DFI DAY 8 Reflections - Computational Thinking

 

Having empowerment gives one the confidence to tackle any challenge that lies ahead.  The DFI course empowers teachers to become fluent and more confident in the digital world so that they can in turn engage and empower their students.  Empowering our students is about giving them a voice, ownership and choice.  Over the last 8 weeks, the DFI course has unlocked several digital tools and new ways of thinking so that we as teachers can do just that for our students.  Another way to positively impact our students is to active engage the parents and whanau in their child's learning journey through leaving positive, helpful and thoughtful comments on their blogs.  We can empower our students by teaching the appropriate skills to blog by upskilling them in ways to navigate the internet, making choices, developing and having their own voice, and sharing their ideas and opinions online.  Ultimately, we hope that our students will become empowered through their learning so that they will become successful life long learners.

The NZ Digital Technologies Curriculum opens up new pathways and thinking processes.  The goal to have the NZDTC well integrated into all learning areas in the NZC.  Our school has begun the process but is still in the early phase of setting up the DT programme.  I believe that with our current focus and support from Manaiakalani, as well as by adopting the pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share, we have already taken a huge step forward to develop the skills and dispositions required to become digitally fluent.

It was good to have time to explore coding and computational thinking, both of which are embedded in the NZDTC.  I had previously ran a Junior Coding Club at school and had used Scratch Junior.  The children were very engaged in the process and learnt new concepts quickly.  There were many moments where the children would create their own vignettes and in the process discover new ways to code a sequence of events.  They would be so eager to share this "short cuts" or "tricks" (as they called it) with their peers.  These were valuable learning moments for both the students and I.

There is a rich selection of apps and websites that have already been set up for children (and adults) to explore the coding and computational thinking.  Today, I had the chance to try out Minecraft and Scratch.  This is a really good introductory tutorial to Minecraft that I worked through today.  

I also used Scratch today to create a simple maze where my sprite has to follow the mouse point to get from the start to the end of the maze.  Here is what my maze and code look like.

As a DRS, I am always thinking of new ways of engaging the students when teaching RE.  I think that games and coding might add a new dimension to making our faith come alive for our students.  It also gives the students a chance to demonstrate some creativity and flair when creating their responses to the RE knowledge and sharing it in a modern and fresh way.  I will be bringing these ideas back to my team to discuss some new ways where we can adopt coding to give the students a fun and fresh way to share their RE learning, while also empowering them to confident life long learners in the digital and real worlds.