Staffing 24 classes of year 9's and 10's (1 period a week) was always going to be a challenge. If anyone has ever done timetabling at a secondary school before, its one big intractable problem ! There are too many variables... teacher's classes, student's classes, specialist classrooms, limited periods etc. The way it worked out for us was that our timetable was changed so juniors (year 9 and 10) were moved to have 4 periods a week of each subject, except PE and Health, where they had 3 periods and the 4th period became Matihiko. We started by asking volunteers who wanted to teach Matihiko. However, teachers first priority is to their own subject areas, so none of these teachers ended up with spare time to pick up an extra period or two. So we ended up with a list of teachers who had a spare hour or more. These teachers were approached to take Matihiko... with the promise of an amazing, planned program to engage students. Of course they all agreed (who wouldn't?)....
Stage two... the concept is set, it's time to get creating. With limited time myself and my amazing colleagues (3 Digital Technologies Teachers) set about expanding our plans into some lessons. Topic 1 - It's Happening! Argh, I'm pretty excited and also a bit of a geek who likes pictures to sum up ideas. So each topic was given an animated gif. This one is to represent both the fact that the new course is coming alive and also the reality that Digital Technologies is happening. We need to embrace it and our school, students, whanau need to understand it. This topic is all about giving students the foundation. Get their own devices set up to be efficient for them. Organise their google drives. Learn what each of the google tools is best for. Learn some tricks of google searching. Topic 2 - The Secret. This topic is all about letting students in on some special secrets, in other words, some great tools available on the internet to make some pretty amazing graphical outcomes...