STEM and twitter

This was posted on twitter a couple of weeks ago.

So, I decided to respond through my lens

My goal is to understand how STEAM can work within a secondary school environment to help design an integrated environment for students projects that they develop their inquiry around to develop. So I suppose it’s around learner agency and how it can support STEAM based learning.

And, the announcement I didn't expect, I won the micro:bit.

Digital technologies, Exploring the Revised Technology Learning Area

Exploring the Revised Technology Learning Area

Exploring the Revised Technology Learning Area. From the beginning of the ideas, the word compulsory was used. This is no longer the case. I wish I had read and understood the words from the following document earlier in the process. It has been through reading this as well as a range of other documents that I am now starting to develop a better understanding and as well as develop better guidance.

So the main document I am reading and developing my understanding is from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/Technology this is the Revised Curriculum document for Technology.

We've revised the Technology learning area to strengthen the positioning of Digital Technologies in The New Zealand Curriculum. The goal of this change is to ensure that all learners have the opportunity to become digitally capable individuals. This change signals the need for greater focus on our students building their skills so they can be innovative creators of digital solutions, moving beyond solely being users and consumers of digital technologies.

Schools will be expected to fully integrate the revised learning area into their curriculum by the start of the 2020 school year.

Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum 2017 (PDF, 354 KB)

Technological areas 

The technological areas provide contexts for learning. At primary school, teachers will generally take a cross-curricular approach, with students learning in the technological areas as part of a topic or theme that encompasses several curriculum learning areas. This approach can also be applied in years 9 and 10, before students begin to specialise in particular technological areas.

Digital technologies 

The first two of the five technological areas focus on developing students’ capability to create digital technologies for specific purposes. In years 1–8, these two areas are usually implemented within other curriculum learning areas, integrating technology outcomes with the learning area outcomes. These two areas also significantly contribute to students developing the knowledge and skills they need as digital citizens and as users of digital technologies across the curriculum. They also provide opportunities to further develop their key competencies.

By the end of year 10, students’ digital technological knowledge and skills enable them to follow a predetermined process to design, develop, store, test and evaluate digital content to address a given issue. Throughout this process, students take into account immediate social and end-user considerations. They can independently decompose a computational problem into an algorithm that they use to create a program incorporating inputs, outputs, sequence, selection and iteration. They understand the role of systems in managing digital devices, security and application software, and they are able to apply file management conventions using a range of storage devices.

By the end of year 13, students who have specialised in digital technologies will design and develop fit-for-purpose digital outcomes, drawing on their knowledge of a range of digital applications and systems and taking into account a synthesis of social, ethical and end-user considerations. They understand how areas of computer science such as network communication protocols and artificial intelligence are underpinned by algorithms, data representation and programming, and they analyse how these are synthesised in real world applications. They use accepted software engineering methodologies to design, develop, document and test complex computer programs.

So, what is it that I have found, technology in general, this is not specific to digital technologies, but all the technology strands.

The technological areas provide contexts for learning. At primary school, teachers will generally take a cross-curricular approach, with students learning in the technological areas as part of a topic or theme that encompasses several curriculum learning areas. This approach can also be applied in years 9 and 10, before students begin to specialise in particular technological areas.

When reading this, the part I have to remember is...

At primary school, teachers will generally take a cross-curricular approach, with students learning in the technological areas as part of a topic or theme that encompasses several curriculum learning areas.

That encompasses several learning areas... Ok, I know what that means.

This approach can also be applied in years 9 and 10, before students begin to specialise in particular technological areas. 

Specifically focussing on Digital technologies now...

In years 1–8, these two areas are usually implemented within other curriculum learning areas, integrating technology outcomes with the learning area outcomes. 

Now back to the first section,

Schools will be expected to fully integrate the revised learning area into their curriculum by the start of the 2020 school year.

Fully integrate, what does this mean, and for me this thinking has been derived from Page 44 of the NZC 2007. Is it that schools should be integrating the revised Technology Learning Area into their schools effectively taught programme of Technology.

