Week 8

 Another chilly day here but the learning and company is warm as always.

Learner agency/Empowered... 

The use of the word agency was accepted and understood within our professional network. It is jargon that we don't necessarily need to think about but when we talked to whanau they instantly froze, due to previous experience with agencies, in perhaps a negative tone so this professional

 jargon was changed to empowered.

For many whanau being empowered can be difficult without a lot of financial support. 

We took a closer look at the term   The working poor- Essential workers. These heroes became the backbone of our society when we needed them most. 

However the access to technology and 

Low wages and 

poor housing along with rising cost of

Rubbish disposal and  

the current Health system... all contribute to making access to technology difficult.

Research shows that Decile 1 children can potentially arrive at school as a 5 year old with the mean performance oral language wise of a 3 year old. These children can hear less than 32 million spoken words and added to that the turn over of transit children can be up to1/3 a year. 

Solution................

Rangatiratanga : taking back control of their own lives

Manaialalani outreach programme

Technology can make learning ubiqutious for all and able to be used by all.

Technology can bridge the gap for learners in the classroom. You don't need to be the best at spelling or the neatest writer. 

Voice recording in google docs can making learners who find the written word difficult then this can be beneficial for our learners in order to accelerate their learning.

The learning needs to have all on board...The child, the school and the teacher delivering the technology. A school might have 1:1 devices and access to all but this is not going to accelerate learning if the skill of the teacher is inefficient. The class will only be as effective as the skill of the teacher delivering the lessons. We don't want our students to be 'just users' but to be able to 'link back' to the content. Empowered to be in that space not just consumption.

Digitally empowered teachers = digital empowered students.

Technology curriculum= How to integrate with purpose in the classroom.

1. Big technologies screenshot.......

How to see these strands........

Digital technology progress outcomes are guides not what you have to teach.

Computational thinking.....

        

Vicki popped into talk to us about computational thinking

Progress outcome 1

                                        

 Instructional writing links nicely into computational thinking and algorithm thinking.

Progress outcome 2 

Outputs and sequencing appropriate for students.

TKI looks at computational thinking 

As teachers we need to dig deep to ensure our learners are wanting to learn particularly during lockdown.

We can do things to change.

5plus a book a day is important for oral language. This can have a positive impact for our learners. 

Teach children to engage in a speaking conversation. This way you are building up the capability of our children to converse then we build up to writing a blog then build up to children then leaving quality comments and respond to these. This stage is achievable from the foundations built in the early years of oral language and conversing in conversations. Commenting on blogs continue to build on children's conversation capabilities.

Having access to technology enables people to hold some control over things. The children have chrome books so they could have family doctor appointments on line especially during COVID lockdown, access to education, google how to fix equipment in the house to help save money or to go have to end up going without or to seek help online .

Equity

How can we have children really connected in this digital age.  

The solution would be for All children can have access to Chrome books. 

Equity and access......... the internet connection has also been enhanced so it is also more accessible. 

If we can work together with a greater number of people and aim to keep the prices low then all have  greater access.

"The greatest joy comes form Empowering students to discover the treasure that lives within them."

The speed of creating a flow chart is as simple as jumping onto Google doc click add on then search mermaid to download a flow chart format. (This didn't work on our computers as disabled by admin but will talk to our lovely tech man when I am back at school).

Moral Machines

Mindcraft- has introduced the impact of emotion into the programme in the form of destruction of people's worlds they have built. 

The Jetson's was a TV programme that was recorded for one year only in 1962-1963.

                                                                      OMG tech  

Fabulous teachers came in today to talk to us about Computational thinking. We had practical and purposeful time to work on this. I enjoyed creating a pick a path story using twinery as a tool to use in the classroom. 

Coding is instructions you give to a computer. If you do this then this will happen. Instructions for it to understand to show us visually

Today was very hands on. We got to see how Coding works first hand. I always find planning things on paper helps this old brain work and the joy of coding or pick a path is the good old paper planning or 

post it notes first before construction on the computer. 

Overall a very productive day as you can see on the face of my esteemed colleague.