DAY 8 COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

 DAY 8    COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

Lucky number 8 for those of us with Chinese connections - and a strangely creative and educational day it was too, so I guess I should count myself lucky to have enjoyed so many new experiences today.

It all started with the interesting opportunity to investigate the new digital technologies curriculum and I was very impressed with the staged development of the progress objectives with a clear pathway from lower primary all the way to NCEA Level 3. It was also interesting to see the expectations in terms of knowledge and ability required when advancing from one stage to the next.

I also appreciated the opportunity to get involved in some coding practice and thoroughly enjoyed getting to play around with "Scratch" and "Toxicode". I could immediately see an opportunity to make use of "Scratch" with my year 9 students as part of our current focus on music videos.

Later, I had the joys and frustrations of trying to get up close and creative with the "SculptGL" app, offering me the chance to create a 3D digital sculpture. I enjoyed creating from a cylinder base a surrealistic Easter Island totem, which was colourful, if not impressive. I then saved it and attempted to modify the totem by adding wings and got lost in wing shapes overlapping and folding in upon themselves. this is what can be viewed in the image below :

I then returned to my saved sculpture, only to discover that it was only the 3D shape that had been saved in readiness for 3D printing. Hence the frustration - I only have the image above to share and not the more artistic (in my humble opinion) sculpture.

However, today was a very enjoyable experience and I now look forward to applying what I have learned with my classes and to approaching my future in the classroom with increased digital fluency.

DAY 7. DEVICES

 DAY 7.    DEVICES

Today's session on navigating Chromebooks was an interesting insight into how difficult it must have been for some of our students when they made the switch from their tried and tested own/home device to making use of Chromebooks in school. Conversely, those who have learned solely on Chromebooks must experience some struggles with switching to Macs or other varieties of laptop. Having used a Mac since 1997, I know that I will not be switching anytime soon - but interesting to be familiar with how our students navigate through cyberspace.

It was also very useful to learn how to use the Everything Everywhere Whiteboard and I enjoyed producing the basic card below :

To my surprise and delight, I immediately realized how I could apply this particular tool to my year 11 English class - they have the opportunity to tackle achievement standard 1.7, Design A Poster, many of them complete their design by hand as they have been unaware of any digital tools that they could use. The Everything Everywhere Whiteboard could serve as just such a platform for them to complete their poster design in a digital format. I will design a practice task for them to investigate further before launching into the actual standard itself.

Another of today's satisfying experiences was to make use of Screencastify for the first time, the practice exercise revealed to me how useful this tool will be for rewindable learning, a technique that many of my students are greatly in need of learning to use.

Below is the link to the Screencastify video that I produced :

https://watch.screencastify.com/v/EEePdWsuaZN9WGcVPcTQ

Day 6 Enabling Access Sites

 DAY SIX.    ENABLING ACCESS SITES

A very interesting and satisfying day, I thoroughly appreciated the opportunity to plan and commence construction of my GoogleSite for Media Studies. It was good to be able to put into practice the skills and techniques which had been modelled both last week and this, finally I could put the unrealised ideas that had been floating around my cerebellum into corporeal form and actually see how various ideas looked when viewed onscreen.

 This is the address for my Media Studies GoogleSite -

https://sites.google.com/d/1PhBDX-uULmVrs218kVRW0e9fPfk6_kJo/p/1isZnIPLYnvAALky-AWXHCcfa8OI9PWmu/edit

This is the preferred version of my homepage for the Media Studies site for CTS - I wanted to use something colourful, yet not too juvenile, interesting and directly relevant to the activities available when studying Media at CTS. We may have a small school population in the Secondary section at CTS, but we are fortunate in that several of them are from farming families and some of those families have invested in drones to make their farming easier when attempting to locate livestock. As a result, a few of our students have made effective use of drone technology in their filming assignments this year. One of the advantages of being a small school community is that our students are very good at sharing, so those students with access to drones have been very willing to give access to their classmates and to teach those classmates how to make use of the technology.

This is the background image I have selected for the page for NCEA LEVEL TWO, but I will probably experiment with the colour and contrast in order to make the image more striking.

I also appreciated the opportunity to give and receive feedback from breakout bubblemates regarding our GoogleSites. There wasn't much for them to comment upon with my minimal construction so far, however I enjoyed viewing what it could be possible to achieve when I saw the sites my bubblemates had created. Jordan's was very striking in its structure and organisation, and i couldn't believe the wealth of activities he had created for his students - he's really hitting the high notes! Rikki's site was very engaging, as was Kate's, they had both made excellent use of colour, buttons and links - both are clearly very creative. it was also a pleasure to see Susan make progress with her site and to share in the satisfaction that she clearly feels from learning and achieving on this DFI.

