To start our learning about Systems and Sharing, we explored the meaning of the word 'system'. The children came up with lots of interesting ideas; we eventually agreed on what we thought a system was:

'A system is a series of things that work together to achieve the same outcome'

Children then began to explore computer systems in more detail and developed an understanding that they feature an input, process and output. The children enjoyed exploring these different features of a system by creating their own 'Digital Ted'. They had to consider what they wanted their Digital Ted to do (talk, move, light up) and what parts would be needed to allow this to happen. Finally, children had to decide which parts of their teddy would be the part of the input, process and output. Take a look at some of our examples.

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Search Engines

We spent our next lesson comparing different search engines and refining our searches. We explored some new search engines that we hadn't come across before, such as: 

DuckDuckGo — places an emphasis on users’ privacy 

Ecosia — dedicate all of their profits to environmental projects, in particular planting trees 

Swisscows — a family-friendly search site that does not store users’ data; it uses Bing for web searches 

We wrote instructions for how to use a search engine. The children had to be super clear with their instructions as they tested these out on each other and provided constructive feedback.

During our next lesson, the children explored how search engines rank websites and learnt that website creators design sites so they will rank highly in searches. This is known as search engine optimisation (SEO). Children were given the task to create their own web pages which were ranked based on a set of criteria, just like a search engine does. The children had to be honest with how their website ranked and think about what changes they could make to get a higher ranking.