DFI - Week 8 - Computational Thinking - Edem626 - UC

CT Things that came up today

I appreciated the Future of Tech in NZ slideshow. I was aware of many of the ideas but found it refreshing and there were some good new examples of NZ Companies with innovative tech that will be relatable to my rural students.\

1. Happy Cow Milk
2. Halter $29m cowgorithm

We have started to use Trimble SketchUp For Schools (formerly Google SketchUp).

So it was interesting to see the Trimble work in Port Otago.

I was already familiar with the DTEC curriculum but the slideshow also had good Te Reo translations for Hangarau Matihiko Progress Outcomes terminologies.

Bucky shared some good links for game creation / character design

1. Hiberworld which I thought was a nice 3D example of a template based game generator.
2. HeroForge - looked like an interesting 3D character creator app

I shared the work of #Dan Milward & Gerard McManus - :  Te HikoTāraro

Dan Milward (working with Game Praxis) has also produced a Game Jam Cards - a game concept development card pack which makes for a creative group exercise. Here is a quick random generator app: http://ygd.bafta.org/resources/game-idea-generator 

I shared links to Drone coding https://sites.google.com/westlandhigh.school.nz/technology/new-dtec/9-10-computing/drones which uses Tello drones with https://learn.droneblocks.io/ for teaching & learning coding. The license cost US$500 could be shared between upto 10 teachers from a collection of schools.

I had registered for the Cyclone "Build Better Worlds" Minecraft Edu competition. I shared my learning site's Minecraft page: https://sites.google.com/westlandhigh.school.nz/technology/new-dtec/9-10-computing/minecraft-edu

I shared the folder of resources from the Cyclone teachers webinar: https://cycloneenable-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/danny_bedingfield_cyclone_co_nz/ErRBKv0tVWxGn3tPiFchixAB569n3SkmictRYK2uzZcdDg?e=7sKvBQ

Teachers Pay Teachers

I found these two resources are useful for CT with Minecraft Edu

1. $5 Minecraft Pixel Art worksheets - Image Binary Representation -https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Minecraft-themed-BINARY-BUNDLE-Simple-Binary-Encoding-Worksheets-Project-6401524 
2. $10 Minecraft Edu posters and Lesson Plans https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Minecraft-Education-Introduction-Unit-6138907

ECE CT etc.

I thought the Cubetto looked cool and maybe my wife's early learning centre could get them, however, they are quite expensive and out of stock in Aus : https://www.primotoys.com/

Previous CT PLD

CT Professional Development with UC

 I have enrolled in Edem626 with University of Canterbury (UC). At the start of this course we discussed Computational Thinking (CT). 

UC Course Material

I will post some of the content here for your information.

There are two 12-minute videos prepared by Tim on pre-NCEA and NCEA Computer Science in NZ; you can watch the one relevant to the level you teach, although both will be useful for all teachers since you may want to know what students are being prepared for, or what preparation they are likely to have had once the changes settle in.

• Video on PO1-5 (pre-NCEA)

• Video on NCEA standards

Links used in the videos are:

• Technology learning area structure 
• Progress outcomes
• NCEA Digital Technologies Matrix

The main reading for this segment is one of your readings from week 1:

Curzon, P., Bell, T., Waite, J., & Dorling, M. (2019). Computational thinking. In S. Fincher & A. Robins (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research (pp. 513–546). Cambridge University Press.

An open access version of the chapter is available online (free).

Links used in this week's session are:

• The CS Field Guide chapter on Data Representation, where many of these ideas are explained
• The online binary card activity
• The online binary card activity with more digits and fractional bits (you can change the numbers in the URL to get more bits!)
• The binary card activity unplugged
• The RGB mixer (for 24-bit colour, i.e. 3x8 bits)
• Comparing images with different numbers of bits per pixel
• Interactive pixel viewer (you can drop your own photos into this viewer)
• Unplugged activity on binary representation

We talked about what computation is; you can find a bit more about it from the reading for this module - section 17.1.1 addresses the question of what computation is, but also search the document for mentions of "Turing" for concepts around what a formal definition of computation is. Section 17.1.5 ("An Evolving Definition") talks about how there isn't a fixed definition in use.

We also talked a lot about curricula outside NZ; here are some links to approaches to Computational Thinking from overseas

• Computing at School
• CAS on Computational Thinking (CT) - UK Computing At School community
• ISTE and CT - ISTE is largely based in the USA with roots in ICT/e-learning
• ISTE and CSTA operational definition of CT
• Google's Exploring CT
• Google CT overview
• CT in the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC)