Inquiry Seminar | Digital Technologies

On Wednesday 20th February a group of us met at the Greytown Primary School staffroom to discuss our inquiries. It was a great afternoon with twenty attendees, many of whom were new to the teacher as inquirer process, and were there to find out more. 

The session started with a sharing of gems from last year. Kuranui College Technology Department worked as an inquiry group, focussed on raising year 13 achievement, and shared some of the agency strategies they had found successful. Simple methods like the use of sticker charts were successful as was making use of tools like google keep and google tasks for organising to do lists.

A big motivation for people attending this session, was the DT | HM curriculum, which will be mandatory in 2020. A lot of people are wanting to have a Digital Technologies focus this year as part of getting ready for 2020.  There was an opportunity to discuss potential inquiry questions with other attendees. Inquiries this year included:

• Play based learning using iPads with year 1 students, what sort of activities can be used on these devices. 
• How can Digital Technologies support mixed ability groupings in Maths.
• Agency scaffolds that can support learning in Digital Technologies in a secondary setting. 

Take Aways

• We need to develop a shared definition of what agency means.
• ScratchJr is a great place to teach programming with younger learners.
• Sign up for the facebook page (search South Wairarapa Kahui Ako) for updates
• The South Wairarapa Kahui Ako website is a great place to come to find out what is going on, resources etc.