Now, what does it say in the other strands?

Learning pathways, Page 5

Over the course of years 1–10, students learn in all five technological areas, developing their knowledge and skills in context. By offering a variety of contexts, teachers help their students to recognise links between technological areas. Students should be encouraged to access relevant knowledge and skills from other learning areas and to build on their developing key competencies. Work towards progress outcomes in computational thinking for digital technologies and designing and developing digital outcomes should build each year in order to ensure learners achieve all of the significant learning steps.

This states the five technological learning areas,

• Computational thinking for digital technologies
• Designing and developing digital outcomes
• Designing and developing materials outcomes
• Designing and developing processed outcomes
• Design and visual communication.

How are school integrating the learning from these areas with their school curriculum?

Integration

While it could be integrated within other learning areas, as it would be in the primary school years, this is where schools need to be figuring out what they are planning on doing. If integration is being used within schools to combine learning areas into rich learning as they now are in the new modern learning environment schools where the pedagogy has changed and the removal of SILO's has been thought about and developed through comprehensive PLD. These are few and far between. There are existing schools that are using this change to explore curriculum review to be able to reshape what the curriculum looks like within the school.

While aspects of these two areas could be taught within other curriculum areas, it is through the technology-digital technologies specialist teacher that the strength of the specific curriculum knowledge and skill to allow the rich learning to take place to enable students by the end of year 10 the knowledge and skills to enable them to meet the suggested outcomes in the document.
While all teachers are teachers of literacy and numeracy, digital fluency, it is the specific subject knowledge and skills of the specialist teacher that provides opportunities for students to engage through authentic contexts and end users the rich learning.

Schools also need to consider the NZC 2007
Page 44 of the New Zealand Curriculum States

Each board of trustees, through the principal and staff, is required to develop and implement a curriculum for students in years 1–13:

• that is underpinned by and consistent with the principles
• in which the values are encouraged and modelled and are explored by students
• that supports students to develop the key competencies.

Each board of trustees, through the principal and staff, is required to provide all students in years 1–10 with effectively taught programmes of learning in:

• English
• the arts
• health and physical education
• mathematics and statistics
• science
• social sciences
• and technology.

When designing and reviewing their curriculum, schools select achievement objectives from each area in response to the identified interests and learning needs of their students. For learning in digital technologies, schools need to provide learning opportunities in line with the progress outcomes from the technology learning area.

http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum#collapsible13

Models of Curriculum Integration
Models of Curriculum Integration in New Zealand Secondary Schools, Philip Jellyman, The conclusion is one of the best that I have found. However, I feel that he does miss a point, the catalyst for change should not only be about buildings, but schools looking at how they are offering the curriculum. It has now been 11 years since the NZC 2007 was implemented within schools. 

Conclusion Implemented well, an integrated curriculum, aligned with modern teaching practices such as inquiry learning based on authentic contexts, has the potential to enhance student learning and competencies beyond what is generally possible in subject specific lessons. Schools considering introducing some form of integrated curriculum should be wary of the barriers identified above and take steps to address them in advance. The most successful schools operating integrated curricula tended to be those new schools that have been built over the past 10 years. The reason for their success is that they were able to integrate solutions to these barriers into their design. For example, a clear vision of what an integrated curriculum looks like was typically established as a part of the founding principles of the school with the timetable designed to facilitate this from the beginning. Staff were hired with a clear understanding what this vision was and the ramifications for their teaching and parents were inducted into the school’s vision without any baggage as to how things were done in the past. In addition, the advent of more open plan modern learning environments contributes to the opportunities to integrate the curricula by allowing multiple teachers to be operating in the same space with several classes.  

This latter point may constitute an opportunity for established schools considering an integrated curriculum in that, as new school buildings are built along modern learning environment principles over the coming years, this could provide a catalyst for discussion and integrated curriculum development.  

