Ben B.
Computing Showcase Website
Computing on GPP
During the course of GPP, I was not able to formally teach computing to the children in the class as the school hired a specialist to deliver these sessions. I was fortunate enough to observe his sessions and develop my own application of Scratch to the different methods suggested. His guidance allowed the children to develop a variety of interactive applications of the Scratch programming language and avatars.
Fortunately, I was able to use computers in other contexts than computing lessons to spur on children's interest in topics and provide alternative methods for researching topics. I used laptops and iPads to promote engagement in lessons with interesting websites and games providing a basis for sessions.
Due to the difficulty in proving lessons' relevance to some children in the class and thus reducing their engagement in the sessions, the use of laptops and iPads was highly successful in generating interest. Students who previously were utterly disinterested in finding information from provided texts were able to retrieve information from websites to help lengthy written tasks.
Before tasking the children on their research, I thought it interesting to ask them their views on E-Safety and the like.
Overall, children in my placement classroom were very aware of the need to be safe online and were familiar with the appropriate procedure to follow in the instance of unsafe or inappropriate content being viewed. They were also keen to point out to me the class' E-safety code of conduct and the presence of such a section on the school website..
