Not just Coding for the sake of Coding: Digital Storytelling in Scratch

In October I ran a workshop on using Scratch as a tool for digital storytelling at Ulearn19 in Rotorua. As part of this I introduced the participants to our kids speak version of the Progress Outcomes for Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes as well as Computational Thinking (see this previous blog post). Here is my slide deck  from the workshop:

Computational Thinking in the Junior classroom

The other day on Twitter I came across Victoria Macann's post on the Learning Architects' blog about implementing CT into the classroom. I agree with many of her thoughts, there is a lot of unplugged computational thinking already happening in classrooms (this previous post contains some of my ideas). Today I want to focus on where to from here.

I have long been thinking that the alignment of CT Progress Outcomes 1 and 2 against Curriculum Levels might be setting the bar a bit low (see also in this previous post). I have seen plenty of examples now where young learners code their digital stories on Scratch though according to the curriculum document computerised contexts are only required for Progress Outcome 2 which is currently sitting at Curriculum Level 3 (many teachers would consider CL 3 as appropriate for year 5 & 6 students):

Am I expecting too much too early? To be honest I am concerned we are packing too much into Curriculum Levels 3 - 5 when we could start at a younger age (the following is an excerpt from TKI, my highlights for emphasis):

Progress outcome 2

In authentic contexts and taking account of end-users, students give, follow and debug simple algorithms in computerised and non-computerised contexts. They use these algorithms to create simple programs involving outputs and sequencing (putting instructions one after the other) in age-appropriate programming environments.

Progress outcome 3

In authentic contexts and taking account of end-users, students decompose problems into step-by-step instructions to create algorithms for computer programs. They use logical thinking to predict the behaviour of the programs, and they understand that there can be more than one algorithm for the same problem. They develop and debug simple programs that use inputs, outputs, sequence and iteration (repeating part of the algorithm with a loop). They understand that digital devices store data using just two states represented by binary digits (bits).

Progress outcome 4 

In authentic contexts and taking account of end-users, students decompose problems to create simple algorithms using the three building blocks of programing: sequence, selection, and iteration. They implement these algorithms by creating programs that use inputs, outputs, sequence, basic selection using comparative operators, and iteration. They debug simple algorithms and programs by identifying when things go wrong with their instructions and correcting them, and they are able to explain why things went wrong and how they fixed them.

Students understand that digital devices represent data with binary digits and have ways of detecting errors in data storage and transmission. They evaluate the efficiency of algorithms, recognising that computers need to search and sort large amounts of data. They also evaluate user interfaces in relation to their efficiency and usability.

Progress outcome 5

In authentic contexts and taking account of end-users, students independently decompose problems into algorithms. They use these algorithms to create programs with inputs, outputs, sequence, selection using comparative and logical operators and variables of different data types, and iteration. They determine when to use different types of control structures.

Students document their programs, using an organised approach for testing and debugging. They understand how computers store more complex types of data using binary digits, and they develop programs considering human-computer interaction (HCI) heuristics.

[You wouldn't believe how much debugging I went through to display this copied text in this format - Blogger didn't seem to like me today...]

In my opinion, we could start working towards Progress Outcome 2 from year 2 (6 year olds) onwards and spread out the required learning to meet Progress Outcomes 2 - 5.

Where to start as a Junior teacher

Firstly, you need to understand what the revised curriculum content includes. There are a number of helpful sites around, especially Kia Takatū ā-Matihiko, I can also recommend Mindlab's Digital Passport. We have also collated useful information and resources on our new Raranga Matihiko website https://rarangamatihiko.com/.

Talk to your colleagues in your kura or school and across your Kāhui Ako. Ministry funded PLD is available, check out the Ministry of Education sites with information for your sector. If you are teaching at a Decile 1-3 school in Northland, Auckland, the Hawke's Bay or in Wellington, check out if our Raranga Matihiko programme is an option for you.

Next you need to get yourself acquainted with coding which I regard as another form of literacy. I personally really like the resources from https://code.org/, no cost involved, lots of useful activities, information and videos. Once you have worked yourself through the different levels of a pre-set programme, you can start branching out into more open, sand-box type environments like Scratch (which now also supports te reo Māori).

From there move on to how can you introduce coding into your classroom? From my own experience as Y3 teacher, I first introduced my students to coding through unplugged activities - check out CS Unplugged for some great ideas. From there I set up my class in Code.org and that became one of our 'Can Do' activities. Once students have mastered the basics of this, show them how they can transfer these skills to a platform like Scratch. Don't make it too complex in the beginning, given them an opportunity to explore and then share with each other what they have come up with.

