This week had one of those titles which either excites you or makes you want to crawl into a hole… “An introduction to programming.”

Before this session I would not have had a clue how to teach a lesson on programming, but we got to experiment with different programmes and apps such as Scratch, Scratch junior (using symbols rather than words), Daisy the dinosaur and Bee bots. These are all reasonably self-explanatory and with time to explore how to use these, children will be able to create their own game or debug pre-made games.

Once programming is broken down into being algorithm (with a fun fact that all the names are just named after philosphers e.g. Mr Algorithm!) and code. It seems a lot simpler when it is broken down into two steps that we have already learnt about!

I like how this is open to all children, and children with EAL are still able to use the programmes such as Scratch (in thier home language) or Scratch junior (due to the symbols representing the words.)

There are a variety of ways to show children how a website is designed:

1. Press F12 on a web page to see how the page was made.
2. Mozilla X-ray Goggles:
   1. Bookmark and show the page at the top of the web page.
   2. Open any web page e.g. BBC News and click on the different areas to change the speech/pictures. Have to be funny!
   3. Basic html editing.
3. Mozilla Thimble uses tags to make web pages e.g. <p> to </p>, <strong> makes the words bold </strong>
4. EAK (Erase All Kittens)
   1. A fun interactive web page program!
   2. A game which they then have to write programming code to progress to the next stage.

html is a mark-up language, not programming, it is the beginning of coding.

• Gets children to start writing things precisely.

The dark web is web pages that google doesn’t know about e.g. a black market website, or a website that you have made yourself but not told google about.

Similar to informing childing about the internet, this is useful as it may inspire the next child to become a games designer etc.

KS1: How do we use the internet?

KS2: Understanding computer networks.

How results are selected and ranked e.g. Google.

E-safety.

One activity you could use to get children to start thinking about the internet would be to draw the internet. Could do this activity before and after teaching about the internet to see how their interpretation has changed.

Internet:

• Set up 1969 America
• Lots of different routes for information to travel so that if one connection fails then data has other possible routes.
• 1973 London connects to the internet
• There are multiple connections all over the world.
• However, if a company or country has only one connection then it allows them to patrol all the information going in and out via the internet.
• Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web 1989

I think it is good to educate children about the internet due to the amount that the next generation is now influenced, uses and is reliant on the internet. They should know how and why they have internet and why it is uncommon to completely lose connection to the internet.

Data can be visual – we watched part of a video about the visuality of data, where pieces of information were linked by a common aspect and coloured, allowing us to easily see a representation of what money is spent on. This could be done with many parts of the curriculum allowing pupils to associate what they are saying to a visual stimulus. Similarly word clouds allow students to see which word they are using most often, from which they could work on expanding their vocabulary.

Through experimentation with Google Forms I can see the benefits and ease at which Google forms could be implemented into the everyday life at school through seeing prior knowledge of a subject (as well as ending knowledge), finding out how they travel to school for the walk to school scheme, getting opinions on what the class want to learn etc. Here I made my own: https://goo.gl/forms/xA0REDJVwbDHStKA3

We also learnt about the legal and ethical issues of data collection and the necessity for anonymity.

I used this recording of Liam Neeson reading The Polar Express https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZBuqQDxEF8 in a lifesaver moment when I was about to teach the second of 5 lessons on The Polar Express and the other teacher asked to use the book I was going to read from. It has the pictures from the book and music as the book is read. I’m sure the children loved it more than they would have my rendition anyway!

In week 5 of the placement we were learning about money and change. I created this for a one off lesson in week 6 to check how well the children understood what they had been learning. The powerpoint checks their knowledge of money coins (smallest to largest in order) and then a plenary question to check their understanding of question phrasings seen in Yr 2 SATs and acted as a short whiteboard activity.

I used this game on the hard setting  to help the children get used to using the coins in British Sterling. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/maths/money/play/

[embeddoc url=”https://eportfolios.roehampton.ac.uk/trebilca/files/2017/01/05-12-16-Maths-IWB-107vrhf.pptx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft”]

In this session we looked at Online Safety and debated what we should and maybe shouldn’t show children – Is it suitable to teach children about “incognito” or “private” internet browsing windows? Probably not. This could lead to the children forgetting about their digital footprint and assuming that because their internet movements are not in their history then no one is watching/recording them, which isn’t true!

It was suggested that the key aspect of this that children should carry over into later life is their online pressence, since once it is on the internet it is there permenantly, even after you delete it. The curriculum says that us as teachers should prepare pupils for opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences of later life. This includes a good digital literacy of all pupils; they should be able to use and express themselves as well as develop their ideas through information and communication technology, at a level suitable for future work, since we are living in a digital world. Therefore, it is critical that in primary school, as pupils are taught to use the internet and computers, they should be taught about the dangers that can come from using the internet:

 

Social networking

Cyberbullying

Digital footprint

Data infringement (data protection)

Scams and hoaxes

Cyber security

Copyright

Viruses and other malware

The necessity of safe searching

A debate raised within the session argued for and against setting blocks up on certain words for the school computers to limit the pupils’ contact with commercial, aggressive, sexual, and specific values. This includes the child being the recipient, participant, and actor (the child’s conduct online).

It is necessary to remind teachers of the risks and get them to assess whether they have protected themselves, in order to get them to successfully assess how to teach their pupil’s about the dangers of the internet. In the session my group made a IWB presentation for teachers using notebook about the dangers of social networking sites. When I get to a computer with the appropriate software I will attempt to attach it to this blog post.

In the future we must also assess why, even after children have been taught about the risks of being online, there are still a number of children meeting people they have met online.

Through examples of sorting socks, making a jam sandwich, and sorting weighted cups the idea of algorithms and how they are used has become clearer, as well as showing it can be done in a variety of ways. The amount of detail needed within an algorithm is still a little daunting, but I feel more capeable of explaining what an algorithm is and requires in order to be successful. The making a jam sandwich example was very informative.

I feel a lot more confident with this technology and am much more likely to use this within lessons. I found it quick and reasonably easy to get to grips with and think it’s quite self explanatory once we worked through the examples together. Writing on the IWB and moving things around is easy.

I worked with Rebecca S and my work is on her blog post.

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