Computing

Teamwork and Cooperation help Class 8 race to success with LEGO Race Cars

10th June 201910th June 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

Year 3s have started using LEGO WeDo 2.0 robotics sets for the first time this week! After much excitement and anticipation, Class 8 have been building race cars for their first project. From building with LEGO bricks to writing the code on screen, the children have demonstrated fantastic teamwork and perseverance to overcome obstacles, locate missing pieces and connect the robots to their iMacs.

The key to success here was good teamwork and cooperation, something which Class 8 realised from the start. Working in pairs they set about co-ordinating their approach so one had the instructions on screen whilst the other built the model, often switching roles as the process went on.

In forty minutes we all had race cars built, but then it was time for the biggest challenge of all – getting the cars connected to the computers and moving by themselves!

Of course we had to have a race to finish the lesson, check out the breathtakingly fast action on the video below…

Class 8 have made an Elephant inspired by Art from India

14th May 201914th May 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

Class 8 have been learning about India for the last couple of weeks, including looking at some of the beautiful vibrant artwork that has been inspired by Indian culture over the years.

Having considered lots of examples and discussed the colours and shapes that make them stand out, we set to work designing our own colour scheme and patterns in Keynote.

Everyone created their own motif based on this theme and then we put them all together in one document to create that beautiful elephant you can see above. Finally we used some of the animation tools in Keynote to make each design rotate slowly, creating the mesmerising colourful effect for our whole-class artwork.

Well done Class 8, it looks great!

Year 6s bring their classrooms to life using Stop Motion

16th May 201910th May 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

This week the Year 6’s have been exploring film making by looking at Stop Motion Animation. Using the iPads and a huge amount of their own imagination, they have come up with some incredible short films which they have filmed and directed themselves.

This is a showreel of the films made by Class 13:

00:00

And here are the short films made by Class 14:

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Penpol Pupils extend Be Internet Legends with their own ideas

11th February 202022nd April 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

This half term we’ve been revisiting our learning on E-Safety and reminding ourselves how to stay safe online using the five sections of the Google Be Internet Legends scheme. We’ve dived into each of these five areas, had some fascinating and honest conversations and we’ve managed to ensure we all know how to stay safe when using the internet.

But towards the end of the sessions lots of children started asking about other elements of Online Safety – areas which perhaps weren’t covered in the Google program. This got us thinking…

“What would we add to Be Internet Legends if we were Google?”

We explored this question and quickly realised that we could enhance the Be Internet Legends program by adding even more valuable and important information of our own. Each child made a plan of what they’d like to include along with an idea for the Inter-Naughty (baddie!) who would play against the character of Legend in the game.

Using Keynote and the shapes tool, the pupils then created their own Inter-Naughty characters using triangles and clever colour shading to try to mimic the unique style of the other characters.

With an idea and a fabulous character in hand, the children then set about using a Keynote template to create their own poster, designed to fit into the current set of five made by Google. They considered colours, key words, messages and style and ended up creating these absolutely stunning posters which wouldn’t look out of place next to the real things.

It’s been a really enjoyable project learning about being safe online this half term, made even more so by the children taking their imagination and creativity to new heights by making their own posters and lessons for others. Many even designed the level of the Interland game along with sketches of the island itself.

It’s been great to see so many brilliant ideas and terrifying Inter-Naughty characters and these new posters will remain on display in the Mac Suite for the whole school to see.

What Makes a Super Strong Password?

11th February 202016th March 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

For our third week of E-Safety lessons this year we’ve been looking at what makes a strong and secure password. Each class in Key Stage 2 has had discussions about what passwords are, why they are important and how they can protect our digital stuff.

It's very important to make sure passwords are strong, otherwise anybody can get into our accounts.

Toby, Year 4

We’ve explored a great website called Dinopass which helps us find secure passwords, but they aren’t always the easiest to remember.

Instead, we’ve taken the formula that Dinopass uses to create strong passwords and have used it ourselves by breaking it down into a four step guide.

Below are some of the year sixes explaining how the four-step process works. (Click on an image to view it full size)

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

frog

flyingfrog

flyingfrog43

flyingFr0g43

How can we Recognise Fake News?

11th February 20208th March 2019 by Penpol School

‘Fake news’ is a huge topic at the moment and believable but untrue content online has become more and more commonplace. Luckily, this week in our E-Safety lessons we are learning all about being Internet Alert, which means recognising what is real and what is fake, as well as being able to develop strategies to keep ourselves safe from false and misleading information.