Using coding as a digital story telling tool makes it relevant (rather than coding for the sake of coding); students could use Scratch to retell (an aspect of) a story, make alternative endings, create new stories etc. Even with limited levels of literacy, students can learn to use suitable blocks as the most useful ones are usually at the top of a colour section:

There are other platforms aimed at junior students which you might want to explore, such as Scratch Junior (available for Chromebooks, iOs and Android) but I feel restricted by limitations like not being able to upload my own backdrop or my own avatar which especially juniors love.

Have a look at these examples from our Raranga Matihiko programme in Waitangi where junior students shared their learning using Scratch; they created their own backdrop and uploaded it, inserted their own sprite and coded their digital story:

(Looking at our collection of Scratch projects, I'm so proud of these children and their teachers, I think they did an amazing job!)

Digital Technology Hangarau Matihiko will be taught in all schools from 2020, if you haven't started yet, hopefully this post can give you some ideas.

Back to ???

Term 1 at work was as busy as I had expected it to be, with a few extra challenges thrown in, namely getting ready to deliver a new programme, the Raranga Matihiko | Weaving Digital Futures Programme, from Term 2. This programme is about integrating learning in the new Digital Curriculum Hangarau Matihiko with the rest of the school curricula, supported by the taonga and artefacts at the various museums. I'm really excited about working in partnership with Te Papa as well as Auckland War Memorial Museum and MTG Hawkes Bay, this project is ticking so many boxes for me:

• Working with students and teachers on a more ongoing basis, and having more opportunity to really apply future-focused pedagogy
• Concentrating on local (and low-decile) schools, something that's always been very important to me
• Using digital technology for students to tell stories that are important to them
• Putting my Digital Fluency hat back on and getting knee-deep back into working cross- platform and across devices in order to support student learning
• Working in collaboration across sites and museums, therefore modelling collaboration between Museum Educators, and learning with and from each other
• A new challenge to get my teeth into:)

By Google Inc., CC BY 4.0, Link

There's probably many more pluses than I can think of right now (and they far outweigh the minuses of updating devices, dropped wifi connections or apps not wanting to play nicely); like the appointment of our fourth teachers to the team who is team teaching with me (she is absolutely wonderful, and she just gets it). I'm a little sad to let my active LEOTC involvement, the work with the visiting schools and the time spent with my lovely colleagues. It's a bit like handing your baby over to their N.E. teachers when they turn 5: I know the programme is in very safe hands, our two teachers are doing a marvelous job, and I am learning to not stick my nose into things I don't need to worry about.

So how does the Raranga Matihiko programme work? Normally schools come and visit us for up to three hours to learn from us about something that supports what they are studying at school (LEOTC visits). it's not unusual for this to be the only visit the student ever has to the Treaty Grounds, so many teachers are keen to pack as much into the three hours as they can (Museum visit, waka, Treaty House, Cultural Performance, film etc.). Our Education Vision is

For learners of all ages and from all backgrounds to critically engage with Waitangi, the place, with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi, and with Aotearoa New Zealand as a nation.

There are many different learning models around, Thinking Hats, Bloom's Taxonomy etc. but we just narrowed it down to three verbs; we want to give students the opportunity to Collect (information), to Connect (that information with prior knowledge and with themselves), and to Reflect (meaning for past, present, future, for myself etc.) - this is where critical reflection happens. We are starting to get better to gather evidence of that critical reflection, some of this gets published on our Education Blog. With limited connectivity, limited access to devices (not all teachers are happy to take devices on outings), and especially limited time, our regular LEOTC visits are still very much a combination of paper with hands-on activities.

Our vision remains the same, but the Raranga Matihiko programme runs quite differently: In collaboration with the teacher(s) we plan a personalised programme for the students, then focus on an aspect that we can support here at the Treaty Grounds. As an example, one of our Term 2 classes studies 'awa' (water), and we will support that unit by work around waka (namely Ngātokimatawhaorua), navigation etc. At the same time we will introduce the children to certain digital tools they can use to share their learning about their topic with others. In turn they and their teachers become the experts within their school and teach others.

We start off with a Teacher Planning Day on site, looking closely at the Digital Technology Hangarau Matihiko Curriculum, and using this to underpin the planning of their Waitangi visits. Different to a LEOTC visit, they will have two consecutive days on site, and they will spend the majority of that time inside our Raranga Matihiko lab. Following these two days (one day in the second year), we will come and visit each of the classes, bringing the digital equipment with us, so they can continue on their projects. As it is currently funded, this programme will run over two years, with each classes being involved for a 10 week period in both years. 

I've been thinking of my elevator pitch: Maybe... "I work with students and teachers at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, and I support them to tell stories that are important to them and their local community by integrating digital technology into their learning". Will that put people to sleep???

Soul II Soul's Back to life has been swirling around in the back of my head today; I'm not sure if I'm trying to look for meaning in something completely unconnected, but I feel very much alive and in my element coming up with suggestions, trying to find solutions to ideas the students come up with, tutuing with different tools, writing up one pagers etc. My family might feel differently, maybe it's more like Groundhog Day for them? However, the teenagers are rather impressed about 3D scanning and VR; maybe mum's mahi is even cooler than they thought...

