Earlier this year I asked my Year 8 students to record a 2 minute warning to their parents, aiming to highlight risks which they might face online. This piece of work followed several smaller tasks (such as Me vs Me), and lots of discussions, regarding digital citizenship, what being online means and how we can stay safe. Of all the excellent pieces submitted, I was most taken by work of Chloe, who I believed manage to convey a lot of meaning in an easy to understand message:
Chloe runs a nice blog where she posts some of her other work, if you are interested in taking a look.
Lying to the north of its more illustrious and flashy neighbours Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po is one of Hong Kong’s more traditional districts. Whilst living in SSP in the early 2000’s, I was fortunate enough to have time to explore its myriad streets, and observe all sorts of personal, family and business activities. A quick walk will reveal garment wholesale, electrical workshops, markets, waste processing, computer retail and a host of family-run enterprise, all taking place at ground level.
I just put the finishing touches on a new ICT unit looking into the past, present and future of ICT, and how technology made us the species we are today. My aim is to get students away from the idea that high-tech is the only tech. Technology is everywhere in our lives, and we only live the way we do because of it. In short, without technology we would most likely be just another species of primate.
These games are fantastic, not only for geography, but for any subject where teachers wish to promote teamwork, encourage students to solve problems, remember patterns, learn more about the world or just get engaged. In the past I have used these games with EAL students as a way to get them talking and interested.
I designed this unit with the aim of introducing young students to the fundamentals of programming, in the hope of helping them to view programming as a discipline built on logic and sequential processing. Theory is kept to a minimum, with students asked to learn 7 key, interrelated key words. Most of the learning takes place within the Scratch visual programming language environment, and students can be encouraged to work independently, solve their own problems and think creatively. The unit provides three levels of assessment, and I allowed students to decide for themselves which they would tackle, allowing students to differentiate the task for themselves.
This unit is my first attempt to introduce students to computer systems in a thorough, formal and organised manner, and it has proved both educational and enjoyable for both myself and (I believe) my students. It uses a very simple layered model (which I call the Four Layer Model) to help students understand how hardware, software, networks and people each function as parts of complex computer systems. For my Year 9 students this was their first opportunity to really work with computer hardware (they had to reassembly old PCs) and software (they had to install 
I created this simple worksheet the other day, and it seemed to really get my ICT & Media students thinking about the issue of how they respond to media, and in particular, how magazine covers are designed to manipulate our thoughts and emotions in order to convince us to make a purchase. Some of the analysis produced by students was very insightful.
