SPIN - minecraft

I am busy creating the beginnings of a SPIN at the moment, minecraft education.

This is something that I have been dreading for a while now. It has been something that I have struggled to see the purpose and function of.

However, I have had to have a growth mindset. I have seen the benefit of how it has improved ideas and development in younger students, been looking at flying and motor control. However, it is how students see themselves within the game.

It was interesting last week when the senior students were playing it and asked for a set of laws to be created when having a shared server running so they couldn't stab each other in the back, or raid the houses.

So, the thinking started.

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End user license agreement, read and take am a paragraph from it and explain in student speak.

Use already created world, has a tutorial to run through

Find camera and take a photo, then take a selfie

Research four blocks thy you have encountered as part of your exploration and present in slide deck

Investigate why Minecraft has taken off as it has and develop a simple game review to end the lesson including your photos.

Notes:

Classroom created and shared
I do not think we will even get through half this lesson, but it is there to support and guide future

Session two, creating a sketch world

Developing a range of designs for above ground, in no particular order, including a house, spca care center for the animals(cat, dog, pig, chicken, horse) that escape, Also what does one of the learning spaces at rolleston

look like in Minecraft, thinking about scale at the same time, what would be a good scale to develop in when developing a world.

Note: could be a possible future build.

Creation of a learning pit?

With this, there is also a plan of other activities that are in development, in groups students will be required to create aspects in the physical world that will then need to be created in the virtual world.

legoCRAFT

pixelCRAFT

paperCRAFT

Bee Aware Month - Bee on the Point

During the Christmas holidays, I was introduced to a neighbour that runs a couple of bee hives in the backyard and it had me thinking. With all the building on the Point, what are we doing to support the bees in the area?


How might we develop a campaign to get people to create spaces for supporting insect life on the Point. (Hobsonville Point) though others could come up with another slogan.

Design outcomes

• Logo development (Bee on the Point)
• Poster
• Brochure
• Graphics for packaging Design for seeds that could be laser cut into the package
• Video to support that could go on community facebook
• Infographic on counting bees - see below to be part of the Great Kiwi Bee Count

A range of software could be introduced as students would need to use different software depending on their outcome. This would involve some workshops for students to learn different design applications as well as training in how to design an outcome for the laser cutter. Cut and score lines.

While these are just suggestions to get ideas started. Students could come up with their own unique ways to include different Design Outcomes.

Students would need to develop an inquiry into what these could look like, as well as to research bee friendly plants, this could include an investigation into what different flavours could be developed of honey using specific plants.
Finding seeds that could be purchased to include in packages to the community for them to plant using the Design Outcomes.

Timeline
Would need to be created before Bee Aware Month September.

Counting Bees
The Great Kiwi Bee Count is like a digital census for bees and the trends it reveals will help apiculture scientists learn more about how bees and other pollinators are doing in New Zealand.

Best of all, it will take just two minutes of your time! Here's what to do:
* Find a plant in your garden or neighbourhood that's in flower.
* Go to The Great Kiwi Bee Count page on your smartphone or tablet.
* Count how many bees and other pollinators you see over a two-minute period.Copied from: https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/plan-bee/96169350/take-part-in-the-great-kiwi-bee-count

Ideas and resources:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/garden/94799038/join-nz-gardeners-plan-bee-register-your-beefriendly-garden-on-our-map
https://www.fortheloveofbees.co.nz/
https://www.pollinatorpaths.com/
https://www.fortheloveofbees.co.nz/schools-as-sanctuaries

http://www.treesforbeesnz.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/141390/TfB_2013_Flowering-Times-National-Level.pdf

9 card logic puzzles

I was presented on my desk this week a parcel full of games and puzzles.

The first one I pulled out was a 9 card puzzle. This was something I remember getting when I was a kid and trying to work out.

However, I now look at these puzzles with a different level of understanding.

Where's wally logic puzzle

Mickey Mouse Logic Puzzle

The part I like about these is the tracability of these puzzles.

While they might seem simple, the math starts to get quite huge and remember I got these wrong, I have yet to solve these. 

Given is a puzzle game with nine square cards.
On each of the cards there are 4 pictures at top, right, bottom and left.

Goal: to lay out the nine cards in a 3x3 grid in such a way that all "inner" (complete) character are properly combined with adjacent cards, i.e. have a front and rear end.

