Creativity and Computing in the Primary Creativity and Computing in the Primary SchoolSchool

3030thth September 2011 September 2011

Lectures

Multimedia Game

Storyboard Development Testing and improvement Activity book

Reflection Blog Video essay

Assessment

Reading / viewing Discussion Presentation Paired practical Paired project Individual, shared reflection

Teaching and learning

Programming on the primary curriculum?

Developing ideas and making things happenPupils should be taught:

KS1: how to plan and give instructions to make things happen [for example, programming a floor turtle, placing instructions in the right orderKS2: how to create, test, improve and refine sequences of instructions to make things happen and to monitor events and respond to them [for example, monitoring changes in temperature, detecting light levels and turning on a light]

to use simulations and explore models in order to answer 'What if ... ?' questions, to investigate and evaluate the effect of changing values and to identify patterns and relationships [for example, simulation software, spreadsheet models].

National Curriculum 1999

Unit 2D. Routes: controlling a floor turtle

Unit 4E. Modelling effects on screen

Unit 6C. Control and monitoring - What happens when...?

QCA Schemes of work

Standards in using spreadsheets, databases and programming

remained low Higher-attaining pupils and students were insufficiently

challenged, often spending time consolidating what they could already do rather than acquiring higher-level skills

Too much emphasis is sometimes placed on pupils using ICT to present their work well, at the expense of developing their skills in handling information, programming and modelling data.

Ofsted, 2009

“An urban primary school had good provision for developing pupils’ programming skills. Two Year 6 pupils attending provision for gifted and talented pupils at their local secondary school were introduced to a freeware application which enabled them to design and program a two- dimensional computer game. Their enthusiasm prompted their class teacher to download the software and to introduce a new unit of work for the whole class based around it.

Pupils were asked to design the graphics, layout and functionality of their own computer game and to write the program to implement their ideas for its design. Over a series of lessons, pupils used a ‘paint’ application to design their game backgrounds and sprites. Having completed the graphical elements, pupils wrote scripts to control movement and interaction in their games. This required them to learn to use sophisticated programming constructs such as ‘repeat… until’ and ‘if… then’ in capturing keyboard input, managing variables and testing whether particular conditions had been met.

The choice of task and software motivated pupils who were therefore able to make good progress. Most were able to write a series of executable instructions to implement the features of their game design. One autistic pupil excelled at this task and made better progress than his peers. He made outstanding use of loops, conditional jumps and incremental counters in his program. His skills exceeded those of his teacher, to whom he had to explain the principles of what he had done. “

BYOB Scratch

Logo challenges

Logo

1928 born in Pretoria (SA) 1954-58 maths research at Cambridge 1958-63 worked with Piaget in Geneva 1960’s AI Lab at MIT (LISP) 1980 Mindstorms 1993 The Children’s Machine 1996 The Connected Family 2005 OLPC 2006 Brain injury, Hanoi

Seymour Papert

Papert on Logo (1983)

In many schools today, the phrase "computer-aided instruction" means making the computer teach the child. One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building.

Mindstorms

Seymour Papert, 1980 (p5)

“In teaching the computer how to think, children

embark on an exploration about how they themselves think … thinking about thinking turns the child into an epistemologist” (p19)

“My conjecture is that the computer can concretize (and personalize) the formal.” (p21)

“I began to see how children who had learned to program computers could use very concrete computer models to think about thinking and to learn about learning and in doing so, enhance their powers as psychologists and as epistemologists.” (p23)

Mindstorms

Seymour Papert, 1980

Papert on OLPC

“Constructionism is a philosophy of education in which children learn by doing and making in a public, guided, collaborative process including feedback from peers, not just from teachers…

Constructionist guidance has to be informed by a knowledge of what there is to explore and discover, including our ignorance, and of a variety of approaches that can be used for children at different developmental levels with various degrees of preparation.”

Constructionism

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Constructionist

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