A Brief Blurb

So, full disclosure, I am from New Zealand. Which means my wording and phrasing might be different from yours. For example, we use year groups instead of grades. And often we refer to Digital Technologies as the Digital Curriculum. So I have tried to make this as user friendly and relevant as I can, trying to make it understandable for any primary/elementary school teacher.

This all started in 2017, when New Zealand released their new Digital Curriculum aimed at preparing today’s students for jobs that pretty much don’t exist. We sat down and unpacked the curriculum as much as possible and started creating resources that could be used in NZ classrooms. Recently, we sat down again to discuss how we could make this knowledge accessible to as many teachers as possible and not just restrict it to New Zealand. Because the findings are relevant. It’s not like our version of Digital Technologies is different from other countries. Sure, there might be variations in wordings. But the core concepts of digital technologies are similar, and we’ve worked hard to create a structure that schools can follow to ensure that every child has a chance to learn the key fundamentals and potential that the digital curriculum has to offer.

As a society, we’ve past the point of being able to turn a blind eye to the importance of digital technologies, we are past the point of relying on high school to cover the immense load of basic digital fluency, and we are 100% past the point of sitting children in front of devices and applications and hoping that they learn something.

(Sorry, I am passionate about this)

The goal around Digital Technologies is to ensure that all learners have the opportunity to become digitally capable individuals. This signals the need for a greater focus on our students building skills so that they can become creators of digital solutions, instead of becoming solely users of digital technologies.

This is a massive key theme throughout Digital Technologies, and hopefully you’ll notice it is a massive theme for us. We are empowering students to become creators instead of users.

Creators vs Users. We are passionate about this idea. We don’t want children to just be users. Being able to use a computer is great. Being able to access and use things like Google Docs and Slides is cool. Being competent on a device is helpful, and it might look like progress if your students were once unable to use devices. But we also need to be asking ourselves, in these scenarios, are students merely using applications? Or are they truly being creators in authentic contexts?

This is what teaching Digital Technologies is about. Teaching children how to design their own digital solutions and become creators of, not just users of, digital technologies – in order to prepare them for the modern workforce.

Our aim for this course is for it to become a resource that you can continually come back to. Refresh your understanding, build on from your knowledge, and grow in your journey of implementing digital technologies.