Kath's Digital Journey

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?)....

Next year, 2021, we will start teaching a new class we have called " Matihiko ". Matihiko, a Te Reo -Maori word, means Digital. It has been a long process to get here, even to come up with a name. But I am very excited to be this close to teaching our first classes. The background Changes to the NZ Technology curriculum saw the addition of two new areas added "Computational Thinking" (CT) and "Designing and developing digital outcomes" (DDDO). Anyone who is across this will be very familiar with these two areas now. This came from years of research and work by a number of groups including Min of Education, industry, tertiary education and teachers associations. The need is there for our future contributors to society to have vital skills and understanding in Digital Technologies and they think ALL students should at least have a chance to learn these skills.  Why a new course? We have a strong and well established Digital Technologies department. We are l...