Before I began planning for my year one Computing lesson that was assigned the ‘logging onto a school computer’ learning objective, I was curious to see at what age parents generally start to introduce ICT into the lives of their children. In October 2012, OFCOM gathered research about children in the ‘digital world’ and found that “9% of 3-4 year olds use a tablet at home, according to their parents.” This is the age where children are still developing their cognitive skills such as throwing, jumping and mental skills such as a wider scale of emotions, understanding basic instructions and imitation (WebMD, 2016) and so to be using a tablet at this age is an interesting observation for the development of their fine motor skills.

While I shall not go into the importance of internet safety that this research is leaning towards, I took the information that children do start young when using digital equipment in terms of computing and therefore my expectations of mostly all the pupils completing the learning objective was high. I also received information that the children had taken part in this activity in their Reception year which led me to reason this objective should not be a problem to achieve.

The lesson was not as successful as I presumed. Most children were confused from the beginning: the keyboard letter placement; the relationship between the cursor and touchpad; and on occasions I had to explain that they did not swipe left or right as some children began running their fingers over the netbook screen like a tablet. The one thing I did not consider was the format of their initial computing experiences and that their home use would be vastly different to what Computing in a Primary School entails. Ager (p.23, 2003) suggested that “what needs to be done in primary schools is to teach children the technical skills to use the computer packages and subsequently teach them how they can use the teaching packages as tools to help them develop their highest-level thinking skills.” From this statement, we can assume Ager would be content with what the National Curriculum have renamed ‘Computing’ from Information Communication Technology in the latest update. For education in England, Key stages 1 and 2 now follow these aims;

“… to ensure that all pupils:

• can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
• can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
• can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
• are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.” (www.gov.uk, 2013)

As a teacher, just like any other subject that they teach, their subject knowledge of Computing must continually develop to ensure that their teaching is effective and present. Beauchamp (p.1, 2012) suggests “as part of their development, teachers have had to develop practical ICT skills both during their training and throughout their career. As software and hardware develop, the skills required also change and any books which deals with specific hardware resources or software packages is often out of date very quickly.” But Beauchamp continues to acknowledge the technology changes, the process and pedagogic-thinking.

A short video from 1991 called ‘Learning Matters – Computers and Multimedia in the Classroom’ (Learning Matters, 1991) showed me that although the technology in the video was old, the teaching and the use of the technology has not changed as dramatically as I initially believed. The lesson planned by the teacher Jaqueline Killingsworth would not look out of place in a modern primary school lesson on Computing.

Although Computing is not always necessarily fun: Microsoft Word; Calendars; Logging on and off for examples, the pupils will find that these lessons learnt during their computing education at school are tools and experiences which will set the foundation to their multimedia future and it will unlock a vast, open, and creative digital world for them to explore as they desire: whether it be the on a laptop, desktop, phone or tablet, they may create, edit, write, draw, learn, explore, watch and discover a mass of interesting and exciting things.

However, they will need to log on first.

Ager, R. (2003) “Information and Communications Technology in Primary Schools: Children or Computers in Control?” David Fulton Publishers Ltd: London.

Beauchamp, G. (2012) “ICT in the Primary School: From Pedagogy to Practice” Pearson Education Limited: Essex.

Department of Education (2013) “National Curriculum in England: Computing programmes of study [online]”

Available: [ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study ] accessed 29^th November 2016.

Learning Matters (1991) “computers and multimedia in the classroom [online]” Learning Matters.

Available: [ https://archive.org/details/LearningMatters1991-07-18 ] accessed 29^th November 2016.

OFCOM (2013) “Protecting Your Child in the Digital World [online]” www.ofcom.org.uk

Available: [ https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/7107/managemedia.pdf ] accessed 29^th November 2016.

WebMD (2016) 3 to 4-year-old: Developmental Milestones [online]” WebMD, LLC.

Available: [ http://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/3-to-4-year-old-milestones#1 ] accessed 29^th November 2016.