DFI Day #8 - Computational Thinking

Another full day of Learn Create Share.
Computational Thinking is such an interesting area and the resources that are available are amazing.
In the past DFI's I have explored Lightbot and Flappy Bird (which was highly addictive!). So today I thought I better get stuck in and try Scratch Jnr.

I am in 7 junior classes this year so I would like to open the world of coding to them and as they all have iPads this is the ideal place to start. I like the way you can test the code and adjust as you go - is that called debugging? I managed to add my face to the girl character which will be fun for learners. Next bit of leanring for me will be to add sound bytes to characters rather than having words popping up.

I can see me exploring this further and probably losing a few hours in doing so. All in the name of "work". And...we are having our 2 young grandsons for the holidays - this could be a saviour on a cold, wet winter's day.

Here is a screen recording of my first project...

Gamefroot was another fun thing we did and used the Mihi Maker. Last time I used this it didn't work that well. And it is still not embedding correctly so I fall off the end of the world part way through even thought the preview went well.

Learning More in DFI

As DFI continues I realise what a great opportunity this is for further leanring.

Each week the "Connecting with Manaiakalani" slot explores the kaupapa of the programme and I always deepen my understanding of it from these sessions. So much of the visible, connecting and sharing sections have taken on a different meaning following Lockdown. 

I found that when we were designing sites and spending time on our own sites that the teachers had so much more understanding of why we use sites and what should be included on them. This is because of their experience in Lockdown and the steep learning curve it threw them into as they designed distance learning programmes and used sites to deliver the learning programme. 

When creating sites we were able to spend lots of time on the actual content and how best to  make it visible. In earlier DFI I have found that many teachers need lots of time just coming to grips with setting up the site, adding new pages, and creating links. This minimised their time in getting content online. 

I have certainly used the time to tidy up the Cybersmart pages on the many class sites I populate. I wanted to ensure the content was clearly dated and titled so the most recent lesson showed at the top of the page. 

Here is one example of the result on Room 4 @ St Mary's.