DFI te rā tuawhitu

Today's session was dedicated to the two new learning areas of the Technology Curriculum - CT (Computational Thinking) and DDO (Developing Digital Outcomes). We were very fortunate to have Vivienne from OMG Tech with us sharing lots of great resources and ideas for use to meet the PO (progress outcomes) of these two areas. These things should be linked to our Maker-y site so that teachers have a 'one stop shop'.

OMG Tech lessons is a great resource with lots of lesson plans, ideas, videos.
Hour of Code which I have used in classes for a few years.  The most wonderful find of the day was Minecraft in te reo Māori - change the language bottom right of the page.
Another activity highlighted was Kodable for pre readers. Teachers were advised to check which activities work on the ipad.
Scratch (Simple Maze Game example and 10 Block challenge) and Scratch junior were shown. You can now bring your own photos into Scratch Junior - add blank button then click top right, draw frame, tap camera, take photo. and it is automatically added.
Compute it for coding beginners.

Vysor is an extension for the Google Chrome browser that connects to an app on your android smartphone, enabling you to control your phone from your PC or Mac using the mouse/trackpad and keyboard. Everything happens via a USB cable, which you'll need to connect the phone to your computer's USB port.

Also covered were the Binary number system., ASCII American standard code for information exchange and Hex codes and how colours work from 00-FF.

Overall this was a very useful day to set teachers up with resources, ideas and a link to a company really working hard to empower teachers to empower their learners in this space.