As technology continues to innovate and become more prevalent in society, the access that children have to it increases. This, on the whole, is a good thing; they can discover new countries, travel through history, explore far off planets and more, all from the comfort of a chair.

However, with this technological freedom comes a variety of issues. Should children be restricted for what they can find on the internet? Are they on computers too much, when they should be exploring the world around them? Who else are they connecting and interacting with when they are online?  How are they behaving when they are online? It is important for children and us to know how to stay safe online and how to use this great tool responsibly.

It’s all too easy  to set up filters and restrictions, in the belief that children will be safe in their ‘walled gardens’. However, there will always be someone who knows how to beat these defences and will happily spread the word to anyone who will listen, allowing everyone to jump the wall into the internets wilderness.

Instead, it is important to instill the beliefs that we expect children to use in everyday life; respect, responsibility, awareness, common sense, so that they will continue to behave in this same way online. The anonymity of the internet can encourage people, adults included, to behave in a way they would never dream off doing when interacting face to face. However, with the previously discussed qualities, children are more likely to behave in a respectful and responsible manner on the internet.

Furthermore, it is important that children are aware of the dangers they could face online and how to react to them. Much like with the hedgehog and the highway code, children need to know how to stay safe online. They need to know to never share any private information, to never talk to someone they don’t know and to talk to a parent, teacher or even childline if they do face an issue.

The internet is a complicated place, but its benefits hugely outweigh the negatives it may present, it is just important that we all know how to use it responsibly and how to stay safe online.

Computers and the programs that run on them work by following a strict set of instructions, or algorithms. Understanding how these instructions function and are created is key to understanding the process of computing. It gives us, and children, basic knowledge of computers and allows us to see them as more than an incomprehensible magical box that does our bidding.

Part of understanding how these algorithms work is knowing how complex and detailed our instructions need to be. Enter the Sandwich Bot! By encouraging children, or in this case PGCE students, to create a set of instructions on how to make a jam sandwich and then enlisting someone to follow these instructions painstakingly to the letter, it shows, with hilarious results, how minutely detailed our instructions need to be to get our intended results.

This was a great exercise that was hugely beneficial in showing us how detailed our instructions needed to be, and in turn showed us how complex the algorithms on computers are. I would definitely use this with my class before delving deeper into the topic of computing. Once they have gained this basic understanding or algorithms they could then take their knowledge and use it on programs such as Scratch to develop more detailed algorithms, with a far cleaner outcome then the jam sandwich!