Sunday 21 April 2013

Home Schooling ICT, part 1: e-Safety.


My eldest aske me to give her lessons about ICT (Information, Computing and Technology) because she wanted to take her school lessons further. So I developed a 10 week course that covered the topics that she wanted, and the topics that I thought were important: e-Safety, Office Apps, Researching on the Internet, and using her Raspberry Pi. It’s been a really interesting learning experience for me: which topics to choose, how to pitch the topics to the right age and ability, how to deliver the topics to be engaging. I’m going to post how each lesson went.

Lesson 1: Staying safe on the Internet

Objectives:
·       Identifying safe and unsafe behaviours
·       Playing nicely online
·       Understand what to do if unsure

1.     List of 5 favourite online activities
3.     Follow links, read and discuss
4.     Watch a cartoon from Hector’s World
5.     Search for <me> online. Follow the links, and write down all that you can find out about me.
6.     Critical evaluation - have I been safe online?

My approach was to highlight how her online behavoiurs could be easily misinterpreted because there are no contextual cues. And these contextual cues help to identify undesirable people and their undesirable behaviours. The analogy I used was the school playground – a behaviour that would be mean in the playground would also be mean online.

My eldest told me that her school had already played some of the “Hector’s World” videos, so these topics were familiar to her. The task to search for me online was quite surprising – apparently I may have a criminal record in the US! But it nicely highlighted that relying on the Internet was itself an unsafe behaviour (more on that in a subsequent lesson).

She was more engaged when the activity needed her to click or type or write, rather than reading  or watching or listening. Her attention span also dropped to almost completely distracted just before the hour mark – must make sure I pace the lessons carefully.

I think she enjoyed the lesson, and I certainly enjoyed giving it. We’re both looking forward to next week.


More in this series: part 2.

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