Even though the puzzle looks simple at first glance, there is an extremely big number of combinations given that you can rotate each piece in 4 different ways.

Is there an algorithm that could be used to help get the answer.

There are only 9 pieces, and thus each potential solution is representable by a small structure (say a 3x3 array of pieces, each piece with it's rotation), so the exact description of the pieces isn't too important.

What you'd do by hand is to place a piece, say at the upper left side, and try to complete the square by fitting matching pieces into the rest. So you'd never consider any combinations where the first and second pieces don't match, cutting the search down considerably. This kind of idea is called backtracking. For it you need a description of the partial solution (the 3x3 grid with the filled in pieces and blank places, and the pieces not yet used; a specific order in which to fill the grid), a way of moving forward (place next piece if it fits, skip that one if it doesn't) and backwards (can't find any fits, undo last move and try the next possibility).

Obviously, you have to design a way to find out if a potential match exists (given the filled in neighbours, try all orientations of a piece in it's asigned place). For such a small problem this probably isn't performance critical, but if you'd try to solve, say 100x100 the case is different...

and now with the maths, The number of possibilities is: 9!*4^9 = 95126814720

Who knew a 3x3 puzzle could be that fun and have these possibilities to explore computational thinking. Students could even develop a program to help them solve this problem.

unplugged tangram puzzle

I am using this an example today. This is something that I have been doing with Adventure Racing students. Getting them to find the puzzle pieces throughout the school. When you are told that there are 7 pieces and have to find them to put the puzzle together. It's a bit of exercise.

This then turns into putting the pieces together into the square. A challenge in spatial thinking as well as algorithm design.

Then using them students can put them into different shapes. Using the Main Activity students have to sit back to back and communicate putting the pieces in the right order.

This has also been carried out using LEGO blocks as well. Which the students found easier.

However, this was also based upon memory, having to run to another area and memorise a section of the problem to take back. This involved students verifying and testing to make sure that the right pieces were in the right place.

Introduction

Your students may or may not have played with tangrams before. If they have, you can skip this portion, and move right to explaining the main activity.

Explain to the students that tangrams are usually used to solve puzzles. You receive a set of seven "tans" and must use them all (without overlapping any) to recreate an image that has been given to you. Often, this is done as an individual activity, and the player is allowed to see the image that they are trying to recreate. Many times, you can lay your pieces right on top of the image silhouette to be sure that the solution is just right.

Main Activity (20 min)

Algorithms

We are going to use our tangrams in a slightly different way than most. Instead of looking at our puzzles and trying to guess which shape goes where, we are going to get puzzles that already tell you where each shape goes.

You might think that this will make it easier, but it won't, because students will also not get to actually look at the image that we are trying to recreate! Instead, a teammate will be describing the image to us.

To keep it from getting too difficult, we will not use puzzles that require all seven pieces.

Directions:

1. Divide into groups of 3-5.
2. Each player should cut out their own set of tangrams.
3. Have one member of each group select an Algorithm Card without showing it to anyone else.
4. The person with the Algorithm Card will try to explain the image to everyone else without letting them actually see it.
5. The other players will build their pictures off of the description given by the Card Holder.
6. When the Card Holder is done, everyone will show their pictures and see if they all ended up with the same image.
7. If everyone ends up with the same drawing, the Card Holder can show the card and see if everyone matched the card.
8. If any of the pictures in the group are different from each other, have the Card Holder try describing the image again, using more detail.
9. Choose a new Card Holder and a new Algorithm Card and repeat until everyone has had a chance to describe an image.

Play through this several times, with images of increasing difficulty.

Wrap Up (15 min)

Flash Chat: What did we learn?

• What did we learn today?
• Was it easier or harder than you thought it would be to describe an image to one another?
• Did any group end up having arrangements that all matched?
• Can you share some tricks that you came up with that helped your group match the Image Card exactly?

Journaling

Having students write about what they learned, why it’s useful, and how they feel about it can help solidify any knowledge they obtained today and build a review sheet for them to look to in the future.

Journal Prompts:

• What did you learn today?
• How do you feel about today's lesson?
• Can you think of tricks to make it easier to describe tangram pictures to a partner?
• Describe why you might want to be very detailed when creating algorithms for writing code.

