Computational thinking learning reflection

Computational Thinking

Shifting from passive consumers of technology to creating with digital technology

Skills required: being digitally fluent

Creativity empowers learning, and digital technology empowers creativity.

Exciting opportunities for innovative and creative learning open up when digitally fluent teachers are working alongside digitally fluent learners.

SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition): We’re heading for the top two rungs on the ladder!

Manaiakalani Kaupapa: Empowered

The terminology of “agency” didn’t fit for the community. (Agencies are organisations that do things to your family). Empowered became the more appropriate term to use.

Empowered

• $ allows choice.

Many of the students in low decile communities are disempowered: 

• Unable to choose where they live (if in govt housing). This can cause transience between schools.

• Language: 30million less words by the time they are 5 years old.

• Starship research suggests that there are also developmental and physical / motor skills delays.

Digital technology enables learners and their whanau to take back the power.

• Language: oral language = train students to engage in conversation (5 plus a day)

• Written language: harness the power of blogs, not just for sharing, but to use the comments as an opportunity for a written ‘tennis match’ conversation.

• Families having access to a digital device, and becoming more digitally fluent enables them to research ‘how to’ videos to fix appliances etc rather than having to pay for repairs or replace items. Allows families to choose the most cost effective power company. To book doctor visits online.

The greatest joy comes from Empowering students to become innovative creators and critical consumers of digital content. 

The future of Tech.

Exciting new advances in technology and automation are making our (near) future look very Jetson-like! 

Some of the breakthrough technologies that stood out for me were:

• Skin vision, which uses a database of 3.4 million images to compare moles and can therefore be more reliable than a GP who cannot hold as many images in their head, are examples of how automation can be a powerful tool for making improvements in health 

• Starlink, which is a network of satellites providing internet access to remote locations.

It’s not all rose tinted glasses though. With advances in automation, come some grey areas in terms of morals and ethics. Questions to ask about autonomous devices / developments: Who was the developer? What biases were built in?

Create

The create task I participated in today was using GameFroot to create a digital pepeha. I was really excited to see a coding space that was specifically designed for Aotearoa. The Mihi Maker template I found a little disappointing to use as it was a bit too prescriptive in terms of the content and organisation of the pepeha. Especially for learners (and myself) who may not have Maori ancestry and therefore need to use slightly different terms. It was possible to miss out certain sections, if these did not apply to you, but not to add or change them. The main problem that I found however, was that towards the end of the session, I lost connectivity for a moment and lost everything, even though I have been saving regularly after I reached each point in the game! So unfortunately instead of my digital learning object today looking like a super fancy digitally coded pepeha…. I will just have to upload a screenshot of the GameFroot site :(

On the positive side though, after talking through my woes with my bubble group, I have been re-inspired to give GameFroot another go. It seems that although some of the pre-made templates can be a little glitchy, the opportunities to create your own code are still worthwhile. And having learners create their own content, rather than just being consumers of digital content, is much more powerful anyway.