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We live in a world surrounded by a wide range of digital information and experiences. The use of technology continues to transform the way we live - shaping our homes and community, and changing the way that we interact with each other and live our everyday lives.
In order to teach our students for their future the Ministry of Education has now included Digital Technologies as part of the national curriculum for all students from Years 1 - 13.
ICT within the classroom is more than just a means to replace pen and paper, it is more a tool to not only support your child to intelligently consume information and ideas but to also design and create new ideas using technology. BYOD increases the opportunities your child has to transform their learning experiences.
Best practice e-learning enables accessible, relevant, and high-quality learning opportunities that improve student engagement and achievement. e-Learning has the potential to transform the way teaching and learning takes place. It is about using technologies effectively across the curriculum to connect schools and communities and to provide accessible, relevant, and high-quality learning opportunities so that every student is better able to achieve their full potential. http://elearning.tki.org.nz
Dr David Parsons, Associate Professor Massey University, explains the need to teach higher-level thinking skills and develop key competencies using technology to prepare students for the 21st century.
What might digital learning look like?
What might digital learning look like?
Below is an outline of how students may use their devices to raise achievement in the core curriculum areas of maths and literacy along with examples of use over the past few years. Digital learning is about enhancing learning not replacing it. There are many learning opportunities with a device that would not be possible without it. BOYD students will not be restricted to a certain digital activity based on the availability of shared classroom devices. Your child will not spend the entirety of the day on a device, some learning will be best suited to be done by hand and your child will learn how to choose the best tool for the job.
Mathematics
Maths learning includes instructional sessions with a teacher, students working on digital activities, bookwork, and independent and group activities. Digital activities may include videos to reinforce a concept or to record their own video to share understanding. Interactive websites are also utilised to consolidate learning through engaging in self-correcting activities. Students are encouraged to use physical equipment and resources alongside digital solutions.
Literacy
Creating content is a huge part of the literacy curriculum. Digital tools may be used to collaboratively write text, make and receive feedback and suggestions on text. Digital presentations may be created, videos or voice recordings made to bring content to life along with creative-based apps and tools to allow for animation, interactive book creation, visual presentations, and more. Digital book banks also provide access to a wider variety of books that may not be available to students in physical format.
Some of the ways digital tools have been used by students in the past couple of years include.
Interactive book creation to share learning in multimedia formats.
Collaborative writing to reinforce editing and improvement along with key competency skills.
Visual presentations to share learning.
Screen and video recording to explain concepts or to communicate with others.
Computation Thinking (Coding) learning to begin the development of app creation.
Digital art via Pixel creation to understand how images are created by digital devices.
At Orewa Beach School we use G Suite for Education. This is our main means of creating, sharing, and collaborating.
G Suite suite offers apps for email, calendar, blogs, documents, presentations, and website creation as well as Google Drive, which is a way of organising all of the work done on these apps. The use of these apps are free and can be used in ‘the cloud’ - a collaborative environment where others can access and work on documents together in real-time. G Suite allows students to access their work from school, home, the local library - anywhere with an internet connection.
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