Beats and Bytes

On June 25th, I had the pleasure of hosting eleven local primary schools for an afternoon of live coding using Sonic Pi.

Before the session had taken place, I had run a cpd session to introduce the teachers to the software and show how the Key Stage 2  computer science concepts can be taught using it. After this session, teachers were armed with the subject knowledge and resources to introduce their children to live coding in preparation for the event.

Beats and Bytes started off with a performance from the school band, The Gigabytes, who performed their composition Samba.

After this, the children, who were in groups of 3 and 4, were given the sheet music to the song the band had just performed and a laptop. Their task was simple: code some of the song and personalise it.

Over the next hour, children changed synths, added effects, created loops, set parameters, debugged - on several occasions a child could be heard telling another that 'every do needs and end' - and had fun. When the time was up, each group plugged their laptop into the speaker system and showcased their composition. The variety of sounds that were produced was fantastic, some of the code I had to look at more than once before understanding what the instructions were.

In my opinion the afternoon was a great success, the visiting teachers departed with complimentary comments and the children were asking when they could come again. One child even said it was the best school trip he had been on. For me, I enjoyed watching the children engage with programming, share ideas and solve problems. Yes kids can code, but more importantly, kids enjoy code!

Earthquake watch on Google Earth

If you are teaching lessons on natural disasters, then using Google Earth, to show pupils recent seismic activities, is a powerful way to get across the idea that earthquakes of a low magnitude happen frequently.

To launch this, first open the Google Earth then open Earth Gallery.

Next select crisis from the explore menu and open the Earthquakes from the Last Week map, selecting view in Google Earth when the option presents itself. If you are using a computer open the .kml file you have just downloaded, touchscreen devices will do this step automatically.

You are now presented with information about the earthquakes grouped into those that have occurred in the last hour, last 24 hour and last week. In class we used the information to create a database-style information cards using the book creator app.

Databases using Top Trumps

Top Trump,  a childhood favourite, are a great way of introducing children to databases. A pack of top trumps is a database, they contain records/files and the data is organised into fields, each card has the same set of fields which enables the data to be compared.

I started the unit off by showing children how to create a database using 2investigate by Purple Mash. Each group was given a set of top trumps card and had to input the data from the cards into a collaborative database. When this was finished, the children got to play top trumps for a few minutes before I posed a question about how we could use the database to work out which field had the best chance of winning. I modelled to the children how to search individual fields and how to use greater than and less than searches. The information returned showed them how many cards were better than theirs for that particularly field. They were then able to make a mathematical choice about which field offered them the greatest chance of winning.

At home several children created their own databases from their own trop trumps card, two even created databases by using Wolfram Alpha (a class favourite) to research statistical data about football stadia.

Once the pupils had mastered the skills of designing, creating and searching databases, we moved on to applying the skills in a cross curricular context. In our topic work we had been studying natural disasters, so the children were asked to create a database about volcanoes. Using the idea of top trumps helped them to think about which fields to include: the pupils visualised the data on a top trump card. They then researched and created a database before querying it to answer questions devised by other children.

The children were clearly enthused by this unit of work and using top trumps gave them an easy way to understanding the vocabulary and purpose of databases.  

Ben Davies @b3ndavi3s