Computing

Purple Mash

Here at Eynsham, we use Purple Mash for our computing lessons. Purple Mash is a creative online space used for computing curriculum and much more, which aims to inspire creative learning both at school and at home. It covers spelling, grammar and maths as well as other work related to the curriculum and various open ended tools allowing children to try their hand at story creation, art and game design, among other things.

Internet Safety Talk

In the light of Safer Internet Day yesterday, we had a parent meeting lead by local PCSO Helen Keen. The talk was about how police, local authorities and the school can support your children in being safe online. In school, we teach online safety in our computing lessons and some PSHE lessons where we discuss many topics such as, not sharing personal information, the use of strong passwords, online bullying, who not to talk to, what to do if they feel uncomfortable and many more.  But ultimately, we can’t do it alone and the support and knowledge of parents is very important in helping children stay safe on their devices. Some key messages for parents are:

• Ensure your parental controls on the devices and your broadband provider are at a high level and regularly checked.
• Monitor how your children are using their devices and what they have access to (many games have in-app purchases or chat functions).
• Social media, video games and TV shows have an age rating which should be checked before allowing your children to use them.
• If your child tells you of something that made them uncomfortable, there are services to help you deal with the situation and help with the next steps, e.g., school, police, CEOP.

Useful websites:

https://www.ceop.police.uk/Safety-Centre/

https://www.eynsham.oxon.sch.uk/esafety/

Tips, advice and guides for parents and carers from the UK Safer Internet Centre (saferinternet.org.uk/parents)

Advice for parents and carers from Childnet (childnet.com/parents-and-carers)

Reviews and information about games, apps, TV shows and websites from Common Sense Media (commonsense.org)

Help on using parental controls and privacy settings from Internet Matters (internetmatters.org./controls)

Code Club

We had a very exciting challenge in Code Club recently. The children were able to code and create a message to send to the International Space Station! Here is a video of what their message can look like, https://youtu.be/4ykbAJeGPMM.

We created the code on Trinket and the simulator lets them run their message to test what it would look like.

Here are some examples of what the club created.

https://trinket.io/python/c146192ba3 (Ethen, Illia)

https://trinket.io/python/8e036787ee (Audrey, Sammy, Cathy)

https://trinket.io/python/2e2c60f065 (Annabelle, Bryn, Kiki, Honey)

https://trinket.io/python/0c62f27404 (Cadence, Sasha)

The 2014 national curriculum introduced a new subject, computing, which replaces ICT. Computing is an essential part of allowing children to discover new skills and develop their understanding of the world. At ECPS, we focus on a wide range of skills including using emails, the internet and a range of publishing programs, coding and programming and how to stay safe online.

To support the teaching of computing, teachers and pupils have access to a range of resources including Chromebooks, laptops and tablets.