation, Partnership and Protection in relation to digital technology. This is something that was also highlighted through lockdown that we could work on as a school. That learning is not just about from teacher to learner, or learner to ...
Read more