Every computer we use has been built to make a process quicker, easier, cheaper or safer. This organiser is all about recognising computer systems as solutions to design problems. Learners should experience a range of techniques and approaches to understanding the problems, planning solutions and then building a working computer solution. This can be done with code, web mark-up languages (such as HTML) or databases. Ideally, this organiser should be the application – an opportunity to assess – learners’ knowledge and skills from their computational thinking, coding and systems learning.
At Early level, learners should be encouraged to create a simple sequence of instructions (algorithm) for a programmable device, such as a Bee-bot, or online platform, such as code.org. They should be able to spot and correct errors in a sequence – this is a great opportunity to develop resilience and problem solving strategies, including the computational thinking concepts and skills from x-13a.
Learners at First level should be able to break a problem down into smaller parts and identify key steps, before creating a solution in a visual coding language, including use of selection (a decision is being made) and fixed repetition. They should then be able to evaluate the accuracy and efficacy of theirs and others’ solutions.
As the progress to Second level, learners should be much more confident with visual coding languages and should be able to use the concepts of variables and conditional repetition (loops) as learned in x-14a. They should be building their knowledge of code and developing ability to identify where blocks of code might be similar in different solutions, before being able to reuse old code in a new solution. This might be seen as a ‘Eureka!’ moment where they ‘see’ the solution to the problem, like they might do when the start to ‘get’ other concepts like fractions.
Beyond Second level there is an increasing complexity of knowledge and skills as learners are required to create design solutions in visual languages with multiple variables and also to manipulate computer data, such as a database, with textual language (this may be searching or sorting but not creating a database). They should also be introduced to web languages, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. By the end of the BGE, learners should be familiar with a wide array of design solutions and processes, including interactive webpages (usually JavaScript) and relational databases and code in a textual language (such as Python).
