EOTC Get Lost roundup

When we were asked what could we do for EOTC Week, I never imagined the comments that I have had this week.

Developing the Hobsonville Habits, developing lifeskills, being able to teach my child something that I couldn't.
These have all been comments from the parents through the students explaining their learning over the past week.

Over the past week students have been through an Education Outside the Classroom Experience, Called Get Lost. It is important to highlight the principles of EOTC.

EOTC is curriculum-based teaching and learning that extends the four walls of the classroom.

Learning takes place both inside and outside school. Learning at school should encourage young people to be capable and knowledgeable citizens, who are involved with the communities they live in and contribute to the wider community. Every young person should be able to participate in learning beyond the classroom, whatever their age, ability, or circumstances.

Learning outside the classroom has the potential to support learning in ways that are consistent with the vision, graduate profile, principles, values, attitudes, key competencies, and effective pedagogy statements in the national curriculum (The New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa). In addition, EOTC can support the aspiration for broad and deep learning in real-life contexts within and across the learning areas of the national curriculum.

The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies: thinking; managing self; using language, symbols, and texts; relating to others; and participating and contributing. Settings beyond the classroom are rich sites for developing, practising, and demonstrating the key competencies in a range of contexts within and across learning areas.

• Authentic contexts are essential for developing the key competencies. Since it is important for students to develop and demonstrate their capabilities, where better than in authentic contexts beyond the classroom? 
• Students need to apply the key competencies and use them to transform learning. They are a means of transforming the way in which students engage with and use their knowledge and understandings. Where better to apply and transform new learning than in relevant, authentic contexts beyond the classroom? 
• Students need to develop the disposition to use the key competencies. Attitudes are important as well as knowledge, skills, and values. Learning beyond the classroom prompts students to demonstrate that they are ready, willing, and able to use the new competencies that they are developing. 
• The future-focused aspect of the key competencies can be reinforced through EOTC, through experiences in which students encounter future issues that are a current concern in contexts beyond school.

Through our school, rather than the five key competencies, we have expanded them into dispositions, sort of extracting the key competencies into ten habits. 

When I think about the EOTC Journey that I have been on with this, and also the students, the habits are identifiable and the students have identified various habits as they have been on their journey. From being able to work within their group, comments from the students often talk about having to sort out issues within their group. When going through Auckland CBD on Wednesday many of them talked about the need to be compassionate, this brought out many conversations about the homeless people that are around the CBD. 

How did this happen...

It is great to have Auckland Transport and their AT HOP Cards, this meant that travel could be preloaded and students get to use a single card for their entire week, it also mean that each student have the responsibility to manage themselves. For the week, I only had one student forget their HOP card. 

Later on I will include some other comments about the AT HOP Card and the issues that we faced...

Preparation began a number of weeks ago, thinking about ideas and how to do a 5 day EOTC week, making sure that we stuck within our timeframes of time. For many of the students on this they have afternoon commitments that they were worried about. A look on the at.govt.nz website and looking at ferries gave me the times that I had to work with. The Hobsonville Ferry was out of the running straight away as the times that it left were not in line with our school day. The West Harbour ferry left as 9:05 and arrived back at 3:40. A discussion with some of the get lost students who have afternoon commitments was held and they were happy with the times. 

Once we had the times and my initial planning from 5 years ago, we needed an extra two days. Having a discussion with a teacher at school getting students out east and south for a day, as well as north and west for the second day. Out west was then taken out of the equation as it was felt a number of students already knew that area well.

Day 1: Hobsonville Point and West Harbour, no transport required. Students will be completing a Street Orienteering activity and learning how to use a GPS receiver down at Bomb Point.

Day 2: Students will travel to and from Britomart on ferry and travel to Auckland Domain for the main activities.

Day 3: Students will travel to and from Britomart on ferry and activities will be based around Downtown Auckland.

Day 4: Students will travel to and from Britomart on ferry and participate in an amazing race style event based around Auckland CBD to Manukau using Bus and Trains.

Day 5: students will travel to and from britomart on ferry and participate in an amazing race style event based around Auckland CBD to Albany using Ferry and Bus.

A booklet went out with all the the EOTC Week events, where students were to select their top three. This work well as the majority of students managed to get their first choice. 

Once the initial selection was done, it was communicated through learning hub, where students had an opportunity to change if needed.

Once numbers and choices had been sorted it was then time to meet the students. 

We had four meetings with the students, the first was around informing the students and answering questions about the event.

The second was to collect information, cellphone providers and wether they had a AT HOP Card.

