Sorting out Spacebook

Computational Thinking - Alien Contact! - Lesson 3

Objectives

To use logic and reasoning to evaluate digital content.
To understand and explain how to stay safe online.
To recognise and apply computational thinking concepts and approaches.

Lesson Resources

Lesson slides
Alien Spacebook cards (Print 1 set per group of approx 5/6 students)
Example social media sheet (Print 1 between 2 students)

Computational Thinking - Alien Contact!

Lesson 1 - First contact

Lesson 2 - Bits and pieces

Lesson 3 - Sorting out Spacebook

Lesson 4 - Communicate and Collaborate

Lesson 5 - Dot, Dash, Dot, Dot / Dot, Dot, Dot, Dot, Dot

Lesson 6 - All about algorithms

Introduction

This lesson combines two elements; searching and sorting and some digital literacy and online safety work around social media.

Begin with the latest message from our aliens:

Ask the class, what do you understand by ‘powers of reasoning’? This concerns how people reason, or the process of using logic to draw conclusions which help us solve problems and make decisions. Logic is one of the computational thinking concepts identified on the CAS Barefoot poster we’ve been looking at, and is all about using what we already know to predict, analyse and make decisions about new things.

Whole class activity

Take a look at the collection of aliens in the teacher presentation.

Pick one of the aliens without telling the children which one you have chosen. Ask the children to use logic to work out which alien you are thinking of. Give them a short time to come up with a list of questions that will identify the chosen profile - just like the game ‘Guess who’.

E.g. Are they wearing something on their head?

The aim is to identify the alien using the fewest questions. Play the game once or twice, trying to identify what makes a good question (always trying to reduce the number of aliens left by at least half).

This is a version of using a sorting technique called divide and conquer where we try and split the information we have search it more quickly.

Main task

Children should work in small groups of around 4 for this activity. The discussion created by working in a group is vital as it provides the opportunity to practise and demonstrate their reasoning skills.

Display a list of questions on the board. Each group has a pack of alien Spacebook cards. As a group they should try to answer the questions on the board, each answer will be the name of an alien - there are no correct answers.

This activity is designed to help children become more discerning with online content. When the groups have had time to discuss the questions, they must have an alien name and a REASON for their answer.

Ask groups to compare their answers and justify why they came to those conclusions. You must be able to question the reasons given by the children and pose alternative theories. This activity needs to be related back to the online safety messages that children are familiar with.

e.g.

How can we tell who someone is or what they are like just by looking at their picture?
Could someone be lying in an online profile?
How can you tell if something we see online is true?

Questions:

Who is the most likely to lie?
Who is the most likely to donate to charity?
Which alien do you think enjoyed school the most?
Who has been a victim of cyberbullying?
Who is a cyberbully?

You could give each group a large sheet of paper and ask them to present their ideas for each question (and stick the aliens onto) the sheet.

How we present ourselves online is really important. Anyone could be looking and we need to know how to protect our privacy, but also how to show ourselves in a positive light online.

Ask the class:

What would you want people to be able to find out about you if they searched for you?
What would you prefer to keep private?
Who already uses some kind of social media service?

Put students into pairs and give each pair a copy of this example social media profile sheet (original PDF version from internetmatters.org):

Ask each group to work together and create a tip sheet for the aliens on how to create a good social media profile. They should discuss each marker as a team, decide what it’s highlighting and come up with a tip for each point. One has been done to get them started.

Some possible tips for each marker are shown below:

Consider how well the class evaluated the digital content they were presented with today. If you are satisfied, in your role as the alien’s agent, you can give out the four-digit code number

The code number for this task is 9191.