Do you scratch?? (Week five)

This session was all about computer programming and games based learning.

First we were taught about modelling software. In ICT the term ‘modelling’ refers to activities where children have to look at ‘what happens if…’ scenarios. This software gives children the chance to try out decisions and then seeing what happens, this is good for developing pupil’s decision making skills and their thinking skills. There are a number of different software programmes for these activities and many schools will have some of these on their computers for children to use. For example, 2simulate, my modelling toolkit and my world are some of the popular programmes used. Modelling is part of the National Curriculum and states children should be taught to explore what happens in real and imaginary situations and to use simulations to answer ‘what if’ questions. ‘2simulate is good for this and contains different types of games or scenarios including one called ‘locked out’ which would be good to use for a PSHE lesson.

Children should also be taught computer programming in primary schools by using programmable toys as discussed in an earlier post but also by using programming software and sites. Some popular ones being used by children a school and at home are Logo, Scratch and Kodu. All of these are free to download and so are cost effective for both schools and parents.

Logo is a programme where commands are written in the command window by pupils to control the on screen ‘turtle’. Simple instructions include ‘FD’ for forward, ‘RT’ for right and ‘PU’ for pen up. Children can type commands in a sequence to get the turtle to create different shapes. Logo has a very obvious cross curricular link to maths as it involves shapes and also angles, as when creating shapes you need to include the angle when you command the turtle to turn. This can be progressed for more able pupils by introducing the ‘repeat’ command and using this to create more complicated shapes.

 

We also looked at Scratch which is free to download and good for children to practice programming by creating interactive stories, games and animations. Children choose a character or ‘Sprite’ and then choose from a range of motions and other instructions to control the Sprite. This would be a good programme to use to assess children’s understanding as you could give pupils a set of directions to execute and assess how well they were able to carry them out.

Kodu is another programme that’s free to download and designed for children and adults to use to create games. Kodu games can also be downloaded and played on the Xbox if children own one so Kodu is flexible. In order to make games users can either create their own world or use pre-loaded worlds and adapt them to create a game that works the way the user wants it to. For example you can use the pre-loaded world ‘Shooting Fish’ and then programme the character to move using the keyboard, mouse or controller and shoot at the fish using missiles or other weapon options.

Some others are ‘Purple Mash’ which has creative tools that children can use and ‘Prezi’ is good for both pupils and teachers to create interesting and creative presentations.