DAY 8: DFI Computational Thinking

Kia ora koutou, 

Today the DFI-Manaiakalani kaupapa was focussed around Empowerment. Dorothy explained that digital technology is not just about being a tool! But it is about the transforming of people's lives - children, whanau and teachers. The way we learn, overcome barriers of time, distance and circumstance. In particular the obstacles present in the lives of many; money, housing, health, paucity of vocabulary. She also emphasised the important role that educators play in promoting conversation be that face to face or through blogs. Digital technology offers new learning opportunities and experiences. 

Our deep dive was delving into unchartered territory for many of us, computational thinking; aka coding - which if you were born before 2000's can be a bit of a scary word! 
The computational thinking and coding activity's was very challenging. I watched the Josh Darnit video on the Exact Instructions Challenge which gave me an idea of how specific and broken down your instructions need to be in coding. It highlighted for me the importance of sequence - series of steps or instructions.

The activities we did in teams where we explored computational resources to collaborate to problem solve. These resources support all learners to collaborate and build resilience, perseverance, problem solving, and a great gateway to coding and understanding the method behind coding. 

Next we were introduced to Lightbot. A puzzle game based on coding: it secretly teaches you programming logic as you play! This is great for building perspective as watching the bot, you want him to turn right, but from his perspective, he's turning left. Again more problem solving for tamariki, and more opportunities to build efficiencies. 

We also had time to explore CoSpaces today, an online tool for coding. Our challenge was to choose coding activities to explore. Minecraft was so much fun! The Mihi Maker allowed one to navigate through each task, I thought I published it but unfortunately I was unable to view the animation in action. All fantastic opportunities and experiences offering free online coding tools for learners to practice simple coding skills.

Today's session provided opportunities for me to improve practice and workflow, and discover what connections I can make from computational thinking to learners and contexts. In education, computational thinking is a set of problem-solving methods that involve expressing problems and their solutions in ways that a computer could also execute.

Nga mihi,
Tracy