Rāwhiti By The Sea: November 2019

At the Grow Waitahi Digi Awards evening...

A group of students from The Red Zone group attend the awards evening at St Margaret's college.

They got first place in the open category, Year 3 & 4, for The Red Zone.

The Red Zone also got 2nd place in the MADE AWARDS, Year 4-6 Interface Documentary category, 2019 and won the Jenny Griggs Creativity award.

A group of students who created the game for the BeeBots called 'Wero Putiputi' got 3rd Place in the MADE Awards, Year 7&8 Interface Documentary category, 2019.

Minecraft Education, Learning from one Another...

We have a lot of students at Rāwhiti School that love Minecraft. This term I've organised a few Minecraft Crafting sessions for a variety of students across the school. We have some groups working on designing their own dream 'whare' (house). Another group working on 'Bridges over Minecraft Village.'

Today we had some 'newbie' students play Minecraft for the first time.

I could have just taken this group and they all used the Minecraft Tutorial World. I really wanted to crate an experience for these 'new' student that would be more personal. I also wanted the more experience Minecrafters to use their knowledge and experience of Minecraft to feel empowered. Students learning form one another is more powerful that from me!

Often we use Tuakana/teina where older students (tuakana) teachers a younger student (teina). The students were Year 2 & 3's. In this case I used a teina teaches teina approach. Prior to the session I buddied up students with a student that was 'new' to Minecraft. We discussed what you would want to 'teach' or get this student to 'learn' about Minecraft. They came up with a list of key things:

This was the first time I had ever done this with Minecraft and would definitely do this again. The session ran for 50 minutes. I observed genuine interested from everyone and engagement. The more experience crafters had never done anything like this before. Some were using the end of a pencil to show their buddy how to navigate the Minecraft interface, some were standing back amazed because for 'first' timers they were building some impressive wee houses and some were giving encouragement and prompting when needed to help their buddy.

To end this session I flew around (you can only say that with Minecraft) and took a snippet of footage to share with tamariki. This provided a prompt for beginners to reflect on their experience and for the more experience crafters to give positive feedback of what they saw.

I went around and used Clips to capture this moment and had Jess Bond, from Core observing the students from Rāwhiti School in action.

The Red Zone

This is the completed full-length movie 'The Red Zone.' It shows the process the Ōtautahi Crafters undertook to innovate some spaces in the red zone, Christchurch, Ōtautahi.

This took a couple of months to complete and a few weeks to collate everything into a movie.

Students have blogged about their experience, check out their blogs below:

Jed

Digi Awards 2019

A group of students from the Ōtautahi Crafters attended the Grow Waitaha Digi Awards 2019 Celebration Ceremony last Wednesday.

To their suprise they won the Year 3 & 4 Open Category with their entry 'The Red Zone.'

Watch our 3 minute entry into the Digi Awards 2019...

Students have blogged about their experience, check out their blogs below:

Jed

Ōtautahi Crafters - Outdoor Area

If you thought the wetland area would be a nice place to visit wait until you see the outdoor area!

This is full of things to get you fit and healthy. There's even a dog park...

Students worked in groups to create this area. To build the wetland area and outdoor area it took about 2 months. Some parts were challenging to build, like the skate park. We had some very talented Minecrafters that gave up their lunch time to get this area finished.

Ōtautahi Crafters - Wetlands

The Wetlands area the Ōtautahi Crafters built is one of my favourite places. If it came to life I think I would visit this place every weekend. I love the native bird sculptures. Imagine walking through the Wetlands and seeing large sculptures of a pukeko, a fantail and kiwi.

I think the birds would love this area!

This took a lot of time to craft and a lot of work on the ground had to be done.

Innovate The Red Zone..Idead & Planning

In Term 3 an enthusiastic bunch of Year 3 students embarked on the challenge to innovate Ōtautahi.

After the earthquakes a lot of houses were knocked down. Learning about what had happened and sharing photos made this group feel sad. The land couldn't be remediated and this land is now known as the red zone.

Ōtautahi Crafters embarked on a journey to investigate what could happen to some parts of the red zone.

They talked to students at school and looked at the different ideas people have suggested for this space Ōtākaro Avon River Regeneration Plan.

They spoke to students at school and attempted to create a list of 100 things that could happen in the red zone.

All ideas were discussed and placed into three lists, Yes, No & Maybe. This was challenging and the the students had to really think what would make the red zone a better place for everyone.

After this they decided to create an Outdoor Area and a Wetlands are in the red zone.

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