Ngā Matapakinga | Discussion

Thanks Joanne for this afternoons PLD, our team really enjoyed attending our first webinar together.

Ngaa mihi. 
Haami  

Found my way here from ULearn2020 - 

What excites me is the wealth of possibilities Digital Technology opens up for us & my concern is the lack of depth we explore.  We and our students remain mostly consumers when we could be powerful creators!

I think I am a combo, depending on the task.

Kia ora koutou

Due to popular demand this webinar will be repeated on Monday the 28th of September, 1.00pm - 1.30pm. Register to attend here.

I loved watching this story and listening to Chris and Jess, because while we grapple with a resurgence of COVID-19, we’re reminded of how amazingly resilient and clever kiwis are when it comes to finding solutions to local and global problems. In this story, Jess Bond talked to Chris Hopkins from SouthMED about the respiratory devices he and his team created (in two short weeks) at the request of minister David Parker.

Problem: In March it was realised that if New Zealand was to follow the pattern of other countries, there wouldn’t be enough ventilators to support patients with severe respiratory problems. Because we couldn’t source ventilators from overseas, we would have to make these ourselves.

Solution: Fast forward a few weeks and Chris Hopkins pulled together a passionate team of volunteers who used all kinds of innovative ways to meet virtually (phone, video conferencing, shared software) to design and manufacture a respiratory hood mask that would eventually be able to be used in hospitals to help patients breathe.

In the video interview, Jess invited Chris to retell the process, that aligns closely to a design thinking framework from; emphasising a need, to brainstorming and ideation through to rapid prototyping, trialing and modifying 2D/3D designs and testing with clinicians to modify final designs ready for socialisation and distribution. This wasn’t without it’s hassles, but well worth it as now there’s a product that can help New Zealanders, our neighbours and ultimately the rest of the world.

How Chris and his team have used digital tools for communication and design and developing digital outcomes (CAD design, 3D  printers) to eventually produce a much-needed device in response to COVID-19, is a fascinating story of kiwi ingenuity – one worth sharing with your communities. One of your students might be the next Chris!

Do you have any questions or stories to share about this design process in action?

Wow, you are having so much fun! These resources sound amazing. Would you please share which parts of the progress outcomes were observed during the learning session(s) using HP Reveal? It is exciting to hear about all the interesting learning happening with DT woven through it. Please keep sharing with us. 

Hi. I've not used Twine but I always go for Google Slides for pick-a-path stories. In fact I ran a toolkit on it this week. Happy to help if needed?

As mentioned in our recent webinar, here is a little technology task that is perfect for Year 5-6 ākonga:

"Ms Smith teaches the new entrants. During a recent fire drill, instead of evacuating the classroom in an orderly fashion many of wee kids burst into tears. It wasn't a great moment for health and safety. The Y5-6 ākonga have been tasked with finding a way to help Ms Smith, and her tamariki know what to do next time there is a fire alarm."

Working in groups, using a design process, the ākonga work to understand the problem, understand the end-users and come up with a solution. There are some interesting factors:

• The end-users have some specific needs (e.g the little children may not be able to read), so empathy is important
• The end result could be a digital outcome
• It's an authentic context—assuming it happened in your school (be on the lookout for similar little problems to solve)
• You don't have to actually make all the solutions. Groups could pitch ideas to the rest of the class, and the winning design is then made by the whole class.

Does anyone else have other little ideas for short, sharp technology projects?

Hi Michele, I've added a link to the slides below the embedded version which you can make a copy of :-)

Great questions! The short answer is that the more helpful the site is, the less secure it is. 

For example, if I'm trying to break into one of our accounts, I could go to (say) Trademe, and try to log in as 'juliecrossen@gmail.com'. If it says 'email is correct, password is wrong' then I know that there's someone with that email address registered on Trademe, and now I just need to figure out their password. If it just says that one of them is wrong, then it hasn't given me that valuable clue, and I don't know if I should try other names (juliecrossen1, juliecrossen2 and so on), or if I've got a valid account. That slows an attacker down a LOT.

Digital security is like physical security... my bike would be more convenient for me to unlock if it had a two-digit combination lock, but it would also be easy for someone to steal my bike in a minute or so. If I had a 10 digit lock, they'll never guess it, but I'll also find it a real pain to use. And then they might cut the lock instead, so then I get a heavy chain, but now it weighs more than the bike. We look for a balance between convenience for the user and inconvenience for the unwelcome intruder.

As for password strength - chances are it is software running in your own web browser that is telling you about the strength of it - the website will have set up a small program in the web browser when you visited the site, and that program counts the number of characters and digits, and reacts each time you type.

And you definitely don't want to use the same password on multiple sites. I know it's a huge pain, but if you go to https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and type in your email address (it's safe to do but be prepared for alarming results), it will tell you of any websites that have been hacked and potentially revealed information about you, especially passwords. My university account shows 9 websites that were hacked where my information is stored. I can sleep at night because I know I use a different password for every site, so it won't be much use if they know what it is for the site that was hacked, although that single hack might be a worry enough). If I used the same password for one of those sites as, say, my bank, then it could be very costly as lots of people could now know my one favourite password. If it was the same as my Facebook password, my friends might have started getting weird messages from me (or weirder than usual). There are other protections in place, but that's covered in other parts of the DT curriculum (hashing is the main thing that makes your password particularly safe, but that's for when you're looking at cryptography). 

Computer security is a huge topic, but there are a few thoughts. Usually if something seems like making things difficult, it's to make it REALLY difficult for the bad people.

And as an aside, none of this directly relates to the topic of this section (error correction), which is about making sure your data (whether it's a good or bad password, or your public Facebook posts) is stored and transmitted without anything in it being altered by accident. But then, everything in computing ends being connected in some way! And counting the number of digits and letters in a password is a great programming challenge for students... just don't give them your personal password to try it on!

Kia ora koutou, here's the last instalment of the Pick-a-path webinar series - with an emphasis on where this all fits in the curriculum and how this might look; using frameworks for design and planning templates. 

Enjoy and please let us know how you get on or better yet, share some of your examples with us here .

Kia ora koutou, here's the last instalment of the Pick-a-path webinar series - with an emphasis on where this all fits in the curriculum and how this might look; using frameworks for design and planning templates. 

Enjoy and please let us know how you get on or better yet, share some of your examples with us here .