Digital Literacy Gets Unplugged in the Fifth Week of the Daily Discovery Series
A merger of two generations occurred during the fifth week of the Daily Discovery Series. Before mobile devices, school-aged youth would spend their recesses outdoors playing Hopscotch. The game involves drawing chalk squares and jumping through a sequence of numbers, and is almost guaranteed to cause hours of fun and laughter!
The genius Daily Discovery Series programming assistants combined hopscotch and binary code to explain the complicated topic in an easy-to-learn concept for little explorers.
In continuing with this summer’s theme of getting outdoors as much as possible, the Daily Discovery Series managed to unplug digital literacy!
In week four, Gardy Lavertu pulled out all of the stops, introducing participants to his ‘twin’ wearing a mysterious lab coat and mustache. Though his ‘twin’ was a master physicist, Gardy himself is no slouch. Having recently graduated from the University of Ottawa with a major in psychology while minoring in biochemistry, Gardy now attends the University of Montreal. He is completing a master’s degree where he studies the ways virtual reality can be used in clinical settings to evaluate and treat individuals who have difficulty with social interaction such as those on the autism spectrum.
Curious as can be, Gardy exudes enthusiasm for STEM questioning everything around him! He wants to know how things work and has tons of interesting facts and information about many different subjects.
Related article: Computational Thinking
Gardy and the rest of the Daily Discovery Series team were faced with their most challenging topic to date. Each of the programming assistants was the first to admit their coding and digital literacy expertise is not their expertise.
Cassidy acknowledged that she never appreciated computer science enough growing up, but despite pursuing a career in biology, she has coded many graphs to display research results.
Josephine had zero background knowledge in digital literacy and required a lot of research to prepare for the videos. Like Cassidy and so many series participants, the Daily Discovery Series has taught Josephine something new and given her some unexpected knowledge. On top of expanding their brain power, programming assistants put the ‘A’(rts) in STEAM. Bead necklaces were an ingenious method of explaining ciphers by using patterns in the beads to represent secret messages.
Youth are naturally curious and if it seems like they are often asking never-ending questions, this could mean STEM might offer a career for them!
Gardy shared that he has a similar approach to learning:
“Growing up I was always asking questions and this profession is one in which you are always learning. There is always new research and information coming to the forefront. Each day is different from the last.”
So far this summer, the Daily Discovery Series has managed to combine interests from a wide variety of topics including space, digital literacy, movement, arts and crafts, and messy science all into one series about STEM!
For many of the programming assistants including Gardy, this series has been their first experience with creating stand-alone educational videos. “I learned a lot of things that I didn't know before. My favourite part was the creativity I was able to express making videos and having a sense of accomplishment for the final product.” The heart and soul of this project, our volunteers have most definitely learned from the Daily Discovery Series and they hope participants have as well.
Develop leadership and communications skills that will set you apart from the workforce while also inspiring young explorers. Learn more about volunteering for Let’s Talk Science - https://letstalkscience.ca/volunteer/become-a-volunteer
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