Digital Fluency Intensive - Week 8 blog post

I am definitely getting there, I will be able to say that I am up to date before the end of today as it seems. I'll do my best to stay on top of posting next time, catching up is not super fun!

This week was our eighth session of the Digital Fluency Intensive course for term 3 - this session's focus was computational thinking.

During this session,  we focused on computational thinking and on the Digital Curriculum.  If I had say that I had looked at the Digital Curriculum before, I cannot however say that I really looked at it in depths as I had placed it quite low on my priority list as a beginning teacher. However, I realised today that I have been teaching it, to some extent. Sadly, the multiple lockdowns that have been taking place in Auckland since March 2020 have not made this an easy task. With having to constantly go back to basics and to behaviour expectations, I have not been able to do as much in this space as I would have wanted to. Still, I got really captivated once I realised that we did not have to teach this as an extra subject, but that we could (and should!) rather integrate it to other learning areas, such as maths for example.

These days, the technological world is constantly evolving (I LOVE staying up to date with all the new tools and gadgets that are popping up - this is certainly one of my happy place whenever I need a break from the hustle and bustle that life can sometimes turn into. Change is definitely not something that I am afraid of: on the contrary, this is something that is sure to make me excited!), and it is and I strongly believe that it is essential that we, as teachers, are providing our learners with the appropriate skills to adapt themselves and be fluent in their use of digital technologies. It is crucial that they keep their mind open to new opportunities as one of our jobs, as educators, is to push our kids to become life-long learners.

For today's 'create' activity, I was really looking forward to learning more about scratch junior. However, with Auckland still being at Alert level 4, I did not get a chance to pop into school to grab an iPad. As a result, I ended up not being able to attend the scratch junior session, and decided to join Cheryl's session on how to use scratch to draw geometric shapes. Even though I knew that this might get a little too technical for my students, I thought that this would be a great learning opportunity. Towards the end of our breakout room session, I had learned and understood how to use the platform to create a fun spirograph using pentagons as my starting shape. Look at all these fun colours!

I'd be really keen on having a look at scratch junior once I get access to an iPad, as I really think that this is the kind of app that my students would enjoy falling in love with.