Jacob Woolcock

Internet Legends Assembly with Google

24th May 201822nd May 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This afternoon we had a very special assembly from Jenny and Daniel who came to visit us from Google. They came down to Cornwall to visit a couple of schools and Penpol were one of the lucky ones chosen.

The assembly itself was linked to our recent work on how to stay safe online and in particular the Be Internet Legends program. The assembly was a chance for the children to celebrate completing their lessons on e-safety and also a chance to experience the various characters and worlds from Interland come to life in the school hall.

Jenny and Daniel bought a whole host of exciting things with them for the assembly, including special hands for everybody to hold up and participate in the assembly with. The hands were green on one side and red on the other, letting us answer yes or no to a number of tricky questions! They also built a massive display in the hall to really get everyone in the mood to learn about e-safety. Giant banners and flags lined every wall in the hall, surrounding us with the colourful characters from Interland.

Audience participation was very much key to this assembly and we all had a chance to get involved and shout out answers at the right times. Daniel and Jenny guided us through the islands of Interland and this proved to be a fun and friendly look at some serious topics including cyberbullying, password hacking, identifying fake information online and sharing sensitive information on the internet.

Speaking to our visitors from Google before the assembly, it was clear that they were very impressed with our Computing lessons at Penpol – particularly the work we’ve all been doing recently on E-Safety. Mr Woolcock and the special guests spoke at length about the animation project we’re working on with the Year 5s and 6s which links to Interland and they are both very excited to see the finished films in the next few weeks.

To complete an already fantastic afternoon, Jenny and Daniel also gave out certificates to every child to confirm that they are now Internet Legends!

Thomas in Class 7 enjoyed the assembly so much he went straight home and created these lovely posters featuring characters from Interland. Well done Thomas, they are lovely!

From the Computer Screen to the Real World

18th May 201818th May 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

Over the past few weeks Taran has been helping run Computing Club along with some friends on a Thursday lunchtime. Whilst there he’s been using his extra computing time to design and create a plastic storage unit for his tent on a program called Tinkercad.

When I first opened my tent I saw a very handy hook right in the centre. I thought “that could have a hanging basket on it” but instead of designing one hanging basket I designed four and had them 3D printed out in the same colour they were on the computer. I’m going to use my invention for general storage in my tent and I think it will be very useful. – Taran, Y6

He has measured, designed and refined his digital model to the point where he was ready to get it 3D printed. It took nearly 14 hours to print all four parts of the model, but now it’s finished he’s delighted with the result. He now has his very own, unique, storage solution for his tent. Well done Taran, an amazing project.

Penpol School are sharing their ‘Internet Legends’ status!

17th May 201817th May 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

Here at Penpol we’ve been working really hard to learn all about staying safe online and how to look after each other in the digital world. We’ve been one of the first schools to use the exciting and innovative Be Internet Legends program from Google and ParentZone, which has involved a series of five fun and immersive lessons for Key Stage 2.

We were contacted by ParentZone, the company who are helping Google introduce this program into schools in the UK and they were so impressed by what we’ve been doing here at Penpol that they’ve written a blog post about us for their website! Not only that, but they emailed the story out to every school in the country, to share our best practice with e-safety. The feedback from ParentZone on our implementation of the Be Internet Legends program has been overwhelmingly positive and hopefully we can help share these skills with other schools through this blog.

You can read the blog here.

We’re expecting a visit from Google next week to give a special assembly to our Key Stage 2 children, so keep an eye out for photos from that soon.

Mr Woolcock

Winners of the Penpol Times Easter Egg Hunt 2018

19th April 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

At the end of last term, a mysterious message appeared on the Penpol Times, along with a dozen hidden eggs! Nearly fifty children managed to hunt down all twelve eggs in order to unscramble the secret message contained within. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the secret message was actually ‘Happy Easter!’

Well done to our winners, who were chosen at random earlier today. They are James B from Class 3, Scott from Class 8 and Gabby from class 12. Well done to all three of you and enjoy your prizes!

Class 9 are Internet Kind

18th April 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

For our forth and final trip to Interland the children at Penpol School have been learning about how important it is to be kind and considerate online. This week, whilst learning how to Be Internet Kind we’ve been discussing a wide variety of topics including how positivity always beats negativity online and how a simple message can easily be mis-interpreted when you don’t understand the emotion it was sent with (i.e. try saying “whatever” in a happy voice, a sad voice, an angry voice and a joking voice – it has a totally different meaning!).