An assessment task

https://code.org/curriculum/course4/1/Assessment1-Tangrams.pdf

https://curriculum.code.org/csf-1718/coursef/10/#algorithms-tangrams0

Rubber duck

What is the purpose of the rubber duck? Why is it a part of what you do?

The rubber duck we talk about is yellow, small, can be carried around and starts conversations.

The rubber duck is part of my work at the school. Be it to be used as a resource kits for students to engage with, or as a compulsory bit of equipment for students to carry on adventure racing trainings and competition, the rubber duck is almost a mascot.

It has become more to me in the past number of years.

The rubber duck came into being for me when looking at programming for my seniors at school. Many students needed someone to talk to about their programming problems, and normally when talking to the teacher they would come up with the answer themselves.

Rubber duck debugging was introduced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

There was one rubber duck in the classroom, and it soon became a hit when students would pass the rubber duck around when they were having issues with their programmes, or projects.

The rubber duck was then used to support a number of other initiatives around the place, from getting scouts to interact with others at a jamboree.

This then started to become an opportunity as I would teach computer science principles. Be it searching and sorting with numbers on the bottom of rubber ducks, through to binary representations. Students often talk about the ducks, or getting given a duck when they solved the problem.

This year the duck became a bit more. With the adventure racing team. When you hand out the forms of what the compulsory items are and when you check them before going, you knew that that did not have everything. The duck was a grand way to check whether they had everything. "Show me the duck." 

The duck then became something that the students could take with them on races incorporate in their outfits. Take photos of while doing the race.

In the last few weeks of school last year, the duck took on another challenge. To be a part of someone's morning each day. This developed a challenge, an opportunity and a way to show Manaakitanga in a different way.

DigiCreate - DDDO PO3

DIGCREATE - DDDO PO3

Graphic novels are a great place to start Integrating English and Digital Technologies together, as well as integrating Art concepts.

The following resources have been made available for Teachers and Schools. In the teacher's guide they there are pages of a practising artist talking about the different tools and techniques that they use to develop the novels.

Getting students to develop content, ideas through an English lesson and then using ipad's, drawing tablets, to draw there own characters and place them into an environment that could be created as part of their art class for backgrounds using different art techniques. The focus was a single page as part of their work.

Here is part of the design and planning of one of the students work that was developed as part of this integrated module at Hobsonville Point Secondary Schoo

Graphic Novels

Graphic novels are a genre of literature that present their narrative primarily through pictures. Graphic novels are an ideal way of encouraging reluctant readers to engage with a detailed extended text. 

Arohanui: Revenge of the Fey 

This resource is part of the graphic novel series The Matawehi Fables. It tells the magical tale of two iwi: one thriving, the other starving and desolate, forced to enter in to a bargain to secure survival and a future for their people.

Arohanui: Revenge of the Fey (PDF, 3 MB)

Arohanui Teacher Notes

This teacher resource aligns to the graphic novel Arohanui: Revenge of the Fey. 

It is designed to help teachers use the graphic novel to engage learners and help them develop their skills across all areas of literacy.  The resource provides a basic and practical guide for teachers with a ‘how to’ focus on using graphic novels to support their literacy programmes.

Arohanui: Teacher Notes (PDF, 2 MB)

Meariki: The Quest for Truth 

Meariki is a slave to the people of Ngāi Kūwai. When the daughter of the chief is kidnapped, Meariki is sent on a quest to rescue her. Along the way she meets some interesting characters. Ultimately Meariki discovers her true destiny.

Meariki: The Quest for Truth (PDF, 5 MB)

Developing Historical Signage - DDDO PO3

History - WOTPOINT

One of the projects that students enjoyed has been to develop new signage for some of the areas around the community. This was a project that was developed around the integration of learning areas, Technology and Social Science, this involved them finding out information through their social sciences class, on an aspect of the history of the area. This enabled students to have an authentic context in which to learn and implement design principles. 

Learning Objectives (Social Science)		Learning Objectives (Technology)
To MAKE SENSE by understanding cultural diversity. To MAKE SENSE by understanding the significance of biculturalism in New Zealand. To FOCUS on interpreting resource material for validity, meaning and relevance.		To generate by producing a technological outcome To refine by transforming materials to be fit for purpose

Using a variety of ideas from paper's past, as well as students developing their own inquiry into an aspect of the area.