Technology makes me wonder....

Every now and then I realise how fortunate I am to be living now and working in the role I am in. How has society developed over the last 100 years to the point where you can catch a plane (or two) to travel from Queensland to South Australia, can call or video call your family and friends from most place on this earth, where you can access your 'stuff' anywhere anytime on any device? The power of connecting and collaborating though is in my humble opinion the biggest game changer for our life today and in the future.

Image Source

Humans are (in the majority) social creatures, and as far as I know, telling stories are a vital part of the culture of all peoples on earth. I sometimes I wish we could have a time lapse of the different ways we have been telling stories over time; I expect that oral story telling would get by far the most airtime! However, the reliance on a person orally telling a story to others is limiting the potential audience. Add the written word, first by hand, later in printed form, and your story can reach a potentially much larger audience - though the absence of a narrator would potentially change the message (which in itself is not necessarily a bad or a good thing, it's simply different). Going to the extreme of making the written form the only acceptable form of story telling though is limiting both the authorship and the audience.

Now we have so many more ways of telling a story and connecting with an audience: Digital voice recording tools help us to record an oral story and share it; video incorporates visual and aural aspects and can also be shared; via online collaborative tools not only can be we connect an authentic audience with the written, oral or visual story we want to tell, we can also collaborate on and become co-authors.

There are a number of apps out there that combine several of above features into one finished product. +Allanah King was the first person to introduce me to Book Creator and I have been a huge fan ever since (in fact she became one of the first book Creator Ambassadors just recently and has inspired me to attempt this, too). Book Creator is to my knowledge the only widely used app yet that works across iOS, Android and Win8.1 (I will try it on Win10 soon) and allows anyone to be the author of an eBook. Combine text, photos, drawing, audio and video into one and share your finished ePub creation yet still leave us with the book experience so that we don't loose this part of our story telling history.  

Image Source

However, technology is not without challenge; I often feel like Frank Zappa who is quoted on the left. With all these stories out there that we can connect to anywhere anytime, do I have anything to add? While I have been talking about digital storytelling and the Book Creator app to a lot of the schools I work with, I have never felt the need to blog about it - after all lots of other bloggers have already done that. Are we going to see less original stories written because of the fact that digital technology lets us connect with all these already created stories? How are we going to ensure that 'good stories' will continue to be written by people without 'wigs and stuff'?

Technology certainly makes me wonder...

PD around Digital Story Telling and UDL

There's always lots going on, sometimes it's hard to remember to blog about it! For me in my work the focus has definitely shifted from being a 'trainer in things IT' to being a connector between school leaders' and teachers' existing knowledge and relevant information out there - not always easy for us as facilitators as there is an immense amount of knowledge out there for us to be aware of... With Teaching as Inquiry being such a powerful vehicle for all educators to progress their students' learning, and with teachers driving their own learning through TaI, there is less need for facilitators to 'know it all' (I do still get this occasionally, "but you must know, you are the e-learning person"...)

However, there is still a need to look at how to use tools. I have realised that if I truly want to apply UDL principles in my work (multiple means of representation, of action & expression and of engagement), I need to be more considerate of everyone's needs when I deliver workshops. Therefore I have gone back to creating some worksheets / tutorials on Google Docs that not only get shared but also easily can be printed out and sit beside the person using an app or a programme on a device. Here is a session I have run with schools around Digital Story Telling / Movie Making recently, and here you can find tutorials I have created to support this: Movie Making with iMovie iPad app, Movie Making with WeVideo (online), Movie Making with WeVideo Android app, Movie Making with Windows Movie Maker.

I think it is vital that we remember, writing is just one form of sharing a narrative. Digital Storytelling is in some sense not very different from the travelling story tellers we have had even back in the ice ages. Technology now lets us tell our stories and share them easily with anyone we choose to (much easier than travelling over land by foot :D). It also perfectly fits with all three principles of UDL!

What might this look like in the classroom?

Use digital story telling parallel to, as an alternative to or instead of writing. Students still need to plan / story board their story, ensure they are sharing the narrative. 

Ensure students understand the limitations and difficulties of turning their narrative into a movie (they might not have the tools / props on hand to create what words could describe).

Time management is an issue for many students; ensure you set a realistic timeframe, provide scaffolding where necessary; this might include you being actively involved in the creation of the story depending on age and ability of your students.

Most importantly: Take time for the finished stories to be shared - within your class, across the school and beyond.

How are you using Digital Storytelling in your work?

There have been some thoughts brewing in my head about UDL - being such a Golden Circle fan the order of the three principles (what, how and why of learning) doesn't sit well with me. Watch this space...