STEAMing in Hamilton

We ran our first STEAM workshop in Hamilton this weekend. Our venue was Te Ao Mārama School in Flagstaff. The workshop was really well attended and the feedback from the teachers who attended was that it was a lot of “fun.” Learning should be fun! We reason that learning should be fun and that it should not be the sole preserve of teachers.

Hamilton STEAM – Ozobot
Hamilton STEAM – Ozobot
Hamilton STEAM
Hamilton STEAM – M-Bot
Hamilton STEAM – M-Bot
Hamilton STEAM – Solderless circuits
Hamilton STEAM – M-Bot
Hamilton STEAM – Micro:Bit
Hamilton STEAM – Micro:Bit

Sharp, Kinane Limited – Company Conference

Millennium Hotel, Taupo welcomes us to our inaugural company conference

We have had a busy time these school holidays, we have run several workshops for teachers and have also held our inaugural company conference. For two days we holed ourselves up in the boardroom at the Millennium Hotel in Taupo for two days of sharing, planning and resource creation.

The range of expertise within our talented team meant that we had the opportunity to share and learn about how the enviro schools programme works, the pedagogy behind play based learning in the early years classroom, how to make science effective in the primary classroom. We looked at how text based coding can be meaningfully integrated into a year 9 curriculum. We also explored the new curriculum planning tool as well as look at some conference presenting and attending opportunities for the next 12 months as well as prepare for our Ulearn presentations, assuming of course, that we have our proposals accepted.

If anything, two days was not long enough, we all were able to share and take away lots of new information from each other.

AIMS principals attend our DT/HM PLD workshop

This week we delivered a day long DT/HM PD workshop to a group of Auckland AIMS principals. The day consisted of us unpacking the revised Digital Technologies Curriculum document, including how schools can apply for DT/HM PLD. As the day progressed it became clear that not many schools were fully aware that there is PLD funding to help schools implement the revised curriculum and so they were very pleased with the information we were able to share with them. Already four schools from the day have sought additional support from us to guide them through the application process.

During the day we got the principals to do some practical work too. We showed them the learning potential that can be gained from “unplugged” as well as computer based computational thinking activities. In the images below you can see the principals working their way through one of the two “unpugged” activities we provided for them. In the afternoon we had the princpals, coding maths games, flying drones, creating remote controlled cars as well as programming robots.

A new DT/HM contract starts with a ToD

Last Friday we started a new contract with Glamorgan School as they started their revised Digital Technologies Curriculum journey. We have run many of these Teacher Only Days. Our introductory workshop is heavily hands on and this one was no exception. By the end of the day, many fears that surround the mis-conceptions of computational thinking were allayed. Now the staff at Glamorgan School are now eager to start their digital technologies integration journey. We are looking forward to it too.

Glamorgan staff discussing the differences between e-Learning and digital technologies
Gla.morgan Staff working with Makey Makeys
Glamorgan Staff working through an “unplugged” Computational Thinking exercise.

STEAM Workshops July 2019

It is time for our termly workshop brochure to be distributed to schools. We emailed our brochure last week, but in case you missed it, click on the download link to get your own copy of the brochure. To book a workshop just click on the “Book” hyperlink relevant to the workshop you want to attend. We hope to see you there.

STEAM workshop and DT/HM ToD

This week has been a busy week for Jacqui and I. On Monday and Tuesday we ran an introduction to coding workshop and a STEAM workshop at Hingaia Penninsula School. Then on Thursday we travelled to Taranaki to start Kahui Ako o te Kohanga CoL digital fluency contract with over 50 teachers in attendance. It was a very successful week, with teachers being exposed to new ideas and resources to help them to integrate technology into their pedagogy.