Entry and exit portfolios in digital technologies years 9–10

Kawana Wallace, ICT Tutor: I’m the tutor at Te Pae Tata. My role here is to engage with the community, delivering high-tech courses, which I design and develop. My role originally started in Raetihi, where I worked as a student role model and teacher aide. I’ve had a bit of background in computer science from university, which I brought in and started working with here. I’ve engaged with the community at all levels, from five-year-olds right up to an 87-year-old lady.

Because of the nature of the trust and the project that we’re doing here, and where we’re located, we’re connected with the high school. Last year we decided to apply for Ministry funding together, which we got. And we wrote a programme, a year-long programme – 12 months – a digitech programme, where we would engage with year nine and tens. It would be a compulsory course for them. And we would deliver everything from fundamental computer science theory, to programming, game development, app development, and web development.

So one of the core outcomes for our project was to develop an entry and exit portfolio for our year nine and tens. This portfolio was built in conjunction with our community, and it just outlines goals and expectations that we want from our kids before they come to high school and when they leave the programme. So when they come, they might have basic computer experience and when they leave, they might be fluent in a programming language.

So the portfolio's really useful because it clearly outlines the expectations that we want for our students before they come in and before they leave. So our portfolios are designed around the evolving digital tech curriculum. Some of the key points in our portfolio are things like teamwork and health and safety standards within a group. We’ve got critical thought development, a lot of the portfolio links towards the six key computer science areas that the Ministry is focusing on, such as human and computer studies, digital technologies, algorithms – things like that. So they’re all relative and really well connected to the new curriculum. Some of them come from a bit more experience in the software field. I work with a few software developers to really flesh out some of the more specific outcomes, like being able to work with databases or develop advanced algorithms to solve problems.

Our portfolios have only recently been developed and so now the next phase is to engage with the schools and the communities to further refine and also to start implementing our portfolios.

Student: I started off doing a little bit of digital technology at Raetihi Primary with Kawana. It was a before experience, like a head start, which was good and then – now it’s a bit easier for us to do it now. At the moment we’re doing free code camp, so we’re just learning other things about coding, so like H1, H2 meaning heading, and then there’s the P element, which is paragraph, then there’s the class, which is changing, like colour, font, text, size – stuff like that. The digital technology programme is helping, like maybe it could help me decide what I want to do in the future.