Digital Fluency Intensive - Computational Thinking

Today we unpacked the significance of the 'Share' within Learn, Create, Share. It was interesting learning about why sharing is such an important and significant part of the learning process. I enjoyed learning about how sharing has evolved over the years, 2005 was a turning point for online sharing with the introduction of social media sites such as Twitter and Youtube, these sites have brought speed and amplification to sharing. It is hard to believe how much sharing has evolved and become so much more global in the past 10 years and how it will continue to evolve in the future.

It is easy to see how important sharing is and how it will be for our learners in the future, sharing gives our learners an authentic audience which is important in regards to raising student outcomes. Furthermore, todays session highlighted to me how Learn, Create, Share is a spiral process - we need to ensure students "share to finish learning". Within this component of the learning process we also need to ensure that students are connected learners - they are confident and know how to share their opinions online - this can be in the form of commenting on others blog posts. This picture states how to be a connected learner online.

I really enjoyed the OMGTech! part of todays session. OMGTech! is a charity that teaches kids how to be innovative with technology. It was really interesting thinking about what the future will ask of us in terms of education. It was good to unpack digital technologies and the components within digital technologies i.e. inquiry, construction, communication and expression and see how they fit into the classroom. I am looking forward to having a look on the OMGTech! website for classroom activities to try with my learners. My confidence has grown within using digital technologies in the classroom and this site will give me ideas and activities that I can use with my learners.

One aspect that I enjoyed today that I want to use with my learners was the practical sorting algorithm. I liked that this activity was a practical way to introduce students to algorithms. I can see the links this activity can help not only to the digital curriculum, but also to other curriculum areas such as maths.

A further element of todays workshop that I would like to take back to the classroom was the binary maths activity on the OMGTech! site. This seemed like a fun way to introduce my learners to binary and is something I definitely want to try.

The practical nature of todays workshop made the session really enjoyable. Today's session provided me with a good opportunity to really understand Scratch. Prior to todays session I had only had a little play with coding sites but I didn't fully understand how they worked and the capabilities behind them. It was great to have a play on these coding sites and develop my understanding of their relevance to education. Furthermore, I was able to gain some ideas of how they can be used in the classroom.