Keeping Safe and Exploring Technology

About this unit:

Help children stay safe and understand what a healthy use of technology is. Then explore the technology in our homes and businesses and get hands on with control equipment to figure out how it all works.

National Curriculum Links - Computing KS1

The content of this plan covers the following National Curriculum strands:

recognise common uses of information technology beyond school
use technology safely and respectfully, keeping personal information private; identify where to go for help and support when they have concerns about content or contact on the internet or other online technologies.

Curriculum Mapping

Why this? What does it build on?

This unit gives important early lessons on keeping safe online, beginning to explore where we find technology and how it works in the world around us. We hope this builds on what students do in the Early Years, where they are likely to explore a range of control equipment and have early conversations and stories about being safe when using electronic devices and going online.

What comes next?

The digital literacy content in this unit will be built upon in our Year 2 unit Keep Safe and Create, where they will recap and go deeper into how to stay safe online. This will continue in even more depth with our Digital Literacy and online safety units for Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, and Year 6.

The IT content in this unit will be built upon in our Year 2 unit Finding and presenting information, where they will find out more about web searching. Later, in Key Stage 2, they will go into more depth about gathering and using data, how search engines really work, what makes computers work, and what the internet is in our units Databases, Searching the web, What is a computer? and Inside the internet.

View our full curriculum map

Take a look at our full curriculum map to see how units across all year groups, from Year 1 to Year 6 link.

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A note about this unit

Two lessons in this unit or work are taken from Common Sense Education’s excellent Digital Citizenship curriculum. Their resources are shared for free under A Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. As a result, this plan can be accessed without logging into our site and is FREE FOR ALL TO USE. It can be shared and used by anyone under the terms of that license. The original materials can be found at: https://www.commonsense.org/education/uk/digital-citizenship

Education for a Connected World

The Education for a Connected World framework describes the Digital knowledge and skills that children and young people should have the opportunity to develop at different ages and stages of their lives. It highlights what a child should know in terms of current online technology, its influence on behaviour and development, and what skills they need to be able to navigate it. Common Sense resources are recommended in the Education for a Connected World framework as essential skills for today's learners. Both resources together, along with Project Evolve, provide you with an excellent set of tools to deliver a comprehensive online safety and digital literacy curriculum.

Education for a Connected World's strands align with Common Sense Education's Digital Citizenship strands in the following way:

Look out for more detail in each of the lessons in this unit, about the strands and statements from Education for a Connected World that link to each lesson.

Unit Resources

Lesson Slides

Detailed lesson slides for you to use when delivering this unit of work with your class

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Unit Assessment Sheet

Use our simple assessment system to measure your students' success in this unit of work.

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Lessons

Lesson 1

Know when and why to take breaks from device time.
Consider the feelings of people around them, even when engaged in fun online activities.

Media Balance is Important

PLEASE NOTE - This lesson is taken from Common Sense Education’s excellent Digital Citizenship curriculum.

The original materials can be found at: https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/

Lesson 2

Discover that the internet can be used to visit faraway places and learn new things.
Compare how staying safe online is similar to staying safe in the real world.
Explain rules for traveling safely on the internet.

Safety in My Online Neighbourhood

PLEASE NOTE - This lesson is taken from Common Sense Education’s excellent Digital Citizenship curriculum.

The original materials can be found at: https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/

Lesson 3

To recognise common uses of technology in the home
To understand what the internet is
To recognise devices that can be connected to the internet

Technology in our homes

Lesson 4

To understand how shops might use technology
To explain how technology can help people

Technology in the world around us

Lesson 5 & 6

To explore control technology devices
To explain how a control device works
To compare different types of control devices

Exploring Machines We Control

Full Computing Glossary

Take a look at our full computing glossary, plus key vocabulary for each age group.

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Key vocabulary for this unit

Control – using computers to move or otherwise change ‘physical’ systems. The computer can be hidden inside the system or connected to it.

Digital citizen - someone who uses technology responsibly to learn, create, and participate.

Digital media - information that comes to us through the internet, often through a tablet, smartphone, or laptop.

Internet – the global collection of computer networks and their connections, all using shared protocols (TCP/IP) to communicate.

Media - all of the ways that large groups of people get and share information (TV, books, internet, newspapers, phones, etc).

Media balance - using media in a way that feels healthy and in balance with other life activities (family, friends, school, hobbies, etc).

Media choices - time spent watching, listening to, reading, or creating media.

Network - A network consists of multiple devices that communicate with one another. It can be as small as two computers or as large as billions of devices. While a traditional network is comprised of desktop computers, modern networks may include laptops, tablets, smartphones, televisions, gaming consoles, smart appliances, and other electronics.

Online - using a digital device to visit a website or app that makes use of the internet.

Private information - information about you that can be used to identify you because it is unique to you (e.g. your full name or your address)

Server - A server is a computer that serves up information to other computers on a network. Schools and many businesses will have a file server that pupils and employees can use to store and share files. A server can look like a regular desktop computer, or it can be much larger.

World Wide Web – a service provided by computers connected to the internet (web servers), in which pages of hypertext (web pages) are transmitted to users; the pages typically include links to other web pages and may be generated by programs automatically.