In terms of the best structure for an integrated curriculum, from my observations I would suggest that the structure is less important than the collective vision of what the school wants the students to gain from it. Staff and senior leadership need to be clear as to what a move to an integrated curriculum is designed to achieve for the students and the rationale behind it. If the staff are on board and supported with time and professional development, then any structure can be made to work well and similarly, if staff do not buy into the programme then which structure is followed will not matter either.

Curriculum integration in New Zealand secondary school, lessons learned from four early adapter schools looks at the following lessons learned, the ideas here are around school leadership taking an active role in the development of this. Currently, it feels through the feedback that the Revised Technology Learning Area is being given to the Digital Technology teacher to sort out, rather than taking a leading role in a whole curriculum integration approach.

Conclusion—lessons learned 
In sum, a number of lessons can be learned from the experience of these early adopter schools:

• Schools and their leaders should not underestimate the importance of addressing teachers’ beliefs about curriculum integration, as well as allowing teachers time to confront the necessity for change. 

• Slow, considered change leads to more effective and successful curriculum integration. 

• Timely and relevant professional learning is vital to allow teachers to gain firm theoretical understandings in order to support curriculum integration. 

• Individual teachers interested in embracing curriculum integration should ensure that they are adequately supported by senior and middle leaders, as well as colleagues and caregivers. The decision to employ curriculum integration should be grounded in a real need, which is student-driven. 

• Resources are needed to equip school leadership, and provide a greater research base to support schools to develop sophisticated approaches to curriculum integration (Dowden, 2012). 

Models of Curriculum Integration in New Zealand Secondary Schools Sabbatical report, Term 2, 2015, Philip Jellyman, St Dominic’s Catholic College
http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/content/download/73195/601556/file/Philip%20Jellyman%20Sabbatical%20Report%202015%20-%20Models%20of%20Curriculum%20Integration.pdf

Intergration models in New Zealand, Radio NZ, 2018
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/insight/audio/2018670501/learning-revolution-or-pathway-to-ignorance

Student inquiry and curriculum integration, Shared origins and points of difference (Part A), Sally Boyd and Rose Hipkins, 2012, https://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/set2012_3_015.pdf

Curriculum integration in New Zealand secondary schools, Lessons learned from four “early adopter” schools, Susan Arrowsmith and Bronwyn E. Wood, 2015, https://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/set2015_1_058.pdf

Beginning of the year - project

Looking at what our community day is at HPSS this year, developing an amazing race for students to participate in to develop relationships and getting to know each other within the hubs. I was put onto this by someone on facebook.
What a cool way to develop a digital outcome that would need to have thought about activities, packaging, concept as well as branding.

What a cool thing to be able to give back in the way of manakitanga, a gift to form classes an opportunity to grow at the beginning of the year.

Project that could be aimed at year 7-10, in groups

Idea and inspiration gained from:
https://www.facebook.com/gettinglostnz/

Great Year 9-10 project Makecode - arcade

I have been watching the videos from the BETT 2019 conference today. Microsoft have been releasing some great ideas. One that has me excited is the arcade.makecode.com 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOHiXQTcy4I&feature=youtu.be

They have been developing an interesting idea of game design and linking it in with adafruit hardware as well as other systems that will be coming out in the near future.

arcade.makecode.com/hardware

What could a term look like with adafruit electronics with your game loaded on digital media that you have created on your own 3d printed custom case game device?

I love the idea of a student project that students can take away that has such a uniqueness to it.

included is a blog post showing more ideas https://makecode.com/blog/arcade/01-18-2019

STEM activity - Brain impact simulator

The other part of the video provided an awesome opportunity to hack STEM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOHiXQTcy4I&feature=youtu.be is the new extension to be able to bring in data into excel. Getting into data science, especially designing a new helmet to be able to protect the head from a concussion. It has been interesting over the years having to do concussion tests on students that have had a head clash at lunchtime on the field, also it has been surprising the number of students that have head injuries in school that need time. What a cool way to integrate health and digital technologies using data, as well as getting to understand the issues and why http://www.bluecard.co.nz/ is such an important initiative in sports today.

