The Digital Curriculum

Reflecting back on my Manaiakalani DFI learning journey I think one of the most memorable sessions was with the OMG Tech Team.

Unpacking the New Digital Curricula

I'm one of these people that likes to know the 'why' behind things. The new digital curriculum does just that. It takes the teachers away from just teaching technology as a tool, to teaching students 'the theory of how technology works and how they can use that knowledge to solve problems'.This is the guts of technology, the knowledge that will have our students immersed in the digital world at a much deeper level. This is the knowledge that will hopefully allow our students to get innovative jobs involving technology in the future, allow them to keep up with technological change and develop some student's passion for technology.

The digital curriculum is broken into three categories 

• Technological Practice - The How
• Technological Knowledge - The What
• Nature of Technology - The Why

There are two key areas; computational thinking and designing and developing digital outcomes. 

During the day we also explored:

Binary

I can now say that I have a little more knowledge about binary, hexadecimal number systems and data representation.... and I kinda liked it. The seemingly foreign language actually began to make a little sense. 

Off-Line Sorting Network

Possibilities galore for the use of this in maths. We used it for sorting numbers from smallest to largest. A fun physical activity that the students will love.

Coding

Scratch

Create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

Hello Ruby

A fun way to learn about computers, technology, and programming.