Yet another new term! Where is this year going!!
I'm really excited to be taking part in the Tahi Rua Toru Tech Challenge
with my Level 1 NCEA class this term. The in-school component of the challenge is built around the very successful TechHub CREST Challenge, previously operating at Years 9 and 10 but now available at all school levels across years 1-13 as a way of supporting the introduction of the new Digital Technologies curriculum into schools.
The Challenge uses a special version of the CREST programme from the Royal Society of NZ. CREST stands for CREativity in Science and Technology and helps students at all levels work through the whole process of problem solving. In a digital technologies context this includes defining a problem, need or opportunity, experimenting on possible solutions, taking guidance from industry mentors, creating a solution and reflecting on it.
The really exciting part for me is that this is a way to enable my students to work with people from the tech industry and gives some authenticity to their learning. We had our first visit from our mentor, Nathan Bromberg this week. He worked with each group, listening to their ideas and providing them with feedback from an industry perspective. It was really valuable for all the groups and they came away from their meetings with fresh ideas and more focused on the kind of outcomes that are practical and realistic.
The other cool thing about the programme is that when you enter teams into the competition they are set up with a blog where they can record their ideas, progress etc. Again this provides a means to increase the learning partners involved in their projects and an authentic way to record this information which sometimes gets lost in the project-based learning process.
If you are looking for a way to structure project-based learning in your context, I would definitely recommend looking into this programme!
If you want to check out our blogs so far follow the links below:
surfingllama.123tech.nz
eeee.123tech.nz
jack.123tech.nz
rainbowrain.123tech.nz
devices.123tech.nz
kylesafro.123tech.nz
(Yes they did choose their own team names!)
I'll keep you updated with our progress throughout the project.
I'm really excited to be taking part in the Tahi Rua Toru Tech Challenge
The Challenge uses a special version of the CREST programme from the Royal Society of NZ. CREST stands for CREativity in Science and Technology and helps students at all levels work through the whole process of problem solving. In a digital technologies context this includes defining a problem, need or opportunity, experimenting on possible solutions, taking guidance from industry mentors, creating a solution and reflecting on it.
The really exciting part for me is that this is a way to enable my students to work with people from the tech industry and gives some authenticity to their learning. We had our first visit from our mentor, Nathan Bromberg this week. He worked with each group, listening to their ideas and providing them with feedback from an industry perspective. It was really valuable for all the groups and they came away from their meetings with fresh ideas and more focused on the kind of outcomes that are practical and realistic.
The other cool thing about the programme is that when you enter teams into the competition they are set up with a blog where they can record their ideas, progress etc. Again this provides a means to increase the learning partners involved in their projects and an authentic way to record this information which sometimes gets lost in the project-based learning process.
If you are looking for a way to structure project-based learning in your context, I would definitely recommend looking into this programme!
If you want to check out our blogs so far follow the links below:
surfingllama.123tech.nz
eeee.123tech.nz
jack.123tech.nz
rainbowrain.123tech.nz
devices.123tech.nz
kylesafro.123tech.nz
(Yes they did choose their own team names!)
I'll keep you updated with our progress throughout the project.
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