Integrating technology into this as well as some schools have vacuum formers in which students could investigate the concept and design, and test these. 

Also the idea of developing a textiles solution as well.

Building models to understand and mitigate brain injury

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/education-workshop/brain-impact-simulator.aspx

It works with a micro:bit!!!!!

https://aka.ms/brain-impact-instructions/en

It can also be created with an arduino as well.

What awesome ideas for Year 9 or 10.

Database task and infographic - action calendar - DDDO 3/4

I have been thinking of different activities to do through the DDDO Progress Outcome 2(Looking at but not reporting at this stage), 3 and 4, and thinking about what kind of theme to have students inquiring through Term Two, when we have a whole school theme of Relationships. 

I have put the planning stuff at the top, Progress Outcomes for DDDO and Technology Achievement Objective focus - Technological Products.

This is just an idea of thinking at the moment. Plan to put into a more google doc structure later on. 

*Thoughts, thinking, is there something that I am missing?*

 

Planning and Curriculum Coverage

Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes Progress Outcomes

Progress Outcome 3 for DDDO

In authentic contexts, students follow a defined process to design, develop, store, test and evaluate digital content to address given contexts or issues, taking into account immediate social, ethical and end-user considerations. They identify the key features of selected software and choose the most appropriate software and file types to develop and combine digital content.

Students understand the role of operating systems in managing digital devices, security, and application software and are able to apply file management conventions using a range of storage devices. They understand that with storing data comes responsibility for ensuring security and privacy.

Progress Outcome 4 for DDDO

In authentic contexts, students investigate and consider possible solutions for a given context or issue. With support, they use an iterative process to design, develop, store and test digital outcomes, identifying and evaluating relevant social, ethical and end-user considerations. They use information from testing and apply appropriate tools, techniques, procedures and protocols to improve the quality of the outcomes and to ensure they are fit-for-purpose and meet end-user requirements.

Also:

Technology Achievement Objectives - Technological Products

School Learning Area - Learning Objective: To refine by transforming materials to be fit for purpose

Level Four: Students will: Understand that materials can be formed, manipulated, and/or transformed to enhance the fitness for purpose of a technological product.

Achievement objective

Students will: Understand that materials can be formed, manipulated, and/or transformed to enhance the fitness for purpose of a technological product.

Teacher guidance

To support students to develop understanding of technological products at level 4, teachers could:

• provide students with the opportunity to discuss what is meant by materials being formed, manipulated, and transformed.

Forming refers to bringing two or more materials together to formulate a new material resulting in a different overall composition and structure to that of the original materials. Transforming refers to changing the structure of an existing material to change some of its properties, but in terms of its composition, it remains the same material. 

• guide students to understand that for materials to be selected for use in a technological product, their performance properties must align with the desired specifications of the product
• guide students to recognise that during development of a product, specifications are established that will require the manipulation, and in some cases, transformation and formation, of materials
• provide students with a variety of technological products to explore and guide students to identify examples of when materials needed to be manipulated, transformed and/or formed to enable material linked specifications of the product to be met and contribute to the product’s fitness for purpose
• provide students with a scenario outlining technical and acceptability specifications for a product and support them to explore and research materials to determine what material would be suitable and how they could be manipulated and/or transformed to meet product specifications
• support students to communicate material related
• details effectively. Material related details include such things as what materials would be feasible and how they would need to be formulated, manipulated and/or transformed. Effective communication uses specialised language and symbols.

Indicators

Students can:

• describe examples to illustrate how the manipulation of materials contributed to a product’s fitness for purpose
• describe examples to illustrate how the transformation of materials contributed to a product’s fitness for purpose
• describe examples to illustrate how the formulation of new materials contributed to a product’s fitness for purpose
• communicate, using specialised language and drawings, material related details that would allow others to create a product that meets both technical and acceptability specifications.

Level Five: Students will: Understand that materials can be formed, manipulated, and/or transformed to enhance the fitness for purpose of a technological product.

Achievement objective

Students will:

Understand how materials are selected, based on desired performance criteria.

