Early Years
Introduction
Technology: children recognise that a range of technology is used in places such as homes and schools. They select and use technology for particular purposes.
Being imaginative: children use what they have learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes. They represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role-play and stories.
Self study resources
Lancashire Grid Early Years ICT Progression - super ideas for use of ICT
Introducing Programming to Preschoolers. Blogpost from Mindshift about Scratch Junior.
Toward Defining Digital Literacy in Early Childhood Kazakoff 2012): Slideset proposing a digital literacy model and looking at the development of Scratch Junior for young children.
Resources for lectures or group study
Programming in the Early Years A short thought piece by Andrew Manches of Pling toys.
Learning, Digital Media and Creative Play in Early Childhood. Blogpost discussing how a mix of pedagogical approaches can use technology to extend and support play in an early learning community.
The TangibleK Robotics Project: Applied Computational Thinking for Young Children.Uses robotics as a tool to engage children in developing computational thinking and learning about the engineering design process. These videos are a must-watch!
Resources for use with pupils
PlingToys Magic Cloud: place any physical objects on a 'magic cloud' to link them with a multimedia or webcam recording, for example placing a toy fish makes the computer play a counting song. Presents the concepts of linking inputs to outputs, sensors and tags, and can be used to introduce the programming language such as 'if this, then that'. (Bett2013 finalist. £55)
How to train your robot set of games from Dr Techniko aimed at 3-7 year olds. Teaches basic principles such as programming languages for communicating and programs as recipes. Incorporates repetition, composition, abstraction, loops and conditionals and unit testing.