Computing

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.

Penpol School make their own 3D Winter Ornaments on our 3D Printer!

4th February 201917th December 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This year, for the for the third time, we gave every child in Key Stage 2 the opportunity to design and refine their own 3D models on the computer, which we then printed out using our state-of-the-art Makerbot 3D printer.

This year the children had greater design freedom than ever before thanks to the fantastic new ‘Scribble’ tool on Tinkercad which lets the children draw their very own designs on screen, alongside their library of 3D shapes which the pupils have used previously. This tool was hugely popular and has resulted in us creating some really personal and unique decorations.

We’ve made a short video below to show the process of making our decorations, followed by a very large gallery underneath of every single decoration we printed this year!

This year we printed two hundred and twenty different decorations, which took a very very long time! You can see all of these decorations in the gallery below – see if you can spot yours…

This year there have been so many lovely designs and each one is completely unique. They’re all brilliant, but are there any that you particularly like?

Gallery of Decorations

(click a decoration to view it bigger)

Exploring 3D designs for this year’s Winter Ornaments

Jacob Woolcock 9th October 2018

What’s that noise coming from the Mac Suite?

Jacob Woolcock 20th November 2017

Enjoying every second of the Hour of Code

11th December 20184th December 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

Over the last two weeks each class in Key Stage 2 has taken part in the Hour of Code. For those unfamiliar, Hour of Code is a worldwide event which encourages school children to spend an hour having fun by problem solving through writing code.

Each year some amazing activities are created and this year schools around the world got to enjoy spending an hour Dance Party and coding their characters to dance their favourite moves.

But enough of me talking about it, here’s a fab video of the children enjoying choreographing their very own Dance Party!

– Mr Woolcock

This is the second year we’ve taken part in the international Hour of Code – you can read more about the children’s Minecraft adventure last year below:

Penpol are Finalists at the 2018 Edge Awards

Hour Of Code 2017: A Hero’s Journey

Penpol are Finalists at the 2018 Edge Awards

16th November 201816th November 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

Penpol School have once again been recognised for our pupils outstanding ICT and Computing work and have been shortlisted as a finalist for the Edge Awards 2018.

These awards celebrate the very best technology companies, digital content and entrepreneurs in Cornwall, along with the schools and colleges that help inspire and nurture the digital pioneers of tomorrow.

Penpol School have this year been recognised in the category of “Most Inspirational Educational IT / Digital / Multimedia Project” for our work with the 3D printed winter ornaments we’ve made.

The judges loved the fact that this project included the whole of Key Stage 2 and that it gave so many children the chance to use a technology (namely 3D printing) that they wouldn’t otherwise have had access to. They were blown away with the quality and charm of the decorations that our pupils had created.

We were the only primary school in the whole of Cornwall to make the finals and whilst we didn’t come away as the overall winner, we were treated to a fantastic video and some lovely words from the judges about our school:

"Penpol School is one of the leading schools for Computing and ICT in the South West. With forward thinking ideas and passionate teaching staff, their pupils learn to use technology with excitement and enthusiasm and the school gives them the confidence to embrace the technology around them. They believe that teaching both logical and creative skill sets will see the pupils thrive, whatever the future may bring."

Edge Awards

2018

You can watch the video below:

Class 14 write programs with their names

10th November 20189th November 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This week we’ve started using the fantastic Scratch 3.0 software to build some pretty interesting programs. Starting with a basic idea of animating our names, we developed ideas and explored options to take our projects in different directions.

Within an hour we’d got 28 completely different projects including games, animations, musical performances and some very unusual pieces of abstract art! Everyone in class pushed themselves to try something new and to experiment, without fear of making a mistake. And when mistakes were made we celebrated them, because with Scratch a mistake is just the first step towards understanding how to make something work!

Well done Class 14, you’ve worked incredibly hard here. Take a look below to see what some of the pupils made and what they thought of their Scratch experiments…

“With my project you can press the numbers on the keyboard all the letters will start bouncing around the screen and change colour. You can change the background colour too by pressing the Space bar. Then if you press the up arrow the letters will all glide back to their normal place and be the right way up so you can see my name again” – Theo

“I have made mine in the line and put music on, then all of the letters spread up in different directions and then all go back together again to ask each other questions. I used code to create my own animations.” – Melissa

“I got my letters to spell my name and then I’ve put some code to make them flash all different colours like a rainbow at different times. And then I’ve got this block of code which asks you a question and you can type an answer to speak to the program” – Izzy

“I have used pieces of code block to create my animation of “E, T and H” and all have their own special parts which make them very funny in all sorts of different ways. I like Scratch because you can go out of your comfort zone but if you make a mistake it’s a perfect opportunity to learn on how to do it so you don’t make that mistake again.” – Ethan

Exploring 3D designs for this year’s Winter Ornaments

30th October 20189th October 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This half term we’re starting a big 3D printing project in Computing. Each class has been learning all about 3D design and how to create different models and designs using the 3D design software Tinkercad.

Each class have gone through some quick-fire challenges with limited time and blocks to push their creativity and design skills to the limits. We’ve seen some giraffes made of just two shapes, rockets made of 6 and even models of St Michael’s Mount made using just 4 basic shapes.

The children have really embraced the creative side of Computing with this project so far and are now starting to develop their own ideas for their 3D printer Winter Ornament.

Over the next couple of weeks each child in Key Stage 2 will design four different ornaments, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each, pick their favourite and then make refinements to their favourite design. When they’re happy with their finished product, Mr Woolcock and Paul will make sure that all of the designs get printed before the end of term.

Year 5 visited by The Beach Guardians

“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.”

How can we Recognise Fake News?

What is our Online Persona?

Penpol School attend the BETT Show 2019

Etch-A-Scratch with Year 4

Class 9 Robot Drawings

Class 10 Robot Drawings

Electrifying!

Penpol School make their own 3D Winter Ornaments on our 3D Printer!

Gallery of Decorations

(click a decoration to view it bigger)

Exploring 3D designs for this year’s Winter Ornaments

What’s that noise coming from the Mac Suite?

Enjoying every second of the Hour of Code

Penpol are Finalists at the 2018 Edge Awards

Class 14 write programs with their names

Exploring 3D designs for this year’s Winter Ornaments

Our Penpol School Vision: “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.”

Contact Us

Please be aware that our email system is currently down. If you need to reach us please get in touch by phone on 01736 753472.

Year 5 visited by The Beach Guardians

“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.”

Class 9 Robot Drawings

Class 10 Robot Drawings

Gallery of Decorations

(click a decoration to view it bigger)

Our Penpol School Vision: “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.”

Contact Us