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The COMPUTING Curriculum
PlanningThe build up to what is hopefully going to be an excellent week of computing and ICT within BSAK was interesting, with myself and Mr Collings involved in a bit of amature dramatics, getting a video ready for an assembly, meant seeing some green screening and being directed by the Computer Explorers team, which was good fun!
The children will be treated to a carosel of activities from coding to movie editing and will be a great opportunity for both children snd staff to experience something new. :) watch this space!
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BeeBots have been the staple of the KS1 computing curriculum due to their ease of use. and children and early years practitioners alike know all about the fun had when using them. The more grown up ProBot is another fantastic tool and allows for programming to be an instantaneous hands on experience. and can be linked well into maths when discussing properties of 2D shapes and angles for example.
The development of Apps using BeeBots also gives another experience of coding in the guise of playing a game and are easy to use and user friendly, as you can see in the links below
Probots are the more mobile and more reliable 'Roamers' and more or less function in the same way. Year 4 use these within maths shape and space lessons and also when working on angles, but also have a unit in Computing that works on sequencing, problem solving and debugging and editing given code.
The videos below are very early sessions on using Probots during our maths sessions!
There's no getting away from it, Minecraft is POPULAR! As well as being downright addictive too it does give scope for a lot of collaboration and also provides a platform that allows children to become very creative. As a self confessed Lego enthusiast, the idea that children can create things, block by block, got me thinking about what children could actually achieve using this program and I'm looking forward to finding that out!
Minecraft PE - iPad Version v Minecraft EDU
While Minecraft EDU is without a doubt the easier to get going and is the standard route to go IF you have the money to spend on it, I found an alternate, and cheaper method of doing this running Minecraft PE. (Although ultimately much more time consuming in the initial set up!)
I'll post more details on how to set up a server (going through the details using envioushost) to run and how to configure it to be in creative mode and installing the Plug ins later on, as well as details on how this is going in class! Stay tuned!
Check out what they've accomplished so far!
You can even trial this on the 'Hour of Code' website, which will give you the basic run through of the game and you can play without signing up. Kodable 'Hour of Code' LinkI can wholeheartedly recommend the App or the Web/PC version to help develop computational thinking and problem solving with such a young age group. This leads nicely into then developing their understanding with Apps and activities such as 'The Foos' and 'Lightbot Jr' further in the school and is worth talking the time to set it up!
I'll add a guide as to how you can set it up in this blog post later on. Weebly
As a teacher you have to first have a Weebly account before you can set up your pupils, but thats fine as it's free to do. Once you have an account up and running (I would set it up using your school email address) you can then add pupils to your account. The password protected video below outlines what you have to do to set it all up, no bulk update at present I'm afraid, so it's manual pupil entry for now!
The Video below goes over the basics of adding text and images to your Weebly page.
There are lots of other things you can do with Weebly, and if you buy into the full version, you get a lot of handy tools! Here is the link to my other Weebly post, should you be interested in doing more with it!
Adding You Tube Videos (on the Pro Version) |
AuthorWith the computing curriculum becoming more about coding, creation and collaboration over the basics of word processing and document making, The curriculum we deliver needs to change. Here you can see what we are doing to work on and develop this using what we have available to us. . Archives
June 2016
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