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.

data representation - csunplugged

On Wednesday night I stayed a bit later at school to work on the relief for the next day, as I had a meeting in Wellington. I started last week teaching the students the beginning of data representation using bits.

One of the best resources to support teachers is csunplugged.com

Using the resources the focus was teaching the students to learn binary up to 32 places.

This provides them the start of being able to develop the language required. Symbols also help provide clarity for students as well as they are able to see it visually.

I thought about what we have been talking about at school recently and the focus of my teaching as inquiry. I need to think about how I present some of my information.

So I thought of what Georgi has been suggesting that I do, and that is to start creating videos to help for those visual learners.

The first video is of the instructions for today showing two forms of data representation. One using chalk in the carpark, the other using cards. Using the titles at the start to include what was required. Though next time I might change it to be my voice.

On my way to the meeting I thought I needed to include a representation of a message. Thanks to the wonderful flight attendants who cooperated with the request.

How was the lesson. Going by a few of the glass walls around the school and comments from the teachers, they are seeing binary being used around the school. To have a message come through my my phone at 2:39pm form a student with the correct code answer also showed that they were developing their understanding.

I look forward to next week when the student receives the prize, The Air New Zealand lollies.

I plan on teaching ASCII and unicode next. Considering this week was Maori Language Week it would have been a great discussion.

Weekend takeaways

This weekend I spent time at #educampAKL.  Getting to see many teachers that I have twitter conversations with regularly,  however having the Face to Face is important as well.
Tamaki College provided an excellent backdrop to these conversations with their classrooms providing a modern learning environment to learn in.

On Friday I spent some time down at the Primary School talking with one of the teachers about possibilities, these were able to be developed at #educampAKL with some of the topics that came up. One of them around Google Cardboard.

The teacher and his class are currently filling in a questionaire from another school about how their classroom looks so they can built it in minecraft. How walks does you classroom have? Bit difficult when you have a room that isn;t quite a normal shape, or a classroom door, or typical spaces. One of the question is around how many spaces are in your classroom. Answer 14.

How can we use technology to support the ideas and questions that these are bringing up.

Having some time with some google cardboard offered us some ideas in how we can use technology between the secondary and primary to show these ideas, but not just within our school, within our community. Showing the history of the point before it is changed forever.

Second (and third), the Hobsonville Point area and even our school are rather new. We could take photos, upload them and then allow others to experience the growth of our area and school through Google Cardboard. This has direct ties to an ongoing project at HPPS and HPSS, opportunities for some authentic collaborative projects here are massive.
The last opportunity, all credit here to @Gmacmanus (pictured). I've been taking part in an interesting little project to assist @NZWaikato and his class as they try collect information on classes so they can recreate them in Minecraft. His learners and mine are operating in quite different classroom environments, Google Classroom would provide a more realistic way to experience each others classrooms. 

Copied from http://teachingyoume.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/educampakl-2105.html 

My moonshot is to get students creating interactive artefacts.

Today, I followed a conversation on twitter around nodebots. These are some simple electronics to develop programming skills. I have been looking at this within our school and what we can develop using some of the equipment we have, however, I do like the idea of this, considering the laser cutter we have.  

Using this open source robot might provide an interesting challenge for some of my students, http://sumobotkit.com/.

getting my database fairy on

One of the books I read over the holidays was The Manga Guide to Databases. I have been trying to find something more to do with teaching databases to students than using MS Access.

The reason behind that is I don't have MS Access on the students BYOD devices, and I haven't used in for a number of years. I have been using mySQL. Which runs on a Linux Box within the school.

I put a help request out to the Digital Tehcnologies Google Group, and that came back with little more than developing a PokeDex, which I think I suggested a number of years ago. As well as developing a database to find stolen cars, which you can download a list of here http://www.police.govt.nz/stolenwanted/stolen-vehicles doing queries is one thing, but developing a database to meet the needs of students and a stakeholder is another thing.

Through some serious searching online, I came across The Mange Guide to Databases.

I learnt more through this book, not about the database stuff itself, but more around creating views, the properties of transactions, when disaster strikes, indexes and optimizing queries. This has been a great book and I feel that I have got my database fairy on.

With a useful cheat sheet

nzgather

Many years ago I started going to a conference called barcamp, an awesome idea that was developed by Ludwig, a 15 year old student that wanted to get the creative community together. 7 years later it is now called gather.

Saturday at Ormiston Senior College brought on a conference that gets people talking, networking and having a good time.

Catching up with people that I saw at the first barcamp as well as people that I have had interaction with since then. It is quite strange how much older they seem...

But this post is about two sessions that I attended.

Interested in games instead of powerpoint for learning. Play "Paying for predictions's" a game developed by the Red Cross so players could experience the effects of climate change.

