#RethinkingICT Programme of Study for KS3

I am currently looking at my version of the Programme of Study for ICT at KS3.

Here is the current version of the KS2 PoS and the intention is simply to tweak each statement so it is suitable for KS3. If you have any thoughts or suggestions on what these statements should be please let me know by leaving a comment below. All contributions will be credited when the #RethinkingICT Programme of Study is complete.

So far I have made one adjustment and that is to include Big Data in the Digital Society section.

Knowledge, Skills and Understanding

1. Digital Literacy

• Pupils should:
• a) learn how to manage their files and folders (Digital Artefacts) including ‘on the Cloud‘.
• b) be able to use a wide range of Digital Tools and select the appropriate tool for the task at hand.
• c) understand the rights and responsibilities of using Digital Tools for communication, production and research.
• d) learn how to collect, sort, search, evaluate, analyse, verify and validate data.
• e) understand that computers can be used to simulate different scenarios.

2. Digital Creativity (Digital Authoring)

• Pupils should:
• a) learn how to evaluate the needs of an audience and to design appropriately
• b) learn how to plan, test and program a series of instructions (Algorithms) in order to create a desired outcome; to detect and correct errors that occur
• c) learn how to plan, design, create and evaluate Digital Artefacts
• d) be equally proficient working independently or as part of a team.

3. Digital Technology

• Pupils should:
• a) learn the fundamentals of how Digital Technologies (including networks and the Internet) work
• b) learn how to use Digital Technology safely, securely and deal with technical problems as they occur.
• c) learn how to design, build and program simple Digital Technologies i.e. robots
• d) learn about the evolution of Digital Technology and about the pioneers of ICT.
• e) be able to consider how Digital Technology may change in the future.

4. Digital Society

• Pupils should:
• a) learn about Big Data and its impact on society
• b) learn about some of the ethical, legal and political issues relating to ICT.
• c) understand some of the environmental issues relating to ICT.
• d) be able to consider the impact ICT has had on society around the world.

5. Breadth of Study

• During the key stage, pupils should be taught the Knowledge, skills and understanding through:
• a) working with a wide range of Digital Tools
• b) being given the freedom and opportunities to ‘tinker‘
• c) investigating and exploring uses of ICT inside and outside of school

Inspection : Year 7 ICT

Yesterday I was observed during my year 7 ICT lesson. Over the past couple of weeks the children have been using Codecademy to learn the basics of HTML. This has followed on from their work on how the Internet works.

In yesterday’s lesson I gave them each a printout of the HTML code for a vet simple webpage. I asked them to highlight all the various tags and invited them to predict what the unfamiliar tags were for. I then showed them the webpage and demonstrated how to edit the code, save and then refresh the page.

We talked about the hexadecimal codes used for specifying colours and that they could use any digit from 0 to 9 as well as the letters A to F.

The children were then given the opportunity to tinker with the code. I asked them to think of a specific topic they wanted to make their page about and then asked them to start to edit the code to add more links, images etc as well as experimenting with the layout of tables.

The lesson went really well and several of the children asked if they could continue their work at break. Cameron was even working on his shark website in the Boarding House last night.

 

 

Scrabble Net : Acting out the Internet

In their ICT lessons Year 7 have been learning about how the Internet actually works. In their first lesson I simply asked them to think about what happens in that split second between them typing a web address and hitting enter and the web page appearing on their screen. I asked them to create a poster explaining what happens and I encouraged them to be as creative and as imaginative as possible. You can see some of their ideas on our school ICT blog.

In yesterday’s lesson we started to think more about what actually happens and in order to try and help them understand I wanted to come up with a physical activity that actual required them to act out how information travels around the Internet. This was the first time I had tried this activity and I already know things I will tweak before repeating it tomorrow with the second Year 7 class but I will describe it as we did it.

To begin with I asked the children to work together to come up with a list of 8-letter words – I didn’t explain why but just told them that I needed as many words as they could come up with in 5 minutes. After they had come up with their lists we printed them out and I asked for one volunteer. Jimi was the first to put his hand up so I handed him the printouts and told him he was now the web server and that each of those 8-letter words represented a different website.

I then asked for a second volunteer and Jack became the client who would be requesting a website from Jimi. I then allocated 8 children to assist Jimi and one child to assist Jack. We then went into the school hall and Jack sat at one end with his assistant and Jimi and the ’8′ sat at the other. I then gave Jimi a set of scrabble tiles and each of the ’8′ had an envelope with the numbers 1 to 8 written on them.

