Blog 1 – Tim Berners-Lee – Answers for young people – Reflection
I read this.
Reflection:
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Not the internet. Big difference. The internet was around for about 20 years before Tim came along. It’s important to note the difference, you can send emails, for example, without using the WWW. The WWW is accessed through a browser using URLs (web addresses) to specify where you want to go.
Aspects that could be targeted to children’s learning include what problem Berners-Lee solved (multiple systems/programs unable to talk to each other), how he solved it (a unified standard system of connecting them) and the behind the scenes workings of the WWW (URLs, hypertext, HTML).
It’s interesting for children to learn how something they use all the time works especially if that thing is technology. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that children like technology. It’s fun. The ability to create their something within technology is a revelation. It’s as simple as seeing a painting and then creating their own. Just swap ‘painting’ with ‘webpage’. It takes a different set of skills but applies the same understanding and I’m excited to teach it.
Because of my job in software testing, I have a reasonable understanding of the inner workings of the WWW but I can’t code HTML (the code web pages are written in). What is interesting to me though is that children can apparently learn, understand and use HTML from as early as KS1. I’ve yet to see that in school myself and I certainly never learned that in primary school. But using basic functions of HTML, headings, bold, italic, sizes and images are a great basis for more complex features as well as providing foundations for coding principles. There are tools available such as Mozilla’s Thimble where you can see immediately what your HTML code is doing and if it works or not allowing you to debug. This is perfect to learn from even if you’re an 8 year old.
All this is relevant to many aspects of the National Curriculum for KS1 and 2 including understanding and applying the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, analysing problems and using new or unfamiliar technologies to analytically solve problems. As a teacher of ICT, I will remember that even the most seemingly complicated systems can be broken down to simple, teachable chunks with effective learning tools and taught in a fun, creative, interesting way.
Hi Michael
Your experience in software testing will put you in a very interesting position with regards to teaching Computing in schools. It’s rare to have some with your experience. This is a great first post. I encourage you to include more embedded media and hyperlinks. Consider how this is practically being taught in schools – are the any case studies you could reference?
A very interesting perspective. I’ve never thought of the Web being a blank canvas for children to “paint”. We all use the WWW but not many contribute to adding more to it, however, there’s always the question of why? Is it because teachers are not confident enough to teach computer programming or maybe because it has not been encouraged or pushed enough in to the educational curriculum…
My experience so far has been that teachers don’t have the experience to teach what’s currently expected in the Computing curriculum. On placement, we were doing Year 5 Game developers module. The teachers had no idea where to really go with it other than trying to follow the steps in the work pack. As we know, you can teach much more effectively if your subject knowledge is on point before you go in. You don’t try and teach fractions without knowing fractions.
The fear of new technology is part of it, not being competent enough or thinking you won’t be good at it. It’s hard, you basically have to learn new skills every time technology changes, which is often. Current teachers don’t have time to learn them well enough to teach and and, judging by the amount of people in our ICT class at uni, not many see ICT of as much value as most of the other core and foundation subjects. I think the members of our class will be in a rather beneficial position by the time we graduate.
I really like the opportunity to show children the HTML code through the use of Thimble. I think it would make a really effective tool within the classroom and allows children to see what the WWW actually is. Although, what actually is the internet?
I agree with you that HTML can be used to great effect in schools; would you agree that HTML is a great stepping stone between the visual based program that a lot of schools are using (Scratch) and language based programming that is used in industry?
Hmm, that’s a good idea. I agree. You can definitely see the translation. Once children get good at Scratch and they’ve seen got a sense of coding principles etc, switching it up and showing equivalent features in HTML would probably prove quite useful. Especially with Thimble where you can still see the changes your code is making, keeping that visual element until they get more confident with the code.