This week in Digital Technologies we looked at digital programming and how this can be used to teach cross curricular lessons. We began with a very simple programme which allowed us to get used to the controls and to create digitally. We then moved on to using a Bee Bot app on the ipads and this allowed us to get used to moving Bee Bot around the screen using controls on the ipad. After getting used to the controls and to programming the virtual toy, we used the real robot and began our group task.

As groups we created lesson plans by creating a board for a game-based activity for a specific level of learners to programme their Bee Bot around the board.

We chose two Es&Os for our lesson, ensuring that it was cross curricular. We decided on a first level lesson based on a book about a picnic which we would read to our classes and then use the foods from the book on the board. We would use this as a follow up lesson to data collection in which the pupils in the class would use the data collected about the favourite foods of the class. The aim of the game would be for the pupils to navigate the Bee Bot around the board, picking up all of the healthy foods and finally taking them all to the picnic basket. As the pupils picked up the healthy foods I would ask them why these foods contribute to a healthy diet and why the foods which they had not picked up do not.

This could be used as an introductory lesson to health and wellbeing as it is engaging for the pupils and would allow myself as the teacher to get to know what they already know about healthy foods. It could also be used throughout the topic or towards the end of it to act as a fun way of testing what the pupils have learned about the members and qualities of different food groups. Finally, this board would be a perfect resource for rotational activities within the classroom as it would be better suited to small groups of children at a time. However, if I was to play the game with the whole class first of all and to use being allowed to move the Bee Bot for the demonstration as a reward for healthy eating, each time we landed on a food I would teach the class a fact about why that food is healthy or unhealthy.

This game-based learning would be fun for pupils and would allow them to build up skills as creators of technology. As the creators of the future, it is by embedding technology within learning in ways such as this which provides young people with knowledge and experience of it as well as providing them with a thirst for learning in a fun and engaging way. As John Naughton said in The Guardian, The Observer in March 2012, by failing to allow the young people of today to truly understand the way these technologies work, we are dooming them to lives as ‘passive consumers’ of technology, taken over and controlled by huge corporations. We therefore must move away from teaching pupils to be users of computers rather than practitioners of computer science and must focus on integrating technology into learning across the curriculum.