Digital Technology Hangarau Matihiko: One year of delivering the Raranga Matihiko programme at Waitangi Treaty Grounds

We started delivering the Raranga Matihiko Weaving Digital Futures programme a year ago here at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. As to be expected, we have gone through a huge learning curve ourselves:

• What exactly does the Digital Technology Hangarau Matihiko curriculum describe?
• How do you put this into practice at different year levels and within the local curriculum of a school?
• What does this look like in the Raranga Matihiko context?
• How do we best support ākonga of all ages, teachers, students, parent helpers?

DT HM curriculum content

I have previously blogged about the revised curriculum content (e.g. here). A year into this programme, I am fairly confident with the concepts and with the Progress Outcomes up to the end of CL5 - keeping in mind I work in this area all day every day this is not really unexpected. For me DT HM is very much cross-curriculuar (see previous blog post), I see it incorporate into all Learning Areas. Like with any specialisation, it takes time to become confident with it, and I am very pleased to see that our returning classes overall appear much more confident than they were a year ago. For teachers who have not had a chance to investigate DT HM, I encourage you to do so asap so you feel you are confident when this curriculum content will be fully implemented (from Jan 2020).

Local curriculum and DT HM

There has been a lot of mention of 'local curriculum' in my world lately; where we would have used the phrase 'localised curriculum' in the past, it seems to now have been replaced by 'local curriculum'. I find this Leading Local Curriculum Guide a really good resource to start thinking about it.

As a museum and historic site, we are part of the 'wider community' that can be a partner in schools' learning-focused relationships and help the schools provide rich opportunities for learning. As PLD Facilitators we should go beyond the mere understanding that we are a partner from the wider community but actively support schools as they develop the finer details of their local curriculum. While our PLD aspect is within the DT HM realm, the concept for Raranga Matihiko has been designed from the outset to link to class inquiries with bespoke programmes, therefore it is part of our role to support schools in their local curriculum development, at least as far as our scope and our availability allows.

DT HM in the Raranga Matihiko context

Our Raranga Matihiko vision states: Empowering ākonga/kaiako to think, challenge and create using authentic, integrated experiences. Authenticity and integration includes the setting of the individual partner museum and the facilitators working at that setting, so just like no two programmes are identical, the programmes across the museum sites differ also. At Waitangi, we tend to focus on Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes in the first year, and on Computational Thinking (supported by DDDO) in the second year - not that you could completely separate the two strands anyway.

Our first year programmes tend to be collaborative projects now, generally Virtual Worlds, created and contributed to by all students in the class. This allows the students to use a range of different apps and programmes to create images and objects to tell their learning, and they get to combine all of these in a digital world using Tiltbrush via HTC Vive. They take snapshots and videos of the resulting world and use these to share their learning with their audience. While, and partly because, few schools would have access to their own VR setup, students get an opportunity to work in VR during the programme with us. Over time we have made it clearer to teachers how the skills learnt through Raranga Matihiko transfer even without access to the same tools (and some schools have decided to invest in tools and / or devices they found useful through their experience with us).

Our second year programmes use the DDDO skills the students have gained and incorporate them into coding projects, generally within Scratch as this platform is free, available to access from any device, provides a true sandbox approach and is available in te reo Māori. So far we have mainly been using Scratch as a tool for Digital Storytelling, but as our students get more confident, the complexity of their code has increased a lot.

As a reflection of what we have seen children being capable of, I am very confident that over time some of the CT Progress Outcomes will shift downwards in the their alignment against Curriculum Levels.

Support for teachers, students, parent helpers

Much of our support happens face-to-face, during the time we spend with the classes. Travel time can be a real barrier, and while we try to make the most of any and all time we have with students, we know that we can get better results when we have more time together. Our online support has been more sporadic, on an as-required basis, but now that our website is up and running, this will help immensely: https://rarangamatihiko.com/

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We also had some other challenges to manage, like to how to balance individual workload, resourcing requirements (classroom bookings, car availability, additional equipment, covering for absent staff etc.) and the contractual requirements. One of the intended yet still surprising benefits has been the connections we have built with the extended team across the North Island; Museum Education can be a lonely field within many smaller, regional museums, and it's been great to break down the barriers and make online and face-to-face connections.

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So one year in, I think this is probably one of the most enjoyable PLD programmes I have ever been involved in, and from what our evaluation report has shown at the end of 2018 it seems to meet all expectations. If you are interesting in supporting learning at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, check out our current vacancies here.