Digital Fluency Playing Cards

The Mind Lab’s Digital Passport team is proud to introduce Digital Fluency Playing Cards, an innovative card game pack to help all Year 1-10 educators navigate the new digital technologies learning areas of the New Zealand curriculum.

These playing cards have been designed to support your learning as you integrate digital technologies into your classroom practice. Wherever you are in your learning journey, these cards offer exciting ways to further your development – and have some fun while doing it!

The cards can be used in a number of ways.

1. Single cards: one card can be taken from the pack and used to suggest a learning task.
2. Card suits: a group of related cards might be used to provide a series of learning tasks. Various games could be used to find these groups.

Cards are grouped in the following ways:

• Suit: Activity, Question, Discussion, Online Search
• Progress Outcome: CTDT 1-5 or DDDO 1-3
• Curriculum Level: Card number ranges in parentheses – Level 1 (1), Level 2 (2-3), Level 3 (4), Level 4 (5-7), Level 5 (8-12)
• Category (number of cards shown in parentheses): Control Structures (6), Input, Processing and Output (5), Testing and Debugging (5), Algorithms (5), Technology and Society (5), Digital Data (5), Digital Devices (4), Application Design (4), Digital Tools (4), Operators and Variables (3), Security (2)

You can use these suits to play various games to collect related hands of cards that could be used for classroom tasks. Made up a game of your own or as a school? Send us the rules and we’ll feature it on the site!

Play the Collaborative Project Game to create a hand of cards that become your group project. 

You will need:
3-5 players*
1 deck of Digital Fluency Playing Cards
Laptop or smartphone (for Online Search)
A timer

Set up: 2 minutes
Gameplay: up to 45 minutes including project 

These instructions are for groups of 4.*

1. Sort the cards into their different coloured decks. Shuffle each deck separately.
2. Deal three green cards to each person, face down.*
3. Each player chooses one of their green cards to keep. (Hint: try and keep cards based on the learning outcome circle closest to your needs as a teacher.) Each player places their chosen card face down on the table in front of them.
4. Each player then passes the remaining two cards to the player on their left.
5. Each player now chooses one of the two cards they have been handed. This chosen card is placed that with their other card, face down on the table.
6. Each player passes the remaining card to the left. Each player should now have three green cards.
7. Repeat this process with the remaining three decks.
8. Each player should now have a pile of twelve cards, three of each colour.*
9. From their set of twelve, each player chooses one of each colour that they want to keep and places it face up into the middle. (Hint: Keep the colours separate. You should have four separate piles in the middle.)
10. Flip the green pile, shuffle the cards and ask someone to choose one card at random. This chosen card goes into a shared pile.
11. Repeat the process with each colour. You should now have four cards, one of each colour. This is your Collaborative Project Deck.
12. Add the numbers in the top right (level number) of each card to get your Project Time. (Hint: Wild Cards [no level] are Level 3 in this game.)
    Level 4 – 7: 20 minutes
    Level 8 – 11: 25 minutes
    Level 12 – 15: 30 minutes
    Level 16 – 20: 35 minutes
13. Set a timer. You now have to complete your project as a team. Read your four project cards, discuss your strengths as a group and decide how to tackle each card in the designated time.
14. Present your project! 

*For a 3 player game, deal 4 of each colour. For a 5 player game, deal 2 of each colour.