Jack was told that he had to simply think of a letter of the alphabet and tell this to his assistant. The assistant then had to run to Jimi and pass the message on. Jimi then had to find an 8-letter word from the list that began with that letter. Using the Scrabble tiles he then put the letters into the correct envelope. As soon as one of the 8 with the envelopes received their Scrabble tile then they could make their way back to Jack. Jimi was told that it didn’t matter which order he put the Scrabble tiles were put into the envelopes as long as they were put in the correct one.

Once all the envelopes  had made their way to Jack he put them in order and then opened them, took out the tiles and spelt out the word.

We repeated the activity a couple of times. On one occasion the letter requested by the client did not have any words on the list at the server and so the server sent back the message “Webpage not found”. On another occasion the Scrabble tile fell out halfway down the hall and so the client only received 7 tiles but managed to use some error-detection and correction to work out what the word should be.

Host the Olympics : Year 7 ICT

This morning Year 7 began this term’s ICT project entitled “Host the Olympics”. The basic aim of the project is for the children to work in small groups and put together a bid on behalf of a city of their choice to host the world cup. In the final lesson of the project they will be presenting their pitch to a “panel of experts” and during the project they will have opportunities to design leaflets and posters to promote their chosen city. They will have to research their city and will also be given some freedom to decide what else they would like to create to support their bid. For example they might design mascots or plan their opening ceremony.

This morning the first group began the project by trying to choose a city to represent. We started by discussing the factors that might affect the decision to award the Olympics to a particular city. The children were then split into pairs to select a city to represent. I gave them two rules: they could not choose a city that has already hosted the Olympic Games and they could not choose a city in a country that has hosted the games in the past 30 years.

The children then had to research Olympic host cities in order to come up with their selection. They had to come up with five reasons supporting their choice of city and then they had to present these to the rest of the class. In the first group the chosen cities were…

1. Wellington (New Zealand)
2. Buenos Aires (Argentina)
3. Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
4. Kingston (Jamaica joint hosting with other Caribbean countries)
5. Lyon (France)

These selections were then posted on our ICT blog for people to vote for their favourite. The votes will be counted in next weeks lesson and will go towards the project’s “Medal Table”. After each task the children’s work will be posted online and votes will continually be counted. By the end of the project the group with the highest total will win the Gold Medal and we will then have a presentation ceremony during our Olympics Week in June.

Please take a few seconds to vote by visiting our ICT blog.

Summer Term Brief Overview

Here is a very brief outline of what I will be doing in ICT for the Summer Term…

Year 8 – Cryptography
Year 7 – App Development
Year 6 – (Academic) Calendar Creation
Year 5 – CD Cover Design
Year 4 – PowerPoint Animation
Year 3 – Control Tech using Big Traks

Olympic Challenges – 4 x 100 metres

Yesterday afternoon all of most of Year 7 and all of Year 8 took part in one of my Olympic Challenges – the 4 x 100 Metre Relay.

The event worked as follows:

Each child wrote the first 100 words of a story and they had to include the following words run, fast, start, finish and race.

They then wrote the last 10 words that they had written onto a second sheet of paper and passed it on to a second child who wrote the next 100 words.

Process was repeated until the fourth child had written the final 100 words of the story.

Only a few managed to get to the full 400 words written as we had quite a few Did Not Finishes.

Here is the first example that I have posted on the Olympic Challenges blog.

Code Academy

I will soon be starting a break time club for children who want to learn the basics of programming. So far I have five Year 8 and 7s signed up to take part. To begin with I am going to use Hackety-Hack to introduce them to programming using Ruby.

I have downloaded and installed it on the ICT room PCs and this afternoon I had a quick play myself – I plan to learn it alongside the children.

I will keep you posted on how we get on.

 

 

Creating Magazines

For the first half of the Michaelmas term years 6, 7 and 8 will all be working on projects revolving around producing magazines. Here is a brief overview of what I hope to do with them.

Year 6 will be asked to form small groups and then come up with a magazine idea that they want to produce. I will show them Publisher and the basics of how to get started but then it will be up to them to discover how to use Publisher and to organise the content – some self-directed learning with me on hand to offer guidance and advice.

Year 7 (who created their own magazine as above last year) will be shown an issue of a magazine that I have created and will be asked to create a new issue individually. This means that they will have to think more about how it is presented and follow the ‘rules’ – i.e. fonts, colour scheme etc. So this will focus more on them researching the content and then presenting it in a similar style to the example.

Year 8 will be put into small groups and will be set the Apprentice style task of creating a new magazine. They will have to put together a pitch explaining their magazine, create some sample pages and then think of how magazines use other media such as podcasts, websites and apps. I am hoping to also build a community of industry experts who can offer advice, suggestions and constructive criticism to the children as they produce their magazine, website etc.