Animated Stories and Brief Development

In Semester 1 this year, the first class that I had was a mix of Year 7 students from Glenbrae School.  The focus of this Semester was to teach code sequences to develop Animated Stories in Scratch, and for students to undertake Brief Development associated with their DigiTech projects.

Student Blogs

If you click on the student photos below, you will be able to navigate to the student blog posts that students wrote which includes links and embedded animations for some of the work that they undertook in DigiTech this semester.

Students Blogging, but what to blog?

Some of the students were already blogging reflections on what they were learning in Technology when they returned to school.

Before the students moved from my specialist subject into the next Technology subject, I specifically wanted the students to blog an overview of some of the tasks that they had completed, relating to Brief Development, as well as the outcome that they had developed; that being, an animated story.

It was easier for me to model to the students, what I wanted them to include in the blog post overview.  This would ensure that students linked and embedded tasks associated with Brief Development and their Animated Stories.  Therefore I broadcast a model blog post for the students to follow, as shown in the image below.

Students had the option of linking their completed tasks from their Google Drive to the text in the bulleted list, or, linking previous blog posts to the text in the bulleted list.

Technology Literacy Resources

The following is School Goal 2 focussing on Literacy and Numeracy



Technology Literacy Resources

The following are literacy resources that were used in a session with Marc Milford to implement literacy strategies in Technology around 'Language Writing Skills' and 'Language Features'.

The PD Tech resource that Marc focussed on for the Technology Department was 91044 Brief Development.  The reason I asked Marc to focus on Brief Development at NCEA Level 1, is because all Technology teachers from Year 7 through to Year 13 teach the Brief Development achievement objective, and three staff deliver the Brief Development NCEA standard to Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3.

AS91044 Exemplar - Low Excellence

Take Outs from our PD Session with Marc

The following are some take outs that I have from the PD Session with Marc:

1. I need time to process the strategies that Marc has supplied us with in the Writing plan 2018 for Techies
2. I would benefit from one on one time to identify specific literacy strategies to help with both my senior students as well as my junior students
3. I'd like some more department time for us to collaborate on, and gain a shared understanding on some useful strategies for literacy issues within Technology

Who does this Moonshot project involve?

Purpose: to identify my tribe/team/collaborators

• Who am I collaborating with on this project?
• Who are my team?
• Who has a voice in this project?

Who are the Who?

• Learners: exactly who
• Colleagues: co-designers, collaborators, sounding boards etc
• Experts: who is being invited to add expert opinion

Original Stakeholders

The original stakeholders (previously blogged) are outlined below:

• Ann/Dorothy - Meet with at PD, gained feedback about tool design
• App Developers - Meet with Dave/Korene Letele, and gained feedback about tool design
• Financiers - No longer relevant as I don't need financial backing to develop the tool
• Sue/Fusion - Not directly relevant to the development of this particular VTaL tool which is targeted towards Teachers and Teaching Practitioners
• CORE Middle Leaders - Need to consult
• SLT - Yet to have discussions
• Teachers - Yet to have specific discussions
• Families - Not directly relevant to the development of this particular VTaL took which is targeted towards Teachers and Teaching Practitioners

NEW Stakeholders

• NEW stakeholders to the mix include:
• NEW - Jim Sill, EdTech, referred me to Kimberley who has shown interest in attending my Sydney GAFE session
• NEW - Wayne Poncia, Hapara
• NEW - Andrew Corney SCT Tauranga Boys College
• NEW - Kalisha Paketama, Frances Kolo, Tamaki College First Year Teachers

Content for the Tool - Stakeholder Feedback

What are the right questions to ask in order to determine appropriate content for the tool?  
How do I ask the questions, in a way that will get me the answers?

I think the scope for identifying appropriate questions can and will be determined from a number of sources.  I gained feedback from a Toolkit Session I ran on VTaL at the beginning of 2017 with staff either new to Tamaki College, or staff who were generally interested in VTaL.  It also makes sense to me to touch base with our newer staff, to find out from them what would be useful as beginning teachers.  Not to say that the feedback should be limited to these sources, but would hopefully help focus the next tier of stakeholder conversations.

Tool Design

Developing the tool itself isn't that difficult for me.  What I do need to consider carefully though is design features (colour schemes, functionality, aesthetics, layout etc).  There is no point in having robust content within the tool, if the way the tool functions and looks is terrible for the end users.  Ironically, this is a conversation I constantly have with my students as a Technology teacher.

There's also the fact that I quickly threw together an original prototype of the tool eg. an original VTaL Google site, when I first launched the VTaL Google+ community.  It dawned on me that the Google+ community was intended to enable users to share and communicate, which is vastly different to a site (even though there may be similar features).  Stakeholder feedback on the design of the original site would also be invaluable, in order to move forward.

Next Steps

It is clear to me that my team of collaborators and original stakeholders has evolved from the beginning of the this year, or even last year when I first started promoting VTaL.  Stakeholder feedback from my current and new stakeholder base on content for the tool, and tool design are what I need to focus on next.  This is likely to include not just the content of the tool eg. the site, but the templates of various VTaL components that I am likely to embed into the site.  A timely process, but also an important and necessary process, if the tool is to be effective for users!

VTaL - NEW Students Navigating in Learning Information in my DigiTech Site

Links to Student Blogs within our NEW Google Sites

Google Calendars embedded within our NEW Google Sites

Step 1 : Students navigated to the main Tamaki College Site

Step 2 : Students clicked on Technology > Ms Anderson

Step 3 : Students navigated to Ms Anderson

Step 4 : Students navigated to my subject site Digital Technologies with Ms Anderson

Step 5 : Students navigated to Year 9 > Year 9 Calendar

Department Goal Idea 2

The way in which the goal has been executed within department meeting time is as follows:

1. Blog Post Reflections - Staff blog their reflections on either a particular School Goal or Department Goal.  The focus is determined prior to blogging.  Staff publish their blog posts, and then share their post within the TC Techies Google+ Community under the category of School Goals or Technology Department Goals.  The sharing within the TC Techies G+ Community, is so that posts can be easily located by other members of the department on a common topic shared under a specific category label.
2. Blog Comments - Staff locate each other's blog posts, read through, and then comment on the posts.
3. Discussions - We then discuss what we've learnt from either our reflection and the comments on our reflections, or, what we've learnt from other people's reflections.