We also talked about how cyberbullies try to get other people to join in in order to strengthen their mean messages. We decided that it was always best to speak up to a trusted adult whenever we saw somebody being treated unfairly online and also that the best course of action was always to use kindness to help people who may be feeling upset.

Here are some photos of Class 9 enjoying the Kind Kingdom island on Interland as well as some really good advice from some of the children.

“It’s important to be kind because if somebody has been bullied online and a bystander isn’t kind to them then they could end up making the problem even worse. Without kindness we would end up with a world of mean people and nobody wants that!“ – Luke

“It’s not hard to be kind to others online and a quick message can make somebody feel much happier.” – Harrison

“Being kind is being nice to other people and yourself. That’s really important online because if you are kind to other people then they will be kind to you!” – William

“It makes other people happy when you are kind, and it’s just nice to be kind. If somebody was being cyberbullied you could send them a nice message to make them feel a little bit better and then you could tell an adult to get them some support” – Freya

All of the games that the children have been enjoying as part of the Internet Legends program are available to play at home for free on Interland here.

Year 6 Create an Animation for Mr Doyle

24th May 201829th March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

Today was a very special day at Penpol – a day where we got to celebrate Mr Doyle and his 19 years at school, as well as a chance to wish him well with the next chapter in his life.

All of the children and staff got together in the morning for a very special assembly, where every year group presented Mr Doyle with something special for him to remember them by.

Below is the video that Year Six worked on with Mr Woolcock, set to the tune of 500 Miles. Each child has spent several weeks designing their own character in Photoshop, using nearly 30 different layers to allow the cartoon to become animated. By drawing the different elements on different layers they’ve managed to create some truly unique characters! They then got to grip with an amazing new program called Adobe Character Animator which is where the real magic happened. Stay tuned for lots more animations from our Year 5s and 6s after the Easter break!

Computing Speed Challenge: Musical Robots!

27th March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This week Class 8 had an unexpected Computing Speed Challenge with the Lego WeDo 2.0 robots. Their task was to design, build and then code a moving robot which makes noises using just the Lego bricks. No sound effects allowed!

To make this even harder, the children only had 45 minutes from start to finish, including tidying up time. The race was on and the children were eager to make the noisiest robot they could.

Here we have Oskar and Henry showing off their robot:

And here are Finley and Lucy with their design:

Finally, here is the robot that Brodie and Patrick built:

Class 7 are Internet Strong

23rd March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This week we’ve been looking at how to be Internet Strong in our E-Safety lessons. The key idea here is that our passwords need to be as strong as possible to protect our accounts and keep our things safe. We’ve talked with each class about some top tips for making strong passwords and have explored a website called DinoPass which is a fantastic and free way to create some super-strong passwords!

Here are some of the tips we’ve learnt this week:

Passwords should be strong so that hackers can’t get into our things. You could put an exclamation mark in your password to make it even safer! – Samuel

You should put capital letters and symbols into your password so that nobody can guess them. It’ll take them ages to work it out! – Aimee

You should never tell anyone your password, apart from an adult you trust who can keep it safe for you in case you forget it – Kiki

They should be quite long, maybe with two random words put together. It’s really important that you can remember your password! – Tilly

Of course we also got to explore a new island on Interland too, this time is was the Tower of Treasure where the children had to collect letters to build the strongest password they could.

SNOW UPDATE: 19th March 2018

19th March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

Mr Doyle has reluctantly decided to close the school today.

Many staff are unable to get to school due to bad weather conditions.

Class 8 are Internet Alert

13th March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

As part of our five week Be Internet Legends program, the children have been learning about how to protect their personal information online by being on the look out for phishing attacks and spam in a module called Be Internet Alert. Using the excellent resources from Google, we’ve discussed how to check if a website is safe, how to spot suspicious messages and how to ensure we’re as safe as possible when we use the internet.

“You shouldn’t send stuff that’s important to people you don’t know. If you aren’t sure you could ask your friends and family if they know that person and if they don’t you don’t send them anything. Always be careful!” – Brodie

As well as learning all about this, we’ve played the Reality River game on Interland to really help the children cement their new found knowledge!

“I really liked playing on Reality River because it was cool and I learnt about how to be safer online.” – Mason

“I learnt that if a website has a green padlock symbol then it’s usually safe to put your password in.” – Freddie

“I’ve leant that you have to look closely at details in messages that you are sent to see if it’s a scam or not.” – Fynn

Year 5 Tackle Litter in Hayle

“Penpol pupils are curious, creative and courageous learners. Our school community believes in authenticity as the foundations of deep-rooted learning. Through our rich and relevant curriculum, we nurture community-minded, forward-facing international citizens of the future.”