Final Day: Digital Fluency Intensive

Today we touched on the Ubiquitous aspect of Manaiakalani which is about our students being able to rewind their learning anytime, anywhere and at any place.  Dorothy explained that it is about giving lower decile children the same opportunities as higher decile students.  She talked about the importance of blogging and how it makes a difference in the summer learning drop off.  Students who blog at least three times per week during the summer break tend to keep up better in their studies when they return.

Zoe and Vivian from OMGTech! visited us today and reinforced the idea that technology is NOT just a tool.  They reinforced the fact that technology matters in our students' world.  Zoe explained that when our students enter the workforce, technology will be deeply embedded into their careers.  She also gave us insight into the world of ethics when it comes to technology and introduced us to the very intense world of robotics and future technologies.  We did a super cool algorithm activity where we had to start in pairs, find out who was born closer to Auckland and move accordingly to the next box (repeating it) until we ended up in a line with the closest to furthest.  Immediately I began thinking of ways I could do this in my own classroom with my littlies (e.g. birthdays, etc).

 We also learned about binary numbers and dabbled in some coding using the Hour of Code (Minecraft) and Scratch.  The Hour of Code taught us how to use blocks to code, as well as more intricate blocks like "repeat until goal" which help you think about code as sequences.  We are focusing on computational thinking this term, so these activities were super helpful with getting my ideas flowing for extra activities to do with my five year olds to teach directions, etc.

As this is the final day for the Digital Fluency Intensive, I am so grateful to have had this opportunity to learn alongside an amazing group of colleagues.  It has been a welcoming space that I looked forward to putting my "student hat on" and learning at every Friday.  My knowledge in Google applications has gone from 0 to 100 (at the level that I'm at!) and I feel much more confident using it in my work and personal life.  Thank you Dorothy and Gerhard for an engaging and inspiring nine weeks!