Networking and ICT skills

When the national curriculum changed in 2013 ICT became computing and the focus switched from ICT skills and networking to computational thinking. However, this does not mean that networking and ICT skills are not still valuable skills that children need to be taught in order to understand how to effectively use computers and technology today. The teacher standards (DfE, 2012) highlights that teachers need to "promote good outcomes" for children and therefore it is important that teachers have meaningful and engaging lessons on networking. 

Technology is a huge part of our lives now including childrens. Many children have access to phones, tablets, TV's and are exposed to interactive whiteboards at school. As a result many children will have a lot of prior knowledge and this should be taken into account when planning lessons. 

In this session we were introduced to the idea of encryption and how you could teach this to children. Encryption is defined as the idea of data being converted into random letters and numbers to keep it protected. In this session, we were given encrypted data and a tool to un-encrypt data, we then un-encrypted the data. This could be done to teach children about encryption. 

In addition, we also designed a website in this session and this can be a good opportunity to instil the idea that children are capable of solving their own problems. This idea is expressed by Simon Peyton Jones (2014) who expresses the importance of children having the belief that they are able to invent technology themselves. To create a website in the session we used a software to create the code and this is shown in the picture below. 

To conclude, ICT skills teach children many important different concepts such as encryption and it can help teachers to give children the confidence to create and solve their own problems. In the future I will plan engaging lessons that encourage children to believe in themselves and their own abilities. 

Reference list- 

Department for Education (2011). Teachers’ Standards. [online] GOV.UK. London: Department for Education. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/665522/Teachers_standard_information.pdf.

Tech Terms (2014). Encryption Definition. [online] Techterms.com. Available at: https://techterms.com/definition/encryption.

TEDx Talks and Peyton Jones, S. (2014). Teaching creative computer science: Simon Peyton Jones at TEDxExeter. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia55clAtdMs.