11 June 2019
The day began with a lesson in EMPOWERMENT. For this to be experienced by our students, the three cornerstones of Maniakalani - LCS (ubiquitous, visible, connected) must be present. Dorothy's assessment of the Tamaki community brought the lack of empowerment home with her descriptions of poverty of income, medical support, housing insecurity, words and interactions (students coming to school with a 32 million word deficit was quite shocking).
I was privileged to have taught at Aranui High School for 27 years and in that time I saw/experienced the consequences of all of these forms of poverty - lack of empowerment was a daily reality for many of our students.
Another poverty I would like to add is the poverty of experience. Aranui students were bereft of experiences outside their suburb simply because it cost too much money to travel anywhere. Across town, across the region, across the island there was no way they could they afford to get across the strait let alone Colombo Street! On field trips, our Geography students grew in confidence as they experienced new lives, the need to problem solve, fit in/celebrate or just reflect ("MISS! Look what happens when I push this button!"). Seoul, South Korea was a highlight, but over the years we ventured into a variety of locations each with their own experiences... Wellington (Parliament), Aoraki/Mt Cook (120kmh winds), the University of Canterbury/Lincoln (law lectures and milking sheds) and Ngā Hau e Wha (whakapapa and kawa) on Pages Road.
So, to the suburb of Mairehau. According to the latest census, we all have access to phones/fax and internet. I would comment though, that it is security of access that is the issue for our students.
Mairehau Stats...
The stats indicate that everyone in the suburb has access to the internet... so there is an opportunity to educate not only students but whānau as well!
Today was a day of thinking about Computational Thinking possibilities.
The sorting exercise to illustrate algorithms was amazing - Viv was a great teacher!
Binary/hexadecimal language is awesome!!!! I got to manipulate colours on a screen and play around with pixel sizing - woop woop!
Then the hard core stuff - MINECRAFT AND SCRATCH!
Lots of fun and lots of learning still to do. I know that our ICT teacher teaches Scratch so will have some fun conversations with her about what she does.
Thank you for sending us Viv - about those Geography applications, we started talking about orienteering and grid refs; just enough to get me interested! I will contact her to talk more. So much fun today - thanks Viv!