And Lego Serious Play, A chance to be hand on with some of the activities used in the opening of a strategy workshop. A useful tool for creating shared metaphors and exploring a 3D perspective on challenges.

These two have given me ideas on how to develop more with my Hub students at Extended Hub at school.

Getting students to use the Hobsonville Habits and explore what they mean as well as building relationships.

Paying for predictions, http://www.climatecentre.org/resources-games/paying-for-predictions
This participatory activity aims to support experiential learning and dialogue on the concept of climate-based disaster risk reduction, which is becoming more salient in the face of climate change. In this table game, players become Red Cross Red Crescent workers, who face changing risks. They must make individual and collective decisions, with consequences. Rich discussions emerge, and there will be winners and losers.

Getting students to think about the gameplay and the establishment of a trade-off between collaboration and competition which enriches the discussion and adds to the emotional depth of the gameplay experience. 

The other, I was looking at at school in a catalogue a couple of weeks ago, and thought that it may not suit what I was thinking. However, going through it today opened my eyes to the opportunities that this will bring.














Lego Serious Play http://seriousplaypro.com/about/about-serious-play/lsp-open-source/ brings in the ideas of building with your hands, it is amazing when you start start building.

A Tool for Building Results, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a radical, innovative, experiential process designed to enhance business performance. It is based on the belief that everyone can contribute to the discussion, the decisions and the outcome.

The use of LEGO bricks simply enables you to take a speedy shortcut to the core. The bricks work as a catalyst – and when used for building metaphors, they trigger processes that you were previously unaware of.

Participants come away with skills to communicate more effectively, to engage their imaginations more readily, and to approach their work with increased confidence, commitment and insight.

These are two things that I hope I can build into the Hub toolkit for other teachers to use with their students and in the development of the HPSS My Learning, My Being, My Communities.

Thank you #nzgather for introducing me to these and the people in the creative industry.

Thank you Ludwig for creating and developing an awesome event. 

Google NZ CS Partnership Summit

This week I have been lucky to be part of the first CS Partnership summit in New Zealand, representing NZACDITT. An initiative that was brought to us by the Hutt City Libraries. This brought Google as well as all the main people in New Zealand having an impact of CS education at primary, secondary and some of the tertiary providers that offer CS4HS together to talk about next steps.

It has been a pretty full on day, hearing about the past CS partnership summits, some of the stats from Google about the issues that Australia is facing and the opportunities that this is bringing as well. Hearing about the action that have taken place in New Zealand with the Digital Technologies curriculum at senior levels that other countries would like to have.

A favourite from the “godfather” Tim Bell, is him talking about the computation of finding a route, then adding in 4 more places that you have to go to, then adding in 16 more. How long will that take to find the best route. Considering the amount of calculations that have to be done, there are just some problems that take years to find out. Why is this important, and how does learning Computer Science help with these problems.

The use of parity checks is also shown, and a quick looking back soon finds a bar code that can be tested. The other is a look at human machine interaction and how having a cancel button that is green and a conform button that is orange plays with people into causing them to have not a good experience with a webpage. I wish that he would use some of the examples that have been developed in the csfieldguide.org.nz to help illustrate some of these to help people see the development of the resource.

Moving onto the stats, how has the development of the Digital Technologies curriculum impacted on the amount of students, number of schools offering these standards. How can we get more school interested in teaching these standards.

The issues of PLD and resources are always quick to be brought up. But these need to be drilled down and given actions and responsibility to someone to help make a difference. That’s what the rest of the day worked towards.

Having lightening talks given by some of the groups at the meeting helped develop an understanding of what are highlights of their offerings, as well as what is making it hard for them. Listening to their ideas and having some feedback from Google really helped to develop an understanding that what they are facing others have done before, and extra conversations would be needed to support them with their longer term strategies. 

Having the moonshot thinking of what are opportunities and barriers really helped, being able to write down what could be carried out if money, time and other barriers were removed. 5 minutes is too short a time to get all ideas written. These were then paired up with someone else and you were able to combine ideas, then working with the table and putting them into categories and ranking them from most important down. This helped everyone start to see opportunities that all groups were facing. Having to vote on what was important to us through dots helped people develop the understanding of what is important to the group.

How to deal with the PLD.

How to communicate better.

The curriculum.

Getting the message out.

The next 50 minutes seemed like it was 5 minutes, ideas on how to deal with these, what were some of the barriers, actions to be dealt with, how could they be validated, developing metrics. 

Then reporting back and having to work on key tasks, developing the actions a bit more, when were they to be actioned, by who, or what group was needed to make it happen.

This has lead to some pretty interesting ideas that are being followed up next week. 