The third was to collect in the AT HOP card and check in with the students about other questions

The fourth was to finalise all the details and pass out the final details, in which I also emailed out to parents, including the "What will happen if students do not make the ferry back on time."

To run something like this requires a large amount of planning and research. A day in the Auckland Domain checking to see if everything is in its place. Amazingly not having used the domain for the past 5 years, the logs and rocks were still in the same place. The only thing that was missing was the train carriages I used.

A day around Hobsonville Point and an afternoon caching down at the point.

A day around CBD, this was also an ingress event day in which I used a lot of the places that were held as part of this event.

I originally planned south auckland to include a trip out to the auckland domestic terminal, I removed this section of the race as I felt that an extra one and half hours could have been pushing it.

Travelling out and around the north shore looking at places to use, I found a fantastic bush within the city that allowed me to get students to explore different areas. From Volcanic cones, to beaches, to native bush.

Day One

Two maps, Hobsonville Point, and Hobsonville to West Harbour. This involved an aspect of street orienteering, at each of the sites, there was a question. Two of the sites involved the students taking a photo. 

I would probably make the second map a bit shorter. While many of the groups managed to do this in a good time, one group took 5 and half hours to do this. Many group came back talking about how they managed to get lost. A common phrase over the days. Many proudly talking about how they got lost and what strategy they used to become unlost. In the afternoon, there was a quick session on how to use the GPS Units that they would be using tomorrow.

Day Two, auckland domain, a mixture of caches and puzzles

First trip on the ferry today, with a train to take us the rest of the way. It was lucky that today we did this, as part of the route to the Auckland Domain on wednesday was part of a police cordon. 

Today was all about the GPS units to fin there way, no map. No way of knowing which paths to follow or what bush they would be going through. For the students it was all about following the arrow. 

Through my planning and checking the night before, I managed to miss one mistake, instead of being 174, I had put 144. This resulted in a number of groups talking about how the arrow did not move, one thing they forgot to look at was that the GPS unit was staying the cache was 2788km away.

billy goats gruff

can you spot the cache?

getting prepared

the most hated steps

While there were caches, there were also puzzles, getting students to investigate the world around them.

The end of day two

It was a change for Steve to have run looking for caches, he missed one

What people started to realise is that I visited the domain three times during that week, once on Monday night to put the caches out, to run the event, and then that night to collect the caches again. It is rather a busy park after work, with many groups playing soccer, running, cross fit and I think an AA meeting? 

Day Three, Auckland CBD

Planning their route

Planning their route

Discussing what order

Today, maps and cards. Getting students to follow a GPS, is one thing, but having to follow a map with 22 different points on it. Sounds like a computer science problem to me. What is the best way to go. How much time do we have to visit all 22 points?

Introducing students to the concept of nearest neighbour...

I am going to start of with the idea of using a computer to try and solve this problem. In fact here is a widget from the http://csfieldguide.org.nz/ComplexityTractability.html website.

It would take 80,948,713,101 years and 11 months and 4 days for a computer to find the best route for this problem.

For the students, they had 5 hours.

The yellow dots are detours, in which all students in the group must all complete a physical challenge.

Shooting baskets

500 skips by the group

One was skipping 500 times, the other was how many basketball shots could be made in 3 minutes. 

Students also had to create an origami boat and have it sail in a fountain. (Instructions were provided)

One thing I start to realise is what is available in the CBD to be able to develop ideas, new parks, spaces and those laneways. Getting students to explore the spaces around them and start to think what can be done differently.

Day Four, South Auckland, Trains! 

train timetables and maps

where do we have to go

Tasks that have to be completed

Planning, on the way to town we gave out the days train timetables and notes on what they had to do. This provided the students time for planning, what train were they going to try and catch, what order would they do it all in. The conversations during this time were purposeful and students were having to show compassion towards others in their groups when there was disagreement.

Many students had not ride the train before. This was not at all surprising as there are no trains really on the north shore. Many talked about how clean and quiet they were. The information put them to one tree hill, sylvia park and manakau station. It also involved a 1km sprint between orakei and meadowbank station along a boardwalk across the orakei basin. This was the day I though I was going to have to stay in town for an extra period of time. Two students had yet to make it back, lucky 15 seconds to spare.

Day Five, North Shore. Buses and Ferries!

Ready for day 5

We need to build a sandcastle?

Trying to figure out bus routes

Old military bases, beaches, rose gardens, bush, sculpture gardens, a selfie and mini golf.