While we are lucky at Hobsonville Point to have such a variety of history around us, from being an RNZAF base, also around us is the former pottery companies that existed, they loved the white clay of Onekiritea. 

Also using the https://www.heritage.org.nz/the-list site, as well as local historical knowledge to get students investigating their local history. Aspects of research, collecting images that are on the https://digitalnz.org/ project. As well as students going and taking their own images, an aspect of this is included at the bottom of the email around enabling priority learners.

Students looked at the buildings and areas that exist on the point and choose one from the list that was provided or one of their own suggestions. 

Students learnt how to do isometric drawings, as well as drawing sketches. They then took these into Google Sketchup to enable them to learn new tools and techniques in an unknown piece of software that they could then use to model up an idea in the future.

While we used the Auckland Design Guidelines, getting students to design and develop a sign that could be used to display the information. This highlighted to the students the new part of the progress outcome of the DDDO Progress Outcomes.

http://content.aucklanddesignmanual.co.nz/resources/park-elements/interpretive-signage/Documents/Signage%20-%20Auckland%20Council%20Signage%20Manual%202013.pdf

Opportunity for Priority Learners.

Outcomes involved students even creating their location through the use of Minecraft, working at below curriculum levels. But opportunities to build and develop content that could be used to incorporate into their design.

Also involved a student that is wheelchair bound to hook up a go pro to there wheel chair computer bracket for them to go out and take photos of their historical place to be able to incorporate their research and own images in their work.

Progress Outcome 3 used

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

The Computational Thinking Duck

The Computational Thinking Duck

One of the key playtime activities that almost every child has engaged in is playing with LEGO bricks. Remember getting the playset, where you had a set of instructions to build a scene? Many a child has followed those instructions to create that scene, and then simply chucked them away to build something totally unique and different. LEGO bricks are a perfect outlet for creativity for both adults and children alike. We can teach not just creative problem solving, but also tackle key concepts in Engineering and Physics amongst others.

This activity uses 6 LEGO bricks. The task is simple. Give each person a set of bricks and tell them to build a duck. What do you come up with? Suitable for all age groups, this activity helps cover key computing and computational thinking concepts such as: algorithms and algorithm design, abstraction, evaluation, logical reasoning and many more. Download the teacher guidance notes below for full details.

Documents
The Computational Thinking Duck.pdf

I must admit when I found this today, that it was out of the blue, I am now trying to find all the bits to make this. It is one thing that I start my classes off with without realising it. I get them using the lego learn to learn series to design and develop a number of different items to get them thinking about design thinking. The duck is the first one of them.

STEM and twitter

This was posted on twitter a couple of weeks ago.

So, I decided to respond through my lens

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

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

Digital technologies, Exploring the Revised Technology Learning Area

Exploring the Revised Technology Learning Area

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

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

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

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

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

Technological areas 

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

Digital technologies 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Specifically focussing on Digital technologies now...

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

Now back to the first section,

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

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

Now, what does it say in the other strands?

Learning pathways, Page 5

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

This states the five technological learning areas,

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

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

Integration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beginning of the year - project

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

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

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

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

Great Year 9-10 project Makecode - arcade

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

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

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

arcade.makecode.com/hardware

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

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

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

STEM activity - Brain impact simulator

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

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

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

Also the idea of developing a textiles solution as well.

Building models to understand and mitigate brain injury

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

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

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

It can also be created with an arduino as well.

What awesome ideas for Year 9 or 10.

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

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

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

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

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

 

Planning and Curriculum Coverage

Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes Progress Outcomes

Progress Outcome 3 for DDDO

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

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

Progress Outcome 4 for DDDO

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

Also:

Technology Achievement Objectives - Technological Products

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

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

Achievement objective

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

Teacher guidance

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

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

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

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

Indicators

Students can:

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

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

Achievement objective

Students will:

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

Teacher guidance

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

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

Examples should include the material selection practices of technologists.

Indicators

Students can:

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

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

Project:

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

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

http://www.actionforhappiness.org/calendars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Infographic Development

Poster design and Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Decision 4 – Quality and thematic images

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

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

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

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

There you go. 

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

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

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

Higher levels

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

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

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

References:

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

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

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

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

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