Computing

As parents who’ve grown up on both sides of the digital divide, it’s easy to lose sight of how important understanding computing and technology will be as the girls grow up.

When they were in school the girls learned to code using Scratch, so we initially tried to build on that but found that we were just copying lessons out of books and not really learning very much. Peggy has, on a number of occasions, revisited Scratch to make presentations or quizzes that support her work in other areas – so it can sometimes be a case of showing them the ropes and leaving them to find their own preferences.

We’ve also looked at Code Kingdoms (which teaches Java), and we understand that a lot of formal settings teach Python – which is something that we will pursue more in the future.

For now, we tend to use computers in addition to their work in other subjects – designing posters using free platforms such as Canva, or typing up stories and other work using Google Docs. We have also looked at spreadsheets on Oak Academy, and created presentations in PowerPoint.

Moving up to KS3 we focused more on Python coding. Oak Academy has some good short modules on this, and we completed the beginner one. We attempted to do the 100 Days of Python course on Repl.it, which was great for about the first 10-15 lessons, but soon became quite confusing and difficult to follow.

We feel a grasp of the main “tools” is probably enough – and may be enough forever more – so this is definitely a subject area that we play by ear.