#WEEK 7/ Analyst/ "Exploring Tasks with Digitals Computational Thinking and Coding."

"I am Charlotte and this week I was in charge of the role of analyst."

Hi, I am Charlotte, and this week I was tasked with the role of analyst.

This week we were tasked with creating a podcast in which we talked about different coding games, both online and physical, and their application in the classroom with children. This activity had a lot of ups and downs, stressful moments, and enjoyable ones, so let us sit down and reflect a little about the week.

First, let’s start with the happy aspects of this activity. Throughout the entire development of the activity, it was really fun learning how to play these games and develop an entertaining podcast, as it is a way to show off how good at expressing ourselves and learning new things we are as a group. Because of this, this activity was definitely enjoyable in these aspects.

When it comes to the best moment of the week, as a group, I would say that our best moment was when we were coming up with ideas for our reflection and filming it. For this aspect of the activity, we decided to create a short story with a moral to reflect what we were trying to say and we had a lot of fun doing it. Not only was it a nice way to express what we were feeling, but we enjoyed filming the audio for it together and adding in short comments about what the narrator was saying.

Moving onto the activity itself, I would say that the best part of it for all of us was learning how to play the games and testing them on ourselves. Despite the fact that these activities are made for students, I believe we all profusely enjoyed playing them and learning new things, as none of us have a vast amount of information about coding.

When referring to aspects that we would conserve for future weeks, I would say that the laughter and jokes in the podcast are something to conserve. I believe that, although we work very well as a team, sometimes we can fall into the rut of being too serious as we are all very stressed about university. For this task though, we all really enjoyed adding little jokes into our conversations and had a genuinely good time with the activity, which is something that I hope we can conserve in the future.

Now, sadly, let us move onto aspects that weren’t as good from this activity. Despite what I have mentioned before, there were also various aspects of this activity that were highly stressful and not fun, especially with such a limited time for completion. As we were informed about the specifications of the podcast Monday afternoon, there was very little time to prepare what we wanted to say, as well as the add and an introduction/final segment.

When it comes to the worst moment of the week, I would have to say Monday evening. Despite the fact that we were divided into pairs for this activity, we all shared the same experience Monday evening when we had to decide on what to say in our parts and how to say it. The dialogue itself ended up being very entertaining, but we were not happy when we were making it. For this part of the activity we were all tired, stressed, and ready to go to sleep, but stayed up making sure the specifications for the activity were correct and everything was as perfect as good be. Tension ran high that night.

Moving onto the activity itself, the worst part was definitely answering the questions about each individual game. This part of the activity was the worst purely because of boredom and tediousness, as with this part of the activity there is not my dynamism. Instead, in this part, all we must do is search for information, reflect and answer, an aspect that is straightforward but not very interesting.

When referring to aspects of this task that we would seek to improve for the next weeks, I would say that there aren’t many group aspects that need improving. We work very well together and create tasks that are very well developed and executed, so I would not say that there is anything that needs improvement, aside from honing in and perfecting the group cohesion that we already have.

Now, let us talk about some general aspects of this task, such as what we have learned, the relation of this task to our degree/course, and the social connection that exists with these activities to the world that we are living in presently.

For this activity, our entire group has gained a vast amount of information, informing ourselves about coding; podcast websites and how to use them; and how to edit audios using apps like Camtasia. I believe that, just like other weeks, this task has been very informative and fruitful for developing our information on different aspects of life, as well as improving our abilities to create interactive activities that students will enjoy in the future, a big part of what our degree aims for us to achieve.

Also, it is important to point out that activities like the ones we used to learn about coding are very important in the world that we are living in at this moment in time. With a global pandemic, developing activities that can be completed at home without issue has become an even more important factor for school activities, and these games are a way of teaching students information whilst allowing them to have fun despite being at home without school interaction.

Finally, I would like to say that in my personal opinion, I have been a proactive member of the groups this week and contributed as much as I could throughout its entirety. I have also completed my role of analyst to the utmost of my capabilities, which I hope is apparent.

Thank you for your time reading this reflection and I hope you have a very good week!