Day 5 Collaborate Sites

 A very difficult day today, we started with the tragic news of the death of a valued member of our DFI participants in a terrible traffic accident yesterday. Not only was Cass a participant in our shared programme, the members of my breakout bubble had learned to appreciate her positive personality and her desire to learn more for the benefit of her students at Devon Intermediate School here in New Plymouth. Such a tragic loss for her whanau, her school and her community. 

It was very difficult to focus on the day's proceedings and I took no pleasure from today's collaborative sessions, distracted by the absence of one regular collaborator. I suppose that I will derive some satisfaction from today's efforts at a later date - already I am very surprised at how much was accomplished.

Below is the title page of the teaching website on the subject of Fake News that I setup today, the website is intended for use by Year 9 and 10 students, but I can see its relevance at a lower level also. 

Here is the link to that website :

https://sites.google.com/coastaltaranaki.school.nz/mr-mcm-fake-media/home

 

 Day 4 DATA

Number-crunching day - and soooo many numbers and soooo much crunching. When I next head back to the dentist, I'm sure I will be accused of teeth grinding once again after all that crunching.

As far as Google Sheets is concerned, I must admit to standing on the shoulders of giants - I have always been happy to adapt spreadsheets which have been produced by those more skilled than myself rather than creating my own from scratch. so, today was a landmark occasion for me as far as spreadsheet skills are concerned.

Vicky's tour of Google Sheets was enlightening - who knew that there were so many tools in the box and so many nooks and crannies to investigate? Not I, that's for sure. It was a reminder that it's always easier to orient yourself once you are familiar with the territory - hopefully, no more heading down blind alleys for me in future when using Google Sheets. In my role as my school's PN, I can see that the use of Google Sheets for data analysis and for the presentation of said data analysis will be of great use further down the road. The analysis and chart below are a perfect example of this.

And speaking of orienting oneself, I am now aware of various ways in which my students can make use of Google Maps to add clarity and colour to certain presentations in order to improve the overall quality of their work. Tourism students can use a map to illustrate routes to take and connections between locations when they are presenting a tailored package holiday for specific clients for particular Achievement Standards. Additionally, History students can use a map to illustrate particular voyages of discovery. Another worthwhile learning experience.

DAY 3 MEDIA - Animation

The animation below is my first foray into the world of Disney, Pixar and Studio Ghibli and has given me added respect for my former students who now work at Wetaworks Studios as digital animators. They have informed me that they enjoy their mahi, they find it satisfies their creative urges and even greater satisfaction when a project is completed - although I am sure that what they haven't told me is that they frequently suffer from repetitive strain injury, as I certainly do after creating such a basic animation.

Today's session on Google Slides took me back in time - I remember being sent by my school in Hong Kong for "special" training in the nineties to learn the arcane mysteries of Microsoft Word, Excel and Slideshow. The Ministry of Education in Hong Kong were convinced that computing would be the way of the future and were very quickly mobilising teachers to represent their schools for training so that they could rush back and coach their colleagues on the few devices which were available in most schools. I was impressed before the course had even started - the building was air-conditioned, a rare treat for teachers as the only schools which had air-conditioning installed were those schools which had fundraised for the huge sums of money involved. Outside it was 35 degrees and ninety per cent humidity, so the air-conditioned environment was very welcome. When i remarked upon this to one of the technicians, he looked at me as if I was crazy and informed me "No, no, no - the air-conditioning is for the protection of the computers, not for the benefit of the teachers!" every time I saw him during that day, he looked at me as if he begrudged me sharing the same environment as his precious hardware - and every computer technician I have ever met has always put the hardware first, we mere humans play only a minor role in the cyber scheme of things.

WORKFLOW

 The video below is the culmination of today's major joint enterprise. My minor role was simply to present and record on Google Meet, my colleague Susan had a more dynamic role to play, leaping from laptop to ipad to phone in a multitasking marathon as she compensated for the internet disruptions created by the major upgrade being installed in her neighbour's home. Through a combination of our efforts we succeeded in recording the discussion we conducted on Google Meet and that is presented below for your perusal.

It was both difficult and enlightening attempting to discern the learning intention of a task based upon the product presented by a student. Both Susan and myself were very impressed with the quality of the work produced by the 9-year-old student and by the scaffolding that the teacher had put in place for the student to produce such a creative finished item.

today was very productive, with a wealth of information being provided, but ending with a feeling of satisfaction at being able to complete something new.