Our students are surrounded by devices controlled by computers in their everyday lives. To understand coding, is to understand how our devices work, and being able to imagine new devices and services is essential to inspire and push our students to solve the problems of the future.
Doron Swade (MBE) Formerly Curator of Computing, and Assistant Director & Head of Collections, Science Museum, Tells us:
London Grid for Learning supports this view which is why we made the resource “History of computing”, the resource promotes the idea that by understanding our digital heritage we can better understand our digital future.
This resource features unique materials to help understand how British computing developments have influenced the world we all live in. It also provides a wide range of materials to show how British innovation in Computing Continues to impact on our world today and shape our tomorrow.
The resource features:
Unique video and photographic resources from the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.
– Offering an expert insight into the iconic British Computing systems from the past 70 years.
Here are two quick examples of how I modified the lesson plans within the unit “A Brave new world”
First let’s look at the lesson about building a computer, My students used an animation app called Chatterpix Kids (but you could use Morfo or our very own j2e5) to create simple animations of parts of a computer in which the animation tells you what the part does in relation to the whole computer.
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My second example is with the Code breaking lesson, I used the lesson plan and video to explain the historical significance of code breaking and then used ‘the explaining binary resources’ from the wonderful website CSunplugged for children to explore how computers use a special type of code to communicate with each other.
Finally, another why to support the ‘History of computing” content is use the many resources found within Barefoot Computing Project These resources will help you improve subject knowledge and understanding within computing. Giving clear definitions, examples and progression across all primary school age and ability ranges.
I hope you have enjoyed the focus on computing within the curriculum blog these last two weeks, please do let me know what you would like to see more of in the comments section.
Tell us what you are have done for EU Code Week in your school and remember you can share your work either on our Twitter or Facebook pages