Not stopping for the view

Ferries, this was the day that we had an issue with one of the HOP Cards, this ended up two students not making the devonport ferry with everyone else. However these students were resilient and carried out with purpose. Considering they sent an image near the end of they day as they were crossing the harbour bridge they could see the ferry coming to pick us up below them. 

Racing the ferry from the harbour bridge

They made it back on time. Mind you I though this was going to have other issues, getting reports of students still on north shore at 2:00pm, my mind was running, ok, four groups have yet to make it back, what did I email to parents earlier this week about the next ferry.

Thanks to the West Harbour Ferry company for four days of having extras on board.

This has been a fantastic week in which the students enjoyed, I had one student who found it a bit much. However, in talking with the students, they did not realise the amount of physical activity required for this. They could not explain to me what there initial reactions were to what Get Lost would be about. They had to get themselves around, use three forms of Public Transport, climb, create and mange themselves.

Trying to do this with a teacher working with every group is just too hard. Considering there were only three teachers for this. Without the other two (Steve and Leoni) it would have been too much to do. They were invaluable. They ran the checkpoints that I set up, the physical activities or challenges, they were there to support if anything went wrong. A lot of this has a large number of risk factors attributed to it, the RAMS form was 9 pages long. 

I think one of the biggest things that I learn from this, is that the qualities that we are developing with our students are those that they can take into situations, five days of Get Lost is rough on any person. These students managed to do it for the five days, turning up every morning, managing themselves and often having to deal with struggle within their groups.

AT HOP Card Issues

Registration, it seems that when a 15 year old student registers their HOP card, it makes them an adult when in fact, the website states over 16 years old.

• Children 5 to 15 years inclusive (until 16th birthday) of age are eligible for a child fare.

Day Pass AB

When you look at the the map around what an AB Zone Day Pass, you see all this green, so sweet, no... however it only applies to Inner Ferries, if you ar not to sure what that means, it is only the ones straight across from Auckland CBD, not including west. Hopefully this can be made clearer.

AT HOP Card

Loading 30 HOP Cards shouldn't require 30 transactions, Trying to find out if you could load them all at once with just the HOP card numbers. This required many emails and phone calls to try and find out. 

Thanks to the great customer services people at Smales Farm, you were awesome helping me get the money loaded and for the information you provided.

Seems one of the cards was Stolen?

Turns out it was't still don't really know what happened here, but got a text message from a student that told me that the customer services rep told him that the card was stolen. At least the student was able to log into his AT Account on his phone and show that he was the holder of that card. But it resulted in him missing the Devonport ferry ontime.

EOTC Week

One of the greatest things I find in schools is their ability to get students thinking outside the square. In 2009, the school I was with started a 3 day EOTC project, this was aimed at year 9 and 10 students and was designed to push students outside their comfort zone. The same happened again in 2010. This was an amazing experience where we pushed students to develop ideas around EOTC and key competencies. The same happened happened at my last school over two days. However, maybe I was not as adventurous, the first year we went mountain biking at hanmer springs, and went for a ride through the woods, finishing off with one of the coolest downhills the students have ever enjoyed, straight down jollies pass road. The next day we rode around bottle lake forest. This was over two days. The following year, paint ball shooting for two days, you can get pretty sore. The next two years was at school develoting time to a cost free programming session, which allowed the students to develop hour of code projects while having fun, including google hangout a students from up north.
Arriving at Hobsonville Point Secondary, Camp was being talked about. I can't think of the last time I was on a school camp. However, the idea of developed of an EOTC week for students, to develop the dispositions or hobsonville habits. I thought of the fun and excitement of Get Lost again, and included it in the document. The Get Lost name is back, students use it around school like a badge of honour, when handing the forms back in at reception, the answer of Get Lost is heard. What was once a three day project has now turned into a 5 day exploration of Auckland through the AT HOP card and public transport.
I have enjoyed finding areas of the Get Lost environment still the same after 5 years, which is kind of scary, but also fascinating when you think of the thousands of people that visit the sites each day.

I will develop this more as we run the event next week.  

Realising the potential

How do we deal with students that join our class in year 13 - this was on a post-it note from the workshop in the holidays

I have been thinking about this for the last couple of weeks and I have been having a number of conversations with people around it.

The issue is the prior knowledge that is required.

Now, think openly about this,

Focus on a single strand of digital technologies, I am going with the programming and computer science strand. This is based on credits and resources.

Having a students turn up in year 13 having possibly done only a little bit of digi tech in year 9 is a challenge. Normally this student is thrown a course in complex techniques and struggles. 

