lecture 3 - games and programming

Learning and Teaching with ICT

Year 2, Lecture 3

February 2012

Pupils should be taught…how to plan and give instructions to make things

happen [for example, programming a floor turtle, placing instructions in the right order]

to try things out and explore what happens in real and imaginary situations [for example, trying out different colours on an image, using an adventure game or simulation].

Pupils should be taught…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].

Unit 1F. Understanding instructions and making things happen

Unit 2D. Routes: controlling a floor turtle Unit 3D. Exploring simulations Unit 4E. Modelling effects on screen Unit 5E. Controlling devices Unit 6C. Control and monitoring - What

happens when...? bit.ly/qcaict

Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it’s made.

One of the things you hear from the businesses is that 'I don’t just want people who are literate in technology, I want people who can create programs.’ I think that is a real wake up call for us in terms of our education system and we are acting on that.”

The narrowness of how we teach children about computers risks creating a generation of digital illiterates

Decomposition

Pattern

recognition

Abstraction

Algorithms