Term Hectic!

As a newly minted senior secondary school teacher I am renaming Term Three to Term Hectic!!

Having always taught intermediate, prior to this term my colleagues warned me about the crazy, busyness of Term Three but even their warnings didn't prepare me for the reality! I feel like I blinked and it's the holidays again. And I didn't even get time to blog!

As I talked about in my previous blog, my Year 11 students took part in the 123Tech Challenge this term. This turned out to be a great motivator as they had to find a real problem, need or opportunity that they could solve using digital technologies. Those students who found a need that involved working with real stakeholders or 'clients' did amazing things and commented how this process opened their eyes to the possibilities of real careers in the field.

"We both have taken this subject in school for many years, but this opened our eyes as to what applications this field can open up in life. We have also seen that a career in this field is something that we may be interested in, because the diversity of the jobs that are available to us with the knowledge in this field is so extensive that we feel that we can go anywhere by inquiring in this field." - Jack and Hayden.

The other amazing aspect of being involved in the challenge was being given access to a mentor from the industry. As I talked about in my previous blog, right from that first meeting with the groups, Nathan was able to engage with the students and bring a perspective to their projects that wouldn't have been possible without his support. Throughout the project the students were able to email him with questions and he visited us at the midway point and in the final week of the challenge. The students (and I) really valued his input.

I have two groups who have completed their final reports and will attend the Regional Championships later in the month so that will be an exciting event, I'm especially looking forward to seeing what other schools have done!

I will definitely do this again next year. I'll make a few changes to my set up though.

• I will recommend groups of two students.

Group projects are fantastic and the collaboration necessary mimics real life work however for NCEA assessment purposes it has been very difficult to ensure everyone has the opportunity to demonstrate their ability in the actual outcome creation in a group of four.

• I will expand the possible outcomes beyond the Digital Media standard.

Next year I intend to run a more project based course over the whole year so rather than students working on three or four different tasks over the year, the tasks will link together e.g. proposal, design, develop and iterate.

Here is my 2019 Senior Course.

Students will choose one or two of the possible outcomes that meet their identified need, problem or opportunity and work through the technology process to develop and integrate them. For example, they might create an animation (digital media) that incorporates a computer program or a website (digital media) that incorporates a database. Doing it this way will (hopefully) allow for more time for learning rather than rushing from assessment to assessment!

As you can see from the plan I am going to do a similar programme with my Level 2 and 3 students using the new Digital Technologies standards for them too.

Exciting times ahead!