Thursday 9 August 2018

Self review for schools in their digital technologies journey ideas

Some quick questions for the start of this post.
Is the digital technologies curriculum to be taught separately from the technology curriculum?

What is your understanding of the progress outcome for each strand. You can select to focus on junior, middle or senior levels.

What is your understanding of these and what types of contexts could they be taught within your school.

What are some of the opportunities that the Digital Technologies curriculum has to offer.

Many schools are asking about STEM and how this might develop an integrated curriculum, what type of themes could be used and what possible outcomes might be developed?

Schools often talk about there senior programmes of learning and the difficulty of how to understand what the junior curriculum has to offer. How might you look at the progress outcomes and the current timetable requirements of your school.

What are some of the opportunities that your current timetable gives?

Which has lead me to start thinking about what a Self review tool for where you are at currently with your digital technologies programme which is different to the review tool as part of the digital readiness.

While the new curriculum content includes a focus on Integrated learning, or connected learning, this  has been talked about as providing opportunities to teach digital technologies rather than within a single silo. However, is this a focus more on digital fluency? How we use digital devices within the class to support the learning.

Schools often talk of their digital technologies programmes being more about the learning with digital technologies or digital fluency. Office and google apps for education feature quite heavily. 

If you were to talk about your digital technologies programme within your school, how would you describe what is currently available and has been available for students?

Digital technologies,  has been taught at Hobsonville Point secondary school through integrated modules with foundation years.
Digital technologies with Physical Education
Digital Technologies with English
Digital Technologies with Performing Arts
Digital Technologies with Visual Arts
Digital Technologies with Mathematics

These have been taught through themes; 
  • Space and place
  • Identity
  • Citizenship
  • How things work
  • Culture and Diversity 
  • Relationships
  • Innovation
  • Transformation
SPINS
These are just some of the SPINS.
Creating 3D modelling characters based upon the English novel that they have been reading.
Understanding the base principles and ideas of how digital devices work.
3D printing to understand and create new opportunities for recycling at our school.
Understanding how things work by pulling apart computers and understanding the components that make up a computer.
Recreation of historical building at Hobsonville point before they were pulled down in sketch up, this ended up being shown by the primary school students who were part of the class as part of a google summit for students by students.

Projects
Digital technologies has also been used to support Projects, an all in curriculum that supports learners to develop outcomes based upon guiding principles.

Back to some more questions that build on the self review
What does assessment against the progress outcomes look like? While this could be a larger question in itself, how could it differ in what it currently looks like within your school.

Local curriculum, how much of what you offer already is based on your local curriculum? How might this change with the opportunities that the digital technologies curriculum offers.

Do projects feature that combine learning about different areas of digital outcomes, ie information and media, developing an understanding of the data that you have collected and crates an info graphic based upon that data? Or are different areas of digital taught and assessed individually?

What is the current description in your course booklet for year 9 and 10?

How is this reported to parents? 
How are you reporting what the current learning is for students, are you using specific skills rubrics, or have you been the Technology Achievement Objectives. Does the report allow for different levels of the curriculum, or just based upon one curriculum level and a standardised level within that?
I have heard of schools that have created a junior credit system or using cut score marking to report to parents where the student is at. How are these being used to support the students next steps within their learning.

What outside opportunities exist for your junior students to develop?

Does your junior course prepare students for future study with digital technologies?

I don’t want to put projects or assessments in this, more want to get people to say what, not pld or specific requirements, but future developments that there regions or developed ideas could support.

What have you done to build your understanding of the new digital technologies curriculum?