Look and Comment Section
We have had a look around the new NZC in Technology which we have also been having talks about in school. It was interesting to see other examples including from one of my bubble group members, who shared their Google site with us on how they have gone about providing some information to their users, we can take some of this for our own program I think. We also hunted around other sites and tried some out such as Moral machine, Code.org, and the Minecraft coding options (not educational Minecraft). I spent a long time on the Minecraft section and some basic programming apps which although basic, are engaging. I took notes for using them in class in the future, Moral machine was interesting, not sure if I totally agree with some of the results it gave me, it was a weird concept of who we rather kill but I see you can create your own “would you rather” instead which would work better for me and my class as a fun side game maybe on friendship or some other hot issue topic.
I think with the digital curriculum, I would like to see a focus on fluency in being able to take their knowledge to other apps or software, we seem to focus a lot on what we know and less on letting them find their own apps that suit them and then giving them the knowledge to manage if this is the right app or not themselves. Give them a range of options and let them work out their best uses, what the benefits are, etc. Fluency is being able to use technology and apply it to other areas, not just be stuck on what we have taught them, and allow them to be technology confident. It’s too deep of a subject to discuss here, and it won’t make much difference when the curriculum has been designed, and outcomes supplied. It has a heavy dose of problem-solving and giving/following instructions, even coding is heavily prescribed and I am not sure this should be our focus for students. Maybe for secondary and University as options, but I feel software/hardware is more fundamental for primary and lower secondary so they can be truly fluent across the technological field.
I loved the videos on creating instructions, following them, and solving any issues found. Removing common sense as it’s not so common and getting very basic, like cooking instructions, very step by step to the basics. This is an important building block for all students to have at all levels. Problem-solving is one thing our students struggle with and if anything, I think they will get the most out of all these programs from this standpoint or focus more than anything else.
Scratch Sandpit
In the afternoon session, we worked through basic scratch tutorials. We have taken a basic Pong game for bouncing a ball off a bar. I decided to change this and play with some code to see what would happen. I mashed in some mindfulness “bubble bounce” by adding a different ball to the mix. There are 7 tennis balls and a basketball. They all change directions when they hit something (Other balls of the car), when the basketball hits the man’s head, he blows a whistle and says Ouch !!! (only does this if it hits his head). The angles are hard to manage when a ball hits an edge, I have set a range of “change angle” code but it often still goes in directions where it takes a long time to make its way back to the man again, this will be a play for another day. The finished product is below: