Digital Technologies as a curriculum area has so much potential for remote learning and support. Additionally, it holds so much promise and scope for enabling students to work on longer projects that have a basis of inquiry and design underpinning them.
General excellent resources include the Digital Technologies Hub and Australian Computing Academy and I would urge all teachers to browse both to be inspired with a range of practical ideas. Unplugged activities can be sourced easily within the Digital Technologies Hub and should definitely be used to support all students including those without easy and regular access to technology.
The current scenario is one that is unprecedented and challenging but it is also one in which innovation is going to thrive. The best ideas are going to come from our talented and creative teachers as they consider possible ways to support learning in an ever-changing environment.
Early Learning:
- One of our teachers asked if she could take a bee-bot home with her the other day which I thought was a terrific idea. She talked about how she was planning on doing some filmed demonstrations to post on our learning platform and how the students could then post their ideas about the series of steps that might be needed to achieve an outcome. The steps could be then programmed into the bee-bot by the teacher and the result filmed and posted again.
- Younger students could be encouraged to make their own bee-bot with craft materials and to determine the series of actions to solve a problem and then to program their toy bee-bot to do what it should do.
- Along with this type of activity, teachers might like to post this bee-bot simulator to be used by the children at home as a virtual bee-bot for them all to use and practise on.. https://www.terrapinlogo.com/emu/beebot.html
- Additionally, if you are using See-Saw as a learning platform, there are some fantastic activities related to computational thinking and the use of beebots/blue-bots within the libraries.
- Apps available that can be installed on devices include this Bee-Bot one. Scratch Jn is another excellent app for the students wishing to create digital solutions. They could animate their daily routine or the exercise routine they have set up outside. This can be shared via a screen recording with others building on this or students responding to feedback to make it better.
- Of course, in addition to just playing a particular app like the bee-bot one and using it, students could be supported to use screenshots of successful paths to add annotations to which then get uploaded to learning platforms and to make screen-recordings of the paths being activated. This could generate much discussion in terms of different paths, most efficient paths etc. The discussion in the form of comments, posts and responses could easily be used for formative assessment purposes.
- Code-org also has courses for younger students.
Yrs 3-4
- Scratch Educator accounts are terrific for teachers wishing to support computational thinking whilst children are at home. One of the benefits of using an Educator account is that students within the class can easily visit each other’s animations and provide feedback on their design, user interface and playability. There is no end to the type of work that can be created including stories, animations, digital solutions, quizzes and games.
- The Scratch tutorials are also a ‘must-do’ for student in the early stages of learning Scratch as students can work through the list on this page, and rate each one based on how interesting they found it or whether they learned something new.
- One of my teachers mentioned the other day that the students could create a digital solution in Scratch to show how a new recycling system in the house could work considering the renewed focus on sustainability around the home. These can be screen-recorded, shared with the community to spread good messages and ideas that help us all.
- Code.org courses are also a great way to extend students in this area.
- GROK courses are also available to students in Australia and are a wonderful way to support students and for the teachers to track data and see progress in a remote environment.
Yrs 5-6
- One of our teachers has had the brilliant idea of supporting the students to work in a spreadsheeting program to allow the students to create their own digital solution that records and tracks the balance of time they are spending on all their different activities during the day. Using the app Numbers in this way means that students can use data in a myriad of ways, create a user interface, design algorithms that achieve a variety of functions and automaticity and reflect on the way the solution meets current and future needs.
- Teachers can consider how the code-builder functionality be used within Minecraft EE so that groups of students can work together to achieve an outcome whilst building blocks of code representing the algorithms that are needed.
- ACA has some fantastic tutorials for students in this age group and I love the fact that some of them are based around the use of physical devices like Makey-Makey and microbit, meaning that when we return to be all face-to-face again, there will be a good level of familiarity with these tools.
- Code.org has some tremendous resources and I like the way there is so much scope for extension for this age group.
- GROK courses are also terrific for students and I love the way that more able students are able to choose pathways for them to work in a multitude of coding languages.
Another piece of advice from me relates to the need to know your students and what they are capable of and to then have a collaborative open mindset about how best to support them. Many students will be operating beyond your expectations already in the area of Digital Technologies and may already tinker with devices and coding platforms that mean they may will need challenge and inspiration beyond what we we each, as classroom teachers, might be able to offer. We need to lean on each other, engage with experts who are also sitting in their own home and invite them to collaborate, share and work with us. We need to work in teams, sharing our expertise with students beyond own own classroom walls.
My final word is that we need to listen to teachers as they innovate, share and collaborate. It is from them that the most interesting stories of innovation will come.