Term One - Level one programming and computer science, have them work through the level one papers and assessment. Many students will probably turn there nose up at this, however, point out that this is the basic knowledge and this will help develop skills and understanding for the rest of the year. Also offer the knowledge computer science external, as something else to work on.

Term Two - Level two, advanced programming and computer science. Developing a better understanding of the requirements for level 3. Demonstrating knowledge of computer science for externals.

Term 3 - Programming and computer science. Doing the level 3 requirements and computer science paper.

Yes this is a large amount of work, but the resources are out there. And being year 13 students they should have the numeracy and literacy skills to be able to do these.

This develops a pathway for these students that they may not have had before.

While it is a single strand, students would get out of it, 10 credits at level one, we don't have to assess the level one credits though 10 credits at level 2, and 10 credits at level 3. But why stop there, allow them to work for endorsement. Use a technology standard as a research task AS91619, Going through the clarifications document, The expected level of understanding of how the technical area has underpinned developments increases across eras. That is, students will explain the technical ideas and developments that created the technical area (for Achievement); explain current limitations and opportunities and possible future developments (for Merit); discuss potential developments in technical areas and debate how these could be applied in fields in the future (for Excellence). 

It is a common occurrence that has been talked about at CS4HS conference as well as through my own experience. 

When students get to year 13 they find that they do not want to continue with a subject due to the amount of external's that have been pushed into the subject at the higher levels, no longer wanting to do the subject because of the amount of theory where the previous year it was practical. Wanting to experience something different because they are being told that they should take this subject because of a skills shortage.

Students change their mind, influenced by different ideas, friends, peer groups, teachers, media.

Why do we stop students from engaging with learning, I realise a lot people will talk about students that may not be self directed. But when I think of this, when has a student been allowed to be self directed? They may have been in courses that are all teacher directed, developed and content as well as assessment contexts have been given and the student has had no say. 

How can we develop students to have these skills earlier on in their learning and not leave it until their 13th year of schools to find out how to become self directed.

Need to include some information here on Managing Self, Key Competency.

Innovation Generation

Many of the Innovation Generation are deeply worried about the future of the planet, seek healthier lifestyles, and want to make a difference more than they want to make money. But they are swimming against the tides of tradition. A lot of parents still harbor hopes that their children will persue prestigious careers and be economically better off than they are. Too many teachers and employers still reward the "old school" behaviours of deference to authority and striving for "success", conventionally defined - and count on carrots and sticks for motivation. The result is that many in the Innovation Generation are skeptical of adult authority and the institutions that their elders have presided over. School is a game the Innovation Generation knows they have to play to get "credentialed", but they do it with as little effort as possible. Most have no desire to climb the corporate ladder and wait twenty years to do something interesting or worthwhile. They have no patience with worksheets or busywork. They have dreams and ambitions that demand time and space - and active nurturing.  

The problem is that many of those in their forties, fifties and sixties who work in established institutions don't make the time and space for the younger generation's dreams and ambitions. Leaders of conventional schools and businesses don't know what to do with this Innovation Generation. These young people have different dreams, different aspirations from their elders.

Page 19, Creating Innovators, Tony Wagner

Why am I posting this,
When I read this book it kept striking me that what we are doing within the Technology Curriculum and Digital Technologies needs to change. No longer is it ok to give the students the same project and expect an outcome. Why are we not allowing students to develop websites with a social need for example.

Last year a student wanted to make a change, help end child poverty.
This was picked up by the Internet Party who pushed it out through their social media.

Allowing students time to develop outcomes and think of new ideas is what is required in schools. It is amazing when I think of the work and time that students put into developing their ideas in class, developing programmes that supported an issue around spelling, a security system in a house through a raspberry pi due to a break in of a fellow student. These projects are ones that I would have never thought of. Students being able to have the confidence to talk about these projects and develop the understanding of skills and knowledge required to make these projects work. A lot of people will talk about the final outcome, few will talk about the process that it takes to get there, the failures along the way.

I meet with my Hub students today and asked them about their successes this term, all were able to talk about them and why they were successes. When I asked the question about failure,  they struggled to talk about them.

You are going to fail - and likely more than once. If you don't fail, then you are probably playing it too safe. Failing hurts like hell - especially failing in public. But you will learn some of your most valuable lessons from failure - far more from your successes. As you reflect on the causes of your failure(s), you will come to better understand yourself - your strengths and weaknesses - and you will adjust your aspirations accordingly. You will also become clearer about what it is you are trying to do and what is required to make it work. Think of failure as iteration, as learning.