To start our sessions the children were issued a research task, to learn as much information as they possibly could about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. If you haven’t heard of this rare animal then I wouldn’t be surprised, especially as it’s completely made up. In a sneaky twist, the children were actually researching from a fake website, trying to learn how some octopuses can live in trees when the children all know that they actually live in the sea.

This proved an excellent introduction to the fact that, sadly, not everything you read online is true. This particular website was made many years ago as a way of teaching children this very lesson.

The children then explored the concept of mis-information and fake news further, discussing how photographs and even videos can be misleading and not always what they appear to be. We discussed how this related to the idea of phishing too, which we learnt all about in our E-Safety lessons last year.

"I thought the tree octopus was very convincing because all of the facts sounded pretty real and the picture looked very convincing. It showed me that not everything that looks convincing is actually real."

Zara, Year 6

The children have once again shown themselves to be very aware of how to stay safe online and also able to hold sensible and mature conversations with their peers about how they can help each other to protect themselves online.

"I learnt that not everything that we see online is real. And that we should always watch out for scams and fakes."

Ariana, Year 5

We finished the sessions this week with a game of Reality River on Interland as a way to recap our learning and to ensure we are all making the right choices when it comes to understanding what is real and what is fake.

What is our Online Persona?

11th February 20201st March 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

We are spending this half term focusing on the internet and how we can keep ourselves safe whilst online. Over the next six weeks we’ll be looking at online safety from a variety of different aspects, starting with looking at the information we choose to share online.

We’re basing our work on the Be Internet Legends project from Google, which builds on the lessons the children had last year.

To begin with we are looking at our ‘Online Persona’. This is how you appear online to other people, based on the information we have chosen to share. We’ve talked about the risks of over sharing our personal data and also the way other people might see what we’ve shared and draw conclusions about us.

This learning has been very thought provoking for the children and has seen us address lots of really interesting topics in whole-class discussions. A particularly interesting activity has been to ‘create a persona’ for a made up person, by giving them loads of personal information and then choosing what should and shouldn’t be shared online with the world.

Below are several of the characters that have been created this week, along with lots and lots of personal information. This information could range from general facts like their favourite colour right down to specific details like their date of birth and their phone password.

The children have then used the highlighter tool to mark green any information which they would feel safe sharing online with the world, or red for any information which they think should stay private. We talked about how information can be changed from red to green later on, but can never be changed back from green to red as when it exists on the internet, it can never really be deleted.

“You should never share really personal information online, even with just your friends. Always tell a responsible adult at home if somebody is asking for personal information that you don’t want to share.” – Zara

“I have learnt that sometimes when you post something other people can get sad or upset if I’m not careful. So in the future if there is a photo I want to share I will go to the people in it and make sure they are all right with me sharing it.” – Ethan

“I have learnt about keeping myself safe on the internet and learnt to always tell your parents or teachers or family about it if something silly comes up on Youtube.” – Poppy

Penpol School attend the BETT Show 2019

1st March 201915th February 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

A couple of weeks ago myself, Mr Chislett and Paul all went up to London to visit the BETT show. This massive educational technology show involves thousands of companies, hundreds of workshops and some fascinating presentations from industry and educational leaders. This year we were also lucky enough to attend an evening event hosted by Apple at the Design Museum which focused on creativity and self-expression, particularly through the innovative use of Garageband in the classroom. We’ve all come back full of fantastic ideas and we can’t wait to start sharing them with the pupils at Penpol. – Mr Woolcock

Etch-A-Scratch with Year 4

29th January 201929th January 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

This term the Year 4 pupils are learning all about robots and their uses in the world. They’ve been taking this learning into Computing as well and this week we’ve written programs to help us draw our very own robotic creations.

Using Scratch 3.0 the children have worked together to make a program which mimics a traditional Etch-A-Sketch, moving the pen up, down, left and right by using the correct blocks of code.

Here’s a few pictures of what their programs looked like, followed by a gallery of the Class 9 robots and the Class 10 robots.

To make their programs even better the children used the MicroBit as a remote controller, adding in pen up, pen down and clear screen functionality into their coding.

Class 9 Robot Drawings

Class 10 Robot Drawings

Electrifying!

22nd January 2019 by Colin Jones

Have you ever wondered where electricity comes from? Class 9 have been investigating the different ways in which electricity is produced. After investigating and finding information, the children wrote short scripts outlining what they have found. Using iPads, the children have narrated a video from the BBC website to help people understand more about where electricity comes from.