Beat the Goalie Game on Scratch - Reflection

First the students were shown the game (Beat the Goalie) on Scratch without the lines of code. They were asked to think about how they would go about recreating the game to replicate the original. Students had to think about how to create the lines of code to recreate the game so that it looked the same and had the same instructions. Because they were already experienced with using the Scratch programme they were automatically able to create 2 sprites and a background quite quickly.

Each student had access to an imac. By working individually rather than in groups I could clearly see who could manage with this task independently and who struggled. Instructions and hints to possible lines of code to be used was shared with the students, but most seemed to be able to go ahead and create the code (or at least experiment) without the instructions.

By the end of the session, two thirds of the class managed to get to the end of game within an hour. Zoe (from OMGTech) challenged them further to create a two player game. Instead of random movement of the goalie (or a stationary one), code was needed to control the goalie instead using the arrow keys. Just over half the class were able to achieve this independently.

This was a really good task to test the skills of the students. It is not a task that I would start with early in the year with students who are new to coding. This task tested the skills that had been learnt over the last two terms. It was reassuring to see that most of the students had the skills to achieve level 4 of the new digital curriculum.

Link to Beat the Goalie Game Instructions

Beat the Goalie Game snippets from SchoolTV on Vimeo.

Coding and OMGTech

The Year 7 & 8 Extension students were lucky enough to receive support in the form of Zoe and Alex from OMGTech to help with their projects on Scratch. Their knowledge and support was invaluable and helped the students to make headway with their projects. First they introduced themselves, described their backgrounds and then explained the basics of using Scratch. Later they worked with the students and helped them to problem solve and deal with issues regarding their games.

OMGTech visit Part 1 from SchoolTV on Vimeo.

ULearn 2016 Day 2

Prof Michael Fullan - Keynote Speaker

New Pedagogies for Deep Learning

System transformation

They build knowledge and practices that foster deep learning and whole system change

Humans are innately wired to connect, create and help humanity

Children are highly creative, but school cuts some of this creativity.

Millennials tend to gravitate towards organisations who do good things

New learning partnership between students, teachers and parents

6Cs - creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaborating, character, citizenship

Deep learning and equity - students that were underserved benefitted the most

Whole system change strategies:

• Accountability
• Standards
• System culture

Breakthrough leadership:

• Respect and reject the status quo
• Be an expert and an apprentice

The 7th sense

• Social media is ubiquitous
• Weakens hierarchies
• Distribution and concentrated connection is the new power
• The young are the most connected and the least committed to the status quo
• Humans, especially the young, find ‘helping humanity’ to be an extrinsic value

The job of education is to produce better citizens for tomorrow, today

Pedagogy is the driver, technology is the accelerator

Big Idea:

Students as change agents

Professional capital of teachers

Coherence

Deep learning unleashes bottom up learning

Hon Hekia Parata

Minister of Education

It can only be the profession that leads the profession. Not interested in targets and asserts that she is interested in kids learning and having choices for the future. Wants every child to get the best education possible. How will funding closely align with what the size of the educational challenge is? Strong sense of urgency that our students are successful, confident, connected global citizens.

NZ has an amazing educational system but we don't make use of full functionality that it provides. PLD - a lot of money has been spent, but not enough evidence of success. What are professionals (teachers etc) in our community of learning going to do? Building better learning environments? Build better pathways for students?

Learning how to Code - Apple workshop

Everyone should have the opportunity to create something that can change the world.

Swift Icon. My Playground - Learn to Code 1. We had the opportunity to play with this simple coding programme.

Video showing ordinary people solving real problems with code. Understanding coding concepts is a new literacy. Creativity is important and code allows development of this as well as skills like problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration.

Swift enables the ability for people to practice code. Developed by Apple and the community. It's easy to use, interactive, powerful, and open - source. Playgrounds allow code to be written and tested as its being written.

Swift Playgrounds and App Development with Swift. It introduces young learners to coding principles. Used on ipads, coding lessons built in, real coding in Swift, built for touch. Glossary of terms available. Ability to take photo/recording of code to record/capture evidence of learning. Special keyboard feature available to use.

Branch Out lesson - for loop in coding (In computer science a for-loop (or simply for loop) is a control flow statement for specifying iteration, which allows code to be executed repeatedly.) Can zoom in and out of worlds. A skill is to be able to write code effectively that can be used over and over again.

ibook app - resources can be downloaded - content for teachers, how to teach coding.

Learning to Code 1 & 2 - suitable for ages 10 -15

App Development for Swift - suitable for secondary students

OMGTech! Rangers Workshop — an introduction to robotics, coding, and 3D printing

3 different areas in the room were organised to cater for hands on practice on robotics, coding and 3D printing. Really cool! We were able to rotate around 4 different stations for 20mins each.

Robotics: We had to create code which would direct a small robotic car/tank? to navigate its way around a track on the floor. 

Coding: We had the chance to create a very simple game using a programme called Scratch. 

3D Printing: Basically we were given a presentation about 3D printing and how the design process was more important at this stage then using the actual 3D printer as its time consuming to print and printers tend to have technical issues. 

There was also another activity set up where we could take apart an old CD player to look at all the different parts inside it. Interesting to find out that the physical structure of modern hard drives are similar to old record players e.g. disc with something that is able to read the information off the disc. Difference is that modern discs hold much more info.