Teacher guidance

To support students to develop understanding of technological products at level 5, teachers could:

• guide students to understand that the composition of materials determines what performance properties it exhibits. Composition relates to such things as the type and arrangement of particles that make up the material
• support students to analyse examples of how materials have been selected to gain insight into how this selection relies on understanding the composition of the materials available and using this knowledge to help decide which materials in combination would provide the best "fit" with the product specifications.

Examples should include the material selection practices of technologists.

Indicators

Students can:

• discuss examples to illustrate how the composition of materials determines performance properties
• explain the link between specifications of a product and the selection of suitable materials for its construction
• discuss examples to illustrate how decisions about material selection take into account the composition of the material and the specifications of the product.

Copied and edited from: http://technology.tki.org.nz/Technology-in-the-NZC/Technology-indicators/Technological-products-IOPs

Project:

How Might We make Action for Happiness a part of our school, or classroom practice?

The following resource has existed for a good period of time and provides a good basis for this project.

http://www.actionforhappiness.org/calendars

The focus of this project is to develop a database using the calendars as a focus for content, that they can be used to push the content of each day through to the Visual Signage in the hallway at school.

Other ideas, how could databases/spreadsheets be used to help create individual slides/graphics quickly to be able to deal with this type of data when planning a month or week of activities in the school. 

Even recreating the document to a weekly focus through design principles and infographics.  

One of the issues that will come up as part of this when dealing with databases, is date formatting.

Dealing with dates... databases and dates, formatting dates, displaying dates and the various formats that cause databases to go askew,

An interesting way to look at this is https://xkcd.com/1179/, what other formats have students seen, or dealt with?

Students will need to come up with a way to get the information into the database, as well as possibly think of metatags, filtering that could be used in the future to help other students find activities that could be done to support.

The discussion would help students to explore filtering suggesting as well as how these make databases more easily to function and interpret.

Jan: Happy New Year (general happiness actions)
Feb: Friendly February (key: Relating)
Mar: Mindful March (key: Awareness)
Apr: Active April (key: Exercising)
May: Meaningful May (key: Meaning)
Jun: Joyful June (key: Emotions)
Jul: Jump Back July (key: Resilience)
Aug: Altruistic August (key: Giving)
Sep: Self-Care September (key: Acceptance)
Oct: Optimistic October (key: Direction)
Nov: New Things November (key: Trying Out)
Dec: Kindness Calendar (for advent/festive season)

Another part of this would be using the functions within the database about finding words and the number of instances. Using the wildcard tools(%, *, depending on platform) to find the "Appreciate" and "appreciating" word for example.

Infographic Development

Poster design and Development

Decision 1: Layout – Less is more
I consider how many key items I’m dealing with. In this case I had 4 key guidelines so considered :

How a page/slide might be divided in four.
What layouts have I not seen recently – you don’t want to many things in your classroom or school looking the same.
Is the target of the work more informative or creative. I keep layout simpler if it’s main aim in information.
I decided we had not seen a basic cheque board look recently and the aim of this poster was information., so we kept it simple.
Too much information on one page/slide can overload the viewer and fight against the intentions of the creator.

Decision 2: Style – Pick one and stick to it.

If the style remains constant it is easier to digest the info. 

Saying that, you can use style to emphasise or unite key elements. E.g. I use yellow to highlight the key word from each of the 4 guidelines on the poster above.

If you import icons for objects:
try to use a icon sets so they’re all the same style, match their line and shape style for other objects.

If you start with a photo, use it’s colours for other objectsFor colours,

use 3 max (unless doing an actual rainbow effect) + Black and white.
Use either a vertical or horizontal line on the colour pallet – match tone or single colour theme
OR use Paletton.com for a 3 colour designer pallet. (see Pic)

Stick to one line style and width
Don’t go crazy with fonts – try to stick to one and make sure it’s easy on the eye
For slides, keep to the same colour theme and style. A change of colour or style can accidentally visually imply a change of topic.

