DFI Day 8!!

This week for our focus was empowerment and computational thinking. Below are some of the amazing things I took in today!

During lockdown students were empowered to make the choice if they wanted to take part in the learning we set or if they would rather play games, watch netflix etc. We need to think about how are we going to engage and connect our learners? I feel coming back from lockdown I have some students who have really struggled getting back into the school routine and this question has been going through my mind. 

We also discussed the importance Encouraging students to have a conversation on their blog posts. Its not just a "great job" we should be encouraging students to ask questions, reply to their comments. This is something I have been working on but it needs to be ongoing. We actually completed the cyber smart blog challenge during lock down focusing on quality blog comments. As I am making commenting a regular task in class I will keep working on this with my class! Its also something I can model with my class when I comment on their blogs.

Today we also talked a lot about the digital technology curriculum and integrating this into our classrooms. We were shared a lot of resources to look through. I spent quite a bit of time looking through Raranga Matihiko and their resources and am excited to think about how I could use some of these resources in my classroom.

We also got some time to check out some coding tasks! I chose to work on code.org and started with a minecraft task then moved onto coding a flappy bird game. Check out my game here. I know this would be so engaging for my students! Can't wait to give it a try with them. I remember using code.org 

For create I got to spent some time on scratch. Our focus was how we can link mathematics into scratch - with a focus on geometry. We looked at creating a range of different 2d shapes which you need knowledge of the interior angles of these shapes to put into the code. I think my class would love this!! We are going to be looking at angles next term so I am excited to give this a go in class. I think this will be incredibly engaging for students and will be a great way to get them engaged with this learning!

I can't believe that next week is our final session! I am excited for the exam next week. But sad that it will be our last day! I have really enjoyed having this time on DFI to learn, create and share! It will help me so much going forward.