The following article was written with the English Computing curriculum at Key Stage 3 in mind. However, the ideas suggested are pretty generic and could be adapted for other Computing curricular too. The article was originally published in Teach Secondary magazine.
This word cloud highlights the main themes in this article!
It’s relatively easy to come up with a list of topics to cover in the Computing curriculum, but a list such as Algorithms, Loops, Flowcharts, Pseudocode and so on is not exactly enticing to anyone who not only does not understand what those things are, but also doesn’t see why they would want to know. The renewed interest in economics, for example, can almost certainly be traced in part to the publication of books and articles dealing with the economics of everyday life. Why not a similar approach to teaching Computing, in the form of a few overarching themes? After all, the Programme of Study is rather skeletal, leaving it to teachers to put the flesh on the bones. If you decide to adopt the approach outlined below, by all means compile a checklist of topics for your own and your Department’s guidance, and you will probably discover that the topics listed will be covered as a matter of course.
So, with no further ado, here are three themes you might adopt. They are not mutually exclusive. For example, a natural combination would be Problem-solving and Place, or you could focus on Place for one term and Games for the next.
Problem solving
In this approach, either the teacher or the students themselves identify problems to be solved. The latter is preferable in my opinion, because it is likely to ensure a greater commitment. However, there are two caveats.
First, students might not know how to collaborate to solve a problem, so presenting them with a problem to solve in a limited time (two or three weeks, say) would give them some practice.
Secondly, it would be a good idea to establish a process for ensuring that the problems are neither ones that can be solved in one lesson nor one that would take years!
To avoid these extremes, consider giving them a list of prompts, or use Half-Bakery (http://bit.ly/TFHalfBake) as a starting point. That’s a website on which people post ideas and invite others to discuss them. The only thing is, some of the language is “robust”, so you could use the site to kickstart your own list of suggestions.
Useful websites to look at are Apps for Good (http://bit.ly/TSApps4Good), Action Learning (http://bit.ly/TSAction) and Coolest Projects (http://bit.ly/TSCool).
Location
Another option is to start with the school’s local environment. Several ideas present themselves. One is for students to identify local issues. For example, in a high school in Italy, a group of students investigated a local park that had become the haunt of alcoholics and drug users. They ended up making presentations to the local council which resulted in money being spent on the park to restore it to its former glory as a family recreation and relaxation area. Not all of the work involved technology, but provided fertile ground for collaboration between different Departments.
Alternatively, part of your curriculum could involve visits to local places of interest, perhaps exploring how augmented reality could be employed to make a place even more interesting. A good starting point here is Augmented Reality Apps (http://bit.ly/TSARapps).
Games-making
Finally, a number of research studies have indicated that creating games can be a good way of helping students to learn. This activity, in common with the others suggested here, lends itself naturally to the creation of flowcharts, writing a program in pseudocode, writing the program itself (or a part of it) and testing it on users.
There are several games-making apps “out there”, not to mention the computer programming language your school uses. There is a list here to get you started: Game-Making Tools for Schools (http://bit.ly/TSGamesApps).
Conclusion
The themes suggested here merely scratch the surface. You can probably think of quite a few more broad themes which will appeal to students.
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