I will make one comment, I thank the teachers and management team at HPSS around the work that they have been doing around developing growth mindsets, working with the students around moonshot thinking. I think that without developing that culture and ideas through the school.

One of the other participants of the summit has blogged about what makes for effective PLD - http://blog.core-ed.org/derek/2015/07/what-makes-for-effective-pld.html

Also I need to check out http://google-au.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/careers-with-code-setting-up-our-young.html

The Wall

There is this wall at school. Not much happening with it. Wait till you see what we have planned for it. 

Challenge accepted

When I first came up with this SPIN I thought I would just go through and do the same old tasks in python that I had been doing with my students for the last couple of years. However, this place makes you want to challenge yourself.

That is what I have been doing over the past 10 weeks, challenging myself in what I am doing with my SPINs. In Term 1 I had a SPIN for programming where I used the programming language Scratch. This term I took it up a level to a text based programming language, called python. This is able to be freely downloaded and installed on the computers without having a licence which makes it work in our BYOD environment as well as being able to be installed on the school computers.

The challenge of programming is that sometimes it is just maths problems that get created and solved. I decided that I wanted to look at game development. Not your normal games of multiplayer environments in 3D. The simple games of Quizes, 8 Ball, Hangman, Paper Rock Scissors and High Low.

These are games which can be developed to increase in skill and ability. Perfect for a differentiated class. Why you might ask. The class that I teach is not just one year level. It is 4 year levels in one.
I have year 8, year 9, year 10, and year 11 in the same class. One thing is that we do not have the achievement standard to contend with. This is about the learning. Students come in with all levels of ability already, working the tasks into the different scaffolds helped. It meant that a student could still succeed. Working with groups of students around the class provided opportunities for support, most of the time it was a student asking before they tried the code themselves. They wanted the validation, yet the answer was almost always the same, "Have you tried it?"


A number of these ideas have come from other resources on the Internet, but being able to develop these and work them towards our students knowledge and understanding. Bringing in our schools Learning Design Model helps students understand the common language in our school as well as areas that they may need to look at and develop.

Using self assessment tools like SOLO taxonomy provides students with feedback and those next steps in their learning.

As I near the end of term, I reflect back at where we started with code being copied from the TV and whiteboard, through to now students planning, testing and developing work as an individual or peer programming. Through the use of other items such as playing cards for high low and working out what has to happen, and what steps are required. Through to playing hangman in class and working out the word, a list of letters tried and how many guesses left(which is interesting as some are as little as 8, where some have 16). Getting students to work out the planning through playing the games has helped immensely.

But one thing that still gets the students are the use of the less than and greater than signs (< >) in programs.
if num1 < num2 : # num1 is less than num2
if num1 > num2 : # num1 is greater than num2

Why is it so difficult?

Awareness of Digital Technologies

One thing I think people are struggling with is how many students are doing certain subjects, tonight I started playing around with an idea.

Showing the schools and how many students sat the standard.

Sitting down beside the fireplace

This week is a special time in my life, it is when I decided to go back to Christchurch four years ago. I took up a position at a traditional catholic school. I had been at my first teaching job for 8 years up till then. The move south opened up new friendships, new ideas and a great change for me, a subject area called Digital Technologies. Over the next two years through the school I tried new standards, sometimes the idea failed, but in others they helped developed new innovation and thinking for my students.

I look back fondly at the end of my time at my first school. It just so happened that my final week at the school the Whare Nui was opened.

This was an amazing event for staff and students. I often think back to the dawn ceremony and the pride that the community had that day, and since then.

Moving south that weekend, happened with the front bonnet of the car taped down as an unfortunate rain shower caused traffic to not be its normal self and I went into the back of another car. Snow and quakes were to show me the way the first couple of months at the school. Working on a different timetable as we were site sharing offered new challenges and new ways to look at assessments.

The classroom, although when I left the monitors and computers had changed.


One thing that stood out were the students. Throughout the rough times and travelling from all areas of Christchurch their learning continued on.

Watching areas of school coming down due to quake damage allowed thinking to happen about what would replace these areas. New classrooms with Modern Learning Environments. But how to make this change within a traditional school. 

Being able to attend conferences in Christchurch around Modern Learning Environments started me thinking about what this could look like. I was also able to attend a BYOD conference in Auckland at a new school. Going to this conference brought with me new ideas, I still remember saying in a session at the end with the teachers from my school, "This is the school I want to work at."

I still feel very lucky to have a position at the this school, to be thinking of new ideas, student centric learning, looking at what Modern Learning Practice is in reality, but there is one thing that I still miss, sitting beside a fire at night in winter staying warm after a day of teaching. It allows for reflection, to talk to others in the flat, and to think up new ideas.

I look forward to tomorrow and the challenges it may bring and where the next couple of years will take me.