 Page 246, Creating Innovators, Tony Wagner

An open letter to NZ Universities - Digital Technologies

Good evening,

We are now 15 years into a new century of education, the 21st century. Through this, we have seen a major change in the education sphere in New Zealand. National Certificate Education Achievement, this has allowed for students to seek better opportunities in courses, though there seems to be very little that schools do that you wish to change. In 2011 a new subject was created, Digital Technologies, yet looking through the marketing material, these students that take the subject in secondary schools as a background subject are missing some of the key information.

The University of Otago background subjects guide is one http://www.otago.ac.nz/prospectivestudents/otago117015.pdf
Computer St
and Computer Studies is mentioned.

I am going to say, this has not been around since the end of Sixth form Certificate.

Canterbury University
When you enter digital technologies into the search engine, you get a whole lot around education and e-learning. When you see the information science, you read, While we do not require students to have studied digital technologies at school

Then you see... If you enjoyed Digital Technologies and Media Studies at school, you might like to study the following subjects at UC: Astronomy;

It seems that the University of Canterbury links Media Studies and Digital Technologies together... http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/media/documents/brochure/what-subjects-do-you-enjoy-brochure.pdf

Yeah...

Victoria University, Congratulations!!!

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/study/course-career/school-subjects/planning-ahead.pdf

Fantastic! You deserve a Bouquet!

University of Waikato

This is a little bit more difficult, however for Computing Degree as mentioned in this, more around Mathematics requirements.

http://unipr.waikato.ac.nz/careersadvisers/files/pdf/choosing-your-subjects-feb-2015.pdf

Auckland University

Where do I start... https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/admission-and-enrolment/ae-undergraduate-students/ae-entry-requirements/ae-domestic-students/ae-national-certificate-of-educational-achievement.html

Entry requirements for Computer Science

Students are not required to have studied any sort of computing at high school to be able to major in Computer Science at The University of Auckland.

It is good preparation for prospective computer science students to study level 3 NCEA in Mathematics or equivalent. Physics can also be useful.

https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/en/for/future-undergraduates/admissionandenrolment-3/entryrequirements.html

It is however... 

COMPSCI 107

15 Points

Computer Science Fundamentals

This is the entry course to Computer Science for students with prior programming knowledge. It focuses on data structures and efficient ways to manipulate data. Topics include: a brief recap of programming concepts, recursion, regular expressions, data interchange, abstract data types, linear data structures (lists, stacks and queues), non-linear data structures (heaps, hash tables, trees), searching and sorting.

Prerequisite: Achievement Standards NCEA Level 3: Digital Technologies and Programming: 91637 Develop a complex computer program for a specified task, 91636 Demonstrate understanding of areas of computer science, or equivalent, or Departmental approval

Restriction: COMPSCI 101, 105

Is it possible to be able to update your material to include aspects of Digital Technologies, the subject to help build interest, parents perceptions, and careers advisors information.

Thank You.

Time to play - mytime v0.0.14

It has been another good night of development, I now have the days running separately and two choices per day. Data is now being feed into a selection database, where if a student has already completed it it overwrites, otherwise it adds in a new row of data.

Thought I had a problem with the display of some data, but it was the way I set it up to test to make sure that if the mytime coordinator did not want to have a selection on that week that it would not be displayed.

Added in the ability to change weeks within the system, could have been done a bit cleaner with a for loop, but leaving it for now...

Now to get the next parts in, 

Absence

Guided Learning 

Numeracy support.

Should it be a second choice... if a student is either going to be away, wanting guided learning, note only one a week, meeting with a teacher or numeracy support, these should be first choice only. Second choice is something else..

Note: only one guided learning a week. This is possible as I can tag it to stop it coming up again in the following days.

v0.0.20

I have now included a check to make sure that you cannot select the same item in 1st and 2nd choice. This will be made red and developed a bit more, but for now.
I am also developing a way to check for guided learning only to be entered once, this is taking a little bit longer to sort out with the logic needed.
Also check it with a student logging in today, had to change his password as I could not remember what the cipher is for login.

Time to play - mytime v0.0.3

I finally feel like I have some time to play,

I am currently playing around with the idea of what learnPath is all about...

I started off with a habit evaluation from one that we started off at the beginning of the year, but now it has changed as the we include and think about what it is developing, or showing.

However the big one for me at the moment is around the mytime, I have started developing the code for it, and I have been rethinking and developing it once I get a piece working. I was running at 173 lines of code, now down to 83, including comments.

