#7

11th April, 22

This weeks class was a presentation from Rowena and Renee, with the Girls Programming Network. We looked at different ways to incorporate technology and “the maker movement” into classrooms. I learn best with anything visual and practical, so this lesson was great, and obviously I am immediately interested in any lesson I can play with playdough in. This seems to be recurring theme or this class, but using this kind of programming to make music wasn’t something I’d previously considered or anything I would feel confident in teaching but was great to see such a broad range of activities and age groups this learning could be applied to. I appreciated all the details and instructions too, it definitely made the tasks simpler for us to complete. Whilst it was lots of fun, I did have a few questions to reflect on following our class.

1. How do I ensure lessons/units with specialised content are engaging as ,any student as possible?

2. How I do I make sure I scaffold and demonstrate complex learning? How do I help learners to understand instead of replicate or memorise?

Below is a video of me playing our very own playdough xylophone, I will admit, I’m not the most gifted scientist so I found it challenging to understand how this even worked, let alone putting it together so that it could function. It was certainly rewarding to see our little final product.