| Wrapping my head around how best to deliver content from the Digital Technologies Curriculum continues to keep me awake at night. The most recent dilemma being just how deep to dive when it comes to explaining the complexities of data transmission to Year 5, whose eventual assessment task will involve them telling the story of data from user input to output via a network printer. These students have little to know prior knowledge to build on, and while in subsequent years students will bring more with them to build on, right now I feel like an alien speaking in clicks and honking sounds. |  What on earth is she talking about? |
The content descriptor being addressed is:
Examine the main components of common digital systems and how they may connect together to form networks to transmit data.
(Year 5-6 Digital Technologies Knowledge and Understanding)
The elaborations provide the following information:
While the elaborations do break this down a lot more, it is still very open to interpretation. Getting Year 5 students to describe the process in Laymen's Terms didn't seem ambitious enough. Why not dive a little deeper? It seems reasonable to at least mention it........right?
Sometimes teaching is like performing a dance...
The fact is that not all concepts are the most engaging or to easy to communicate. It can be a little like performing a complex dance in front of a panel of hyper-critical adjudicators. Stumble...and you lose them. Dazzle them...and they won't take their eyes off you. The difference here was that instead of performing a dance I was trying to explain a very abstract concept in a simple way.
And so it began....I opened by stretching out the acronym, sashayed into examples of common letters and symbols, pirouetted around the involvement of the CPU, pliéed into the role of binary before ending with a bow and an example of data transfer in pixel maps.
At this point I luckily had some "ah-ha" moments in the audience because it connected with our previous data transference lesson.
I took a breath.....not a total flop.
And so it began....I opened by stretching out the acronym, sashayed into examples of common letters and symbols, pirouetted around the involvement of the CPU, pliéed into the role of binary before ending with a bow and an example of data transfer in pixel maps.
At this point I luckily had some "ah-ha" moments in the audience because it connected with our previous data transference lesson.
I took a breath.....not a total flop.
Having some fun with it: ASCII to Binary Chinese Whispers
| So at the end of my dance at the front of the classroom I was happy to see the majority were still with me, although there were some very big eyes in the audience. At this point I always find getting the kids up and acting out processes has a big impact. So we played a sort-of Chinese Whispers in groups. Roles included:
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The keyboard decided on a letter which they sent to the CPU in ASCII. The CPU used an ASCII to Binary converter to produce a Binary Code which they then passed to the Software. The software created a pixel map of the letter before passing it to the monitor to hold up for the keyboard to confirm on the other side of the classroom with a thumbs up.
After the first round, it became a little bit competitive and the teams wanted to then race each other. It turned out to be a good brain break and provided the children with a more physical representation of the process.
What do you think? Should kids in Primary School be learning about ASCII? How deep do we go? Leave me a comment! I'd love to hear what others think.
After the first round, it became a little bit competitive and the teams wanted to then race each other. It turned out to be a good brain break and provided the children with a more physical representation of the process.
What do you think? Should kids in Primary School be learning about ASCII? How deep do we go? Leave me a comment! I'd love to hear what others think.
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