Playing around with data and display

Each week our mytime changes, this has been included in the development of database, it reads the year, term, week and day, at the moment we have mytime run for 3 days, however I have developed it so mytime can run each day. I am thinking about wether to show individual days or select all days on one screen, select second options on the next.

Transforming Assessment Praxis

I am on a pilot of a new NZQA Best Practice Workshop model, which is around Transforming Assessment Praxis.

While it hasn't been all inspiring, as most of the work that they have been talking about over the last five weeks has been ideas that I have been working on with my students for the past couple of years. It has made me more aware of what we are trying to do at HPSS. Knowing the learner and working with contexts.

As well as looking at Naturally Occurring evidence

While watching the three hour session tonight that I missed last week, around What currently drives you current assessment practice, What students value, Future shifts, Modes of assessment and naturally occurring evidence. I have been sent two assessments to moderate by another teacher, looking at these tonight and putting the ideals that I have been working through, I have been able to make some changes to evidence statements. While it is an assessment in Digital Information, database creation, the assessment is written in such a way that it allows for a student to develop their own context, yet also offer ideas for those students that can't think of one, or it does show the students what the rigour of the assessment should be. Having the conversation with the teacher on the phone while modifying the assessment through Google Drive has allowed for some great conversations to happen about how the assessment could be delivered, and what contexts should be included to help develop students ideas around rigour.
Evidence statements have now been changed to allow for a screencast of the database working by the student to show how it would function.

But the highlight of the work was on area of the assessment that had been developed which was on to show skilfully or efficiently as required as part of the step up of the assessment. This is the masterpiece of the assessment in my opinion, without even knowing it or putting it in for assessment sake, this allows for naturally occurring evidence of the technology level 2 achievement standard around planning to be included. So a 6 credit assessment, is now a 10 credit assessment.

In the presentation I was watching tonight, was included some information on overlaps. This is something I think originally looked at when the assessments came out, however I think I was turned off at the amount of evidence required by the standards. Having a better understanding of the standards now and evidence required through my role in the subject association helps me to now develop better assessment outcomes. A feature of what we are looking at as part of the Workshop15 in the holidays. To many teachers are talking about the amount of evidence needed for assessments now. Why are we not thinking smarter and allowing the technologies that we use everyday to assist us.

I know look forward to the next two weeks where I get to put my plans for the task into action and develop an assessment resource 

Things to consider …

Prior to writing your assessment resource, you will need to consider the following:

• Your goal
• What the student voice has told me
• Student input into context
• Knowing my student
• Documents which will inform my assessment resource (Achievement Standard, Conditions of assessment, Clarifications documents)
• Modes of assessment
• Variety of ways to collect evidence

My Goal, to look at how naturally occurring evidence and authentic contexts can help develop engaging learning that can be used for overlaps of assessment.

Curious Minds, What might Digital Technologies look like

This week saw the fourth meeting of the Curious Minds, Review of the Positioning of Digital technologies in the New Zealand Curriculum.

What the Ministry have heard

There is a "Digital Imperative".

• Digital Technologies need an increased presence or focus in the National Curriculum
• Work is needed to determine if the curriculum support/reflects this.
• Digital Citizenship is important in Years 0 - 13

Vision and Principles in the NZC

• The vision may need to be reviewed to include 'digitally capable'

Achievement Objectives in the NZC

• Every learner needs to know how to be critical consumer of digital technologies
• Computational and logical thinking through active learning needs to be supported for learners from Y0-13.
• Learner need to know how to create, not just use artefacts.

Technology Learning Area

• Digital Technologies should remain as part of the Technology learning Learning Area but be strengthened and structured with explicit progressions for digital technology.
• As long as the teaching and learning of digital technologies occurs, as above, it did not matter whether it remained within technology or was imbedded across the curriculum.

Implementation

• There needs to be significant, well funded, relevant and ongoing PLD to shift practice for ALL teachers.
• Exemplars of authentic programmes of work and lesson plans are needed to show contextualized learning.
• Resources are needed at all levels, including - PLD, ITE, teacher support materials.
• This must be part of a larger transformational change across the sector (ITE, PLD, infrastructure, guidance, parents, families and whanau)

Community

• There needs to be an acknowledgement of learner and whanau demand.

Teaching and Learning

• Authentic and integrated experiences to enable high quality teaching and learning is the key driver.
• Learners will flourish in a digital world.
• Pedagogy needs to inform planning, teaching and learning.
• Evidence, examplars and guidance about how to teach digital technologies is required.
• The support of leadership is imperative.