Decision 3: Balance objects size and spacing
No matter what’s on the page, make sure all the objects, when grouped, create an equal border width around the edge.

Don’t use bullets if colour and shapes can divide the info.
Consider how many key statements/elements there are and find an interesting way to divide the area up in a balanced way.
Remember people read left-to-right and top-to-bottom. Think about the order you want people to see things in.

Decision 4 – Quality and thematic images

It's the holidays, so I thought this might be a nice image to go with this resource at the time, maybe not in winter.

Using high-quality images is key to making work look professional. 

When people can quickly recognise their work looks like a quality product, teachers and students both enjoy the task much more. Speakers can be taken more seriously if they look visually professional.

Use a good royalty-free image site. Not Google.
I use pixabay.com (There are many more)
Have a creative thought about connecting the meaning of images with your theme. This cocktail on a beach might mean relax or holiday but it also might mean “escape” or “lonely”.
Try to match the colours of your graphic to the images you chose. This will help maintain the 3+B&W colour rule.

There you go. 

My final rule is “Be inspired by others.” Google “posters” and “infographics” before you start any project and try to copy the ideas of pros. 

You’ll rarely achieve the same result leaving you with wonderfully unique “ideas of you own.”

Some content copied and reused from https://eduwells.com/2018/09/12/4-guidelines-for-making-posters-slides-infographics/ as per CC 3.0 BY-NC-SA

Higher levels

To build on this would be ways for students to input what they have done to show how they have met the different posts each day.

How would they make there own type of system for ongoing daily activities, ie training calendar for sports?

How could a student develop an iCal or iCalendar (not the same thing) program to automatically add these into the days, groups, calendar. - Possibly a CT Progress focus as well?

References:

Some content copied and reused from https://eduwells.com/2018/09/12/4-guidelines-for-making-posters-slides-infographics/ as per CC 3.0 BY-NC-SA

http://technology.tki.org.nz/Technology-in-the-NZC/DDDO-Progress-outcomes-exemplars-and-snapshots - DDDO Progress Ouctomes

http://technology.tki.org.nz/Technology-in-the-NZC/Technological-knowledge/Technological-products - teacher Education - Tehcnologicial Products

https://xkcd.com/1179/ - XKCD Databases

http://www.actionforhappiness.org/calendars - Action for Hapiness Calendars 2018

Could we teach students how to hack hardware. DDDO PO 5

Thinking about the new standards and the opportunities around the integration of learning areas. This is something that is especially part of me and my teaching over the past four years.  Thinking about opportunities to integrate health and digital technologies. I have been the teacher in charge or mountain biking, adventure racing and orienteering, as well as taught two comodules with health and physical education at year 9 and 10.  While there is a lot talked about ethics within digital technologies, the ideas around fitness and the hardware that is now available that students wear or have access to.  is it ethical to hack a device? Is it ethical what about where the data goes? What are the relevant social, ethical and end-user considerations when doing this?  Being able to get this data to be used in an authentic and meaningful context. While the apps show one side of the data, what else is being recorded and sent. Could we be teaching students how to hack their devices? I am looking at the Alternative fit bit, MI Band 2 for this project. Some details if you are hardware inclined: https://medium.com/machine-learning-world/how-i-hacked-xiaomi-miband-2-to-control-it-from-linux-a5bd2f36d3ad python https://github.com/addibble/MiBand2 But as the DDDO PO5 states, with support, so information and guidance can be given to students. Looking at how this might integrate into DDDO progress outcome 5 In authentic contexts and with support, students investigate a specialised digital technologies area (for example, digital media, digital information, electronic environments, user experience design, digital systems) and propose possible solutions to issues they identify. They independently apply an iterative process to design, develop, store and test digital outcomes that enable their solutions, identifying, evaluating, prioritising and responding to relevant social, ethical and end-user considerations. They use information from testing and, with increasing confidence, optimise tools, techniques, procedures and protocols to improve the quality of the outcomes. They apply evaluative processes to ensure the outcomes are fit-for-purpose and meet end-user requirements.