I throughly enjoyed these three days, it was fantastic to met peers, exchange and discuss tools and resources. I've now so much that I wish to focus on I'm not 100% sure where to start.
I'm particularly interested in gaming, developing learning opportunity, problem solving and reflective writing, plus the additional of extra spreadsheet and database tasks that could be generated from data after playing games.
I'm also interested in a digital parenting. As much as I love technology this is one area it can impact negatively on families and I feel strongly that children deserve their parents time, over what is happening on their favored social media channel.
I see digital literacy as a key part of learning. By better understanding digital literacy, children can engage with so many more resources online, using them sensibly and safely, understanding what they are doing in the technical content that they are doing it in.
If my decision was not impacted by finance and time constraints my final choice might be different. Something I have always wanted to do is to develop programming lesson around Lego Mindstorm, where learners could build Lego models to design, build their own create models and program them to perform functions around the school, such as deliver a note to a classroom, or even make Mr. Botfield a coffee (additional programming required!). These kits are however expensive for one, let alone enough for a class therefore sadly out of reach for us at the moment.
I think realistic action I can take is to promote digital literacy. This will have a really positive impact on the learners now, and also equip them with the digital skills they need to remain good digital citizens in the future and safeguard their digital reputations. There are various ideas I have to achieve this; but initially it is most likely by setting up a bloging system, that learners can use to blog thoughts on lessons, as well as respond to a series of question and digital literacy tasks. This can be further developed in KS4 and KS5 where learners can privately or publicly blog revision notes for example. As well as being good practice for them I particularly like the idea that their revision material will be online for them to access, reflect upon and revise from when ever they need it. Such a system not only gives me scalability, but the opportunity to extended learning and digital skills by employing additional collaborative technologies, for example wikis.
This approach will give a degree of flexibility, whereby for example I could cross over, or at a later date investigate and develop a new line of interest, such as digital parenting.
My action is now to deploy a website where each learner has control of and responsibility for their own blog, and I will be thinking about the topics that I myself may start bloging on.
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