Assessment

• Assessment tools need to link pedagogy to the future
• There needs to be a change in the assessment system and the tools available.

The ministry put up a slide in What they haven't heard.

• No change is required to the national curriculum.
• Schools, leaders and teachers are fully equipped to teach digital technologies
• Digital technologies is relevant to some students.
• Digital technologies is coding.
• Coding should be compulsory from Y0-13
• Digital technologies is already sufficiently explicit in the curriculum.

My Comment

One of the biggest issues that has still really to be resolved is what is Digital technologies, Learning with Digital technologies is still a huge issue and one that is causing issues. While the ministry agree that concepts of skills and knowledge in Digital technologies/Computational thinking/Computer Science is necessary, it still gets caught by the digital technologies used within classrooms and the changing nature of teaching and learning for all students.

I think the intention was to gather information, then they'll write the plan, based upon some of the suggestions that have been given along the way.

One thing that has come through every discussion has been that the technology Curriculum needs fixed. Digital Technologies needs to be fully independent  or a fully independent area within technology.

I include the proposal of what a Digital technologies curriculum could look like, this was looked at in Meeting 3, and some more comments in meeting 4, before another proposal was put forward and the elephant in the room was discussed.

We do have a full endorsement that it's important, that it needs prominence, and that it needs to be from primary levels up.

So four options have been talked about through the meeting

- Separate area

- Address the shortcomings of technology as a learning area. (It was interesting seeing a possible model be captured which would have meant the removal of Design and Visual Communication)

- Look at integrated/restructured delivery

- Be added to the Humanities area

The ministry have taken what has been captured and talked about, and are looking at possible trials and pilots of what this could look like. So we wait to see what that could be.

What came out nice and clear, is what is digital technologies isn't.

It is not Unit standards, it is not Digital Information (office productivity tools)
It is not knowing how to use ms access. 

It is around developing understanding and using databases, however MS access removes the complexity required for understanding of how databases are used and created. Simple Queries of drag and drop components do not help develop the deep understanding. 

It is not around just using software programs. 

This is what they are saying Digital Technologies is, it is Computational thinking, maybe this is what the Learning area could be called, "Computational Participation".

Computational thinking (CT) is a problem-solving process that includes (but is not limited to) the following characteristics: 

• Formulating problems in a way that enables us to use a computer and other tools to help solve them. 
• Logically organizing and analyzing data 
• Representing data through abstractions such as models and simulations 
• Automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps) 
• Identifying, analyzing, and implementing possible solutions with the goal of achieving the most efficient and effective combination of steps and resources 
• Generalizing and transferring this problem solving process to a wide variety of problems 

These skills are supported and enhanced by a number of dispositions or attitudes that are essential dimensions of CT. These dispositions or attitudes include: 

• Confidence in dealing with complexity 
• Persistence in working with difficult problems 
• Tolerance for ambiguity 
• The ability to deal with open ended problems 
• The ability to communicate and work with others to achieve a common goal or solution
  http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/CurrFiles/CompThinkingFlyer.pdf

It is not simple media, using wizards or tools, its not WYSIWYG. It is about higher level computational thinking applied across contexts.

It is going to involve a series change in thinking from years 9 at present. 

If the goal is to give it creditability alongside physics and calculus, that will come at a cost.

This will require Resources, Professional Development and a new way of thinking, teaching and implementation not seen in New Zealand Schools. Potentially it may not get that funding. We can say it needs funding, but as we know with other implementations, funding is not ongoing.

Professional Reading, 15 characteristics of a 21st century teacher

Each week at HPSS we get given readings to do as part of our professional learning, this week we were given 15 characteristics of a 21st century teacher (http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/15-characteristics-21st-century-teacher) to read. The last three are ones that link to what I am trying to do as a teacher, why is coding important, why do I need to innovate, and to Keep Learning. While the other 12 are important and just as essential. I feel that these three make up some of what I am doing more of.

13. Code

While this one might sound complicated, coding is nothing but today's literacy. As a pencil or pen were "the tools" of the 20th-century, making it impossible to picture a teacher not capable to operate with it, today's teacher must be able to operate with today's pen and pencil, i.e., computers. Coding is very interesting to learn -- the feeling of writing a page with HTML is amazing! Even though I have ways to go, just like in every other field, a step at a time can take go a long way. Again, lynda.com is a great resource to start with!

