Friday 14 October 2016

Future-focused learning and coding

We need to be teaching students in a future-focused way. What does this look like and why is this important? In 2014, a report was presented to the Ministry of Education by the 21st century learning group called 'Future focused learning in connected communities.' This document suggests 10 key recommendations in order to support future-focused students. It was really interesting to see which of these recommendations have been achieved, and which are still in progress.

In New Zealand, there is a big push for changes to the curriculum to support digitally fluent students. This is explained throughout this document. In addition, CORE education has released these 10 trends which have been acknowledged as important in future-focused learning communities. 

We need to be supporting our students for the future, not for the past. As a group, we brainstormed tools that are currently being/ or starting to be used for future-focused learning in the classroom:

Made with Padlet

One of the transferrable skills which has started to be taught through a number of schools is coding. Coding is a skill which can begin to be taught with junior school students and can become more and more complex as students progress throughout school. Coding can be presented simply as blocks with symbols or commands and can progress to use of JavaScript and HTML.

Below, I have coded a Star Wars game through 'Hour of Code' in code.org using blocks and then using JavaScript.


This game requires the gamer to remove all 'Pufferpigs' to win the game. They lose points for hitting obstacles and will lose the game if they get all 'Mynocks' (the flying creatures). Play the game here!

Check out this screencast of me playing the game:

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