Raranga Matihiko | Weaving Digital Futures is offering students with limited digital learning opportunities the chance to tell stories that matter to them.

What stories could you tell if you had access to the exciting resources and collections at your local museum? That’s the opportunity – and challenge – being laid down by Raranga Matihiko | Weaving Digital Futures.

Part of the Ministry of Education Digital Technologies for All Equity Fund, this museum-based initiative is a designed to support learning of the new Digital Technologies and Hangarau Matihiko curricula content. The 10-week programme, including a two-day visit to the local museum, specialist visits to classrooms and online support, is provided at no cost to the school. At the museum, students learn and create with a range of technologies, from virtual reality and digital storytelling, to coding and robotics.  

First Participants in the Hawke’s Bay

The Terrace School, from Waipukurau, were the first class to participate at MTG Hawke’s Bay. The focus of their learning was on Hauora/Whakawhanaungatanga, with inquiry into the school principles of Whanaungatanga, Awareness, Kaitiakitanga, and Achievement. For this immersion class, learning the new kupu of Hangarau Matihiko was key, so that students could converse in Reo Mãori as they worked.  

Teacher Ben Carpenter reported that these kupu would form the basis of spelling tests in the weeks ahead. In addition to the kupu, students worked on their inquiry in a variety of ways and using a variety of digital technologies tools and curriculum content including 3D design, virtual reality and robotics.

“Inaianei, ka mahi mãtou ko Te Kohure te mahi Hãngarau Matihiko kei te akomanga ia rã, ia rã. He ngãwari haere te mahi nã te mea i whakamarama a Tash rãua ko Steve mã  mai te whanau o raranga matihiko ki a mãtou,” said Ben.

“Now, we (our class Te Kohure) do digital technology every day in the classroom. It is getting easier to do because of the clarity gained from Tash, Steve and others from the Raranga Matihiko family.”

Learning experiences

Through these learning experiences, students were able to:

• Break down stories into small chunks as they develop them. They were able to work together as they map, programme and develop movies identifying and correcting errors (CT Progress Outcome 1).
• Demonstrate their ability to save, upload and store work in the cloud. They were able to show knowledge of a range of digital tools and select the best one for the job (DDD, Progress Outcome 1).
• Evidence their understanding of a variety of tools including movie making and stop-motion animation, along with editing work as they created algorithms using both digital and non-digital tools (CT Progress Outcome 2).
• Demonstrate how they considered who would be accessing their work (end user) and design it appropriately, show understanding of their role in producing the input and how that lead to the output (DDDO, Progress Outcome 2).

“I enjoyed this experience because it taught me a lot of new things,” said a student, “such as how to write code, new kupu Maori such as ‘karetao’, ‘tipapa’ and ‘mataikaretao’. Because of our Napier visits we are able to use our new knowledge in class which makes our learning more exciting.”

Another commented: “The best thing about our Raranga Matihiko mahi was coding for the robots and virtual reality. I got to make my own korowai!”

Regional programme

Raranga Matihiko is available to decile 1-3 schools and all kura in Wellington, Hawke’s Bay, Auckland and Waitangi/Northland regions. There are two facilitators per region, who work directly with students and their teachers. They co-design and co-facilitate the programme with each classroom teacher thereby ensuring the programme is tailored to support existing classroom learning.  

For many teachers and their students, this is the first opportunity that they have had to engage with the new curriculum content. Teachers are commenting on how they understand more, with one teacher using the language of computational thinking in her classroom now noting “suddenly I see algorithms everywhere now”. 

Tara Fagan is Project Director for Raranga Matihiko | Weaving Digital Futures.

To find out more, contact rarangamatihiko@tepapa.govt.nz
or 04 381 7000, or go to rarangamatihiko.com 

Raranga Matihiko|Weaving Digital Futures offers relevant digital technologies curriculum content learning to those with limited opportunities in this area, as part of the Ministry of Education Digital Technologies for All Equity Fund. This is available to 12,500 students across New Zealand each year until the end of 2020, and is a component of a $38 million investment package supporting the introduction of the Digital Technologies l Hangarau Matihiko curriculum. For more information see education.govt.nz/digitech