Coding to me has been important back from 1984 when we had the BBC Model B at home, this allowed us to start to see the power of computing and what it offered. A friday night activity was to go to the book store once a month to pick up the latest computing magazine for Mum to develop her knowledge of  programming the games that we could play, through this I learnt debugging, sitting beside Mum explaining that the code she just wrote in wouldn't work due to syntax problems. This has lead to a lot of time developing programs at Polytechnic as well as with schools now.

14. Innovate

I invite you to expand your teaching toolbox and try new ways you have not tried before, such as teaching with social media or replacing textbooks with web resources. Not for the sake of tools but for the sake of students!

Ever since I started using TED talks and my own activities based on those videos, my students have been giving a very different feedback. They love it! They love using Facebook for class discussions and announcements. They appreciate novelty -- not the new tools, but the new, more productive and interesting ways of using them.

Innovate, keep thinking of new ideas and write them down, keep a blog of the ideas. One of the greatest things I have at the moment is not the comment of "This is the way its always been done", Surely at some stage someone came up with a better way.

15. Keep Learning

As new ways and new technology keep emerging, learning and adapting is essential. The good news is: it's fun, and even 20 min a day will take you a long way!

As teachers we need to keep doing this, we need to keep learning. My latest is playing with google cardboard and thinking about how to incorporate this within school.

Data representation unplugged - continued

This week I had an email around last weeks Data Representation work. In the email there were a few comments that I found rather interesting. I include part of it below. The whole entire focus is one around assessment, at the junior level. I must say I read this 5 times trying to understand why? Why the subject requiring 32 credits per semester? Why the assessment driven curriculum?
To be clear, the following is not the school that I work at, we work towards Learning Objectives based on our Learning Design Model and NZC 2007, we report on curriculum level and progression, based upon rubrics.

We have a junior diploma which is all about credits, each subject does 32 credits per semester.  If an assessment is worth say 12 credits, they'll get 12 credits for getting excellence, 9 for merit and 6 for achieved or something like that.  Then students get A/M/E for their junior diploma overall based on how many credits they got out of credits available.

IMHO it's awful because our junior curriculum is assessment driven.  Sure we get to decide on the topics and how the assessments work, but once that has been done we still get stuck having to balance covering what's needed for the assessment, and trying to make it catered to their interests.  See, we decide on the topics before we meet our classes and then we're locked in, there's not much room for "Hey you guys are fully interested in binary, let's spend a week on data representation (and make some movies like Gerard's class did" because we have to give them a decent shot at their assessments.

To be clear, a week in my classroom for this module, is one and a half hours on a Thursday. As part of our SPIN, Special Interest Module. I include the following on what is being covered.

The work I am developing towards is Technological Systems under the Technology Curriculum, The work you saw as part of the videos and page was on part of the Computer Science module that runs over 13.5 hours

I am using the basis of the computer science badges that the University of Canterbury, Computer Science Education Department developed. 

Students will then work through algorithms and finish off with HCI.

Data Representation

The core concept of this topic is the binary digit, which is the basis of all data storage and transmission on digital computers. Students should be familiar with the role of a bit, combinations of bits (such as a byte), and their use to represent numbers, characters and images. This work does not include compressed representations (e.g. mp3, jpeg).

For a student to be successful they need to :

Demonstrate the ability to work with binary and hexadecmimal numbers by showing how to:

• manually convert between binary and decimal for numbers up to 8 bits.
• Demonstrate the ability to manually convert between hexadecimal and binary for arbitrary numbers, and to convert between hexadecimal and decimal for numbers up to 255.
• Demonstrate how to count and add in binary.
• Explain how an 8-bit characters are typically stored on a computer.
• Explain a system for representing colours with numbers. This might be one of:

• Web page colour specification (6-digit hex values)
• Colour picker in publishing software that allows RGB or HSV values to be chosen as three numbers
• Photo processing software that gives the RGB or HSV value of chosen pixels

Demonstrate a data representation that has a choice of bit sizes, and explain the significance of the different representations. Examples that could be used include:

• 8-bit and 16-bit characters
• 24-bit and 8-bit colour
• Other Examples could include:
• 16-bit and 8-bit sound files
• 56-bit and 128-bit encryption
• IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
• MAC addresses using MAC-48, EUI-48, and EUI-64
• MIDI representation of notes, patch numbers and channels

Convey the concepts of data representation to someone who doesn't know about the topic. This might be:

• A short video suitable for non-experts explaining a key aspect of the topic
• Introducing it effectively to someone who is considering doing the module themselves
• Creating effective quiz questions (e.g. in Peerwise)

The work they did last week in their second class was conveying a concept of data representation suitable for a non expert.