Introduction

Last week we looked at different ways of sorting information and considered how computers also do this. We looked at a branching database which split the content in half with yes/no questions until each item was on its own. This can be used to identify unknown data or items.

This week we are going to explore a different kind of database.

 

What is a database?

Discuss what a database is and examples where people might want to collect together information on a topic. School will hold a database of some information about all the pupils in the school, what sort of information do you think might be in it? Will the name of your pets be in it? Why not?

Like some of the examples mentioned last week, explain that sometimes databases can be paper based and sometimes they are electronic. You (or your parents) might have an address books at home of all your friends and families information, what might be in it? Names, telephone numbers, addresses, email addresses, birthdays etc.

Have you ever played Top Trumps? This is a kind of database as the cards have information about a number of categories on them, each card has the same categories. The whole pack is the database.

Is it easy to search paper databases? Why? If you had a set of dinosaur Top Trumps and you wanted to sort them into meat eaters and plant eaters (assuming that was a category) how would you have to do it?

Computers can help us search digital databases much faster and more easily. Today we are going to be exploring some databases that have already been created.

 

Searching a database

Open up Purple Mash and 2Investigate from the Maths and Data Handling section.

 

 

Open 2Investigate from this menu (not the quizzes).

 

 

When it loads, choose the minibeast example database.

 

 

This is our database about mini-beasts, think of it a bit like a pack of Top Trumps cards. How many cards are in this database?

 

 

Double click on one of the cards and show that you can look at the information on any card individually. This card has a picture and three categories (fields), all the cards are set out in the same way, this is the ‘card view’.

 

 

Show how you can also switch to the ‘table view’ by clicking on the grid button at the top of the screen. How is this view different? Which is most useful? Why? 

 

 

Ask a few questions that require them to look for information in the table; what is the habitat of a butterfly? How many legs does a pond skater have? Does a newt have wings? What has the most legs, a newt or a pond skater?

 

Switch back to the card view. Remind the children of the number sorting activity from the last lesson and how computers are able to compare data and sort it for us. Go up to the menu and choose the Data button. Look at the options it gives us.  

 

 

Let’s do a sort. Choose one of the categories to sort by, press okay and watch the computer sort the cards out. Explain that it is looking through all the data and putting them into the correct order for us. You can adjust the speed with the on-screen slider.

 

 

Cards here are sorted by ‘number of legs’.

 

 

We can also group cards from the Data menu. Ask the class How will grouping be different to sorting? Again choose a category to group by and watch it go!

 

 

Cards here are grouped by habitat.

 

 

So we can use the card or table views and we can sort or order the data when in the card view.

 

Main task

Ask them to open 2Investigate and open the database called 'Children' (This is called ‘Our Class No Sound’ if you are still using the older version of 2Investigate in the 2Simple Collection). If you are already in 2Investigate you can get to this by starting a New file.

 

   

 

Introduce the question sheet.

 

 

Ask them to find the answers by searching using the card and table views, and by sorting and ordering the cards. Be aware that there are two slightly different versions of the questions sheet depending on which version of 2Investigate you are using (see resources section above).

If time, they could experiment with creating a graph of one of the categories.  Go to the charts button.

 

 

Choose your category and the graph is automatically built. There are four types of graph available at the top of the screen. 

 

 

Plenary

Evaluate the students' learning with the following questions: What is a database? How can a digital database be useful? How were you able to sort the data today? 

Pick out a selection of questions from the worksheet and ask the students for their answers, and how they found the answer.

 

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