“Computer science is a rigorous, fascinating and intellectually challenging subject.” So said Michael Gove in his speech at BETT in January 2012 as he talked about the need for “… encouraging rigorous computer science courses” and describing the current ICT curriculum as “… too off-putting, too demotivating, too dull.”
Summerfields Primary School in the Isle of Wight is not a school feeling under any constraints from the soon to be abandoned National Curriculum ICT Programme of Study. Year 6 has just completed a term of computer science.
Based on a scheme from New Zealand and available for free download (see below) the first job for Emma Wadmore who teaches ICT was to run it by a couple of recent computer science graduates who were mightily impressed by it. I visited the school at the end of the project to see part of the final lesson and to talk to three pupils.
After an introduction to the concept of computer science the first lesson introduced the 10/11 year olds to binary, a potentially difficult subject but one that was met with enthusiasm. While some children needed some support some made extension resources at home. This progressed into image representation where the children learned about pixels, decoded images and some even produced the code for their own. “Learning how to do binary and read it,” was one of Nathan’s favourite lessons.
The next lesson, on text compression, was difficult too not least because the children had criticisms of the compression used in the scheme! Apparently the example used single letters while the explanation said that it should be at least two.
Moving on to error detection the lesson involved a ‘trick’ to demonstrate parity. A further activity involving ISBN numbers could have been a problem because of changes since the scheme was written but the authors responded to an email by quickly sending out an update.
An interesting (and valuable) lesson on information theory followed. In the ‘information age’ this seems vital as well as the lessons the children have on validating information. The majority understood the notion of efficiency in guessing mystery numbers or letters but some didn’t get the concept of guessing the middle of a range and halving each time so some decision trees were a bit random. Hopefully this will give a little more meaning to probability lessons in mathematics.
The second half of the course focused on algorithms, what they are and how they are central to computer science. The class talked about what sort of problems they could use computers for and how they thought they would solve problems.
By now it was apparent how important binary is both in representation but also in searching. The class needed two goes at developing searching algorithms. Basically the game of ‘find the number’ is pure guesswork, but the children need to use the binary methods they learnt previously to find the solution efficiently.
The children enjoyed learning about sorting networks. This reinforced the idea that computers need information in order to make a decision and that efficiency in network design was key to speed. Isabelle said that the game they played was one of the hardest things they did.
An activity called “The Muddy City Problem”, essentially a topological activity, emphasized the importance of efficiency when creating networks. Designing what are known as minimal spanning trees reinforced the mantra ‘start simple and tweak’ to make the most effective networks. Spatial awareness was a key skill here.
Routing and deadlock is something computer science shares with many networks i.e. many items trying to use the same resource. This was another activity that highlighted the need for logic over emotion and another that emphasised the importance of efficiency.
The children enjoyed their term of computer science by the end of which key themes such as binary and networks were emerging. It reminds one of the central importance of mathematics to computer science and that while numeracy is something universally in demand basic computation should not edge mathematical thought and problem solving to one side.
How do you assess this? A test? A piece of writing? No. Teams of four, a quiz and some tasks to complete (with something percussive to bash when your team has the answer). The tasks included a message to decode, code for an image to implement and a 16 node network to design.
Talking to the children it was clear that what they had done was very challenging. Isabelle and Zak described the work as “different” and lest this sounds like damning with faint praise Nathan said he preferred it to actually using the computers as he was “involved more.” Interestingly they all agreed that more girls should take up computer science. To sum up Isabelle said, “I enjoyed it. I had no idea any of this stuff even existed.” Nathan said it was exciting and that he had learned a lot and that there was so much more to it as well while Zak was waiting to see what Mrs. Wadmore would come up with next!
ICT boring? All about MS Office? Not here!
Resource:
Computer Science Unplugged - An enrichment and extension programme for primary-aged children
http://csunplugged.org/sites/default/files/activity_pdfs_full/CS_Unplugged-en...