The PC: beige, boxy and boring. Overtaken, out-cooled and overshadowed by iPhones and tablets - but COVID-19 has changed all of this. Global PC sales jumped by 13% in 2020. Why? Because we all need to work and educate our children from home and you can't do that on a phone...
‘Exactly,’ agrees McNab. ‘The introduction there is perfect. It sums up the PC over the past 20 years. If we go back to 2010 and the introduction of the iPad, it became the “in” thing, everybody needed / wanted one. What we found, certainly in primary school, is that children are coming in with the ability to swipe across the screen, but those keyboard and mouse skills have now gone and we're having to reintroduce them.’
While the swiping left or right might be suited to internet shopping or reading, it’s obviously not conducive to, say, touch typing. ‘It's frightening to see everybody's reliance on this one finger swipe and one finger typing,’ says McNab. ‘We’re losing fine motor skills with the keyboard and mouse. And yet, to do any actual computing, you have to go back to the PC. The tablet is a sterile experience because you're sat there and you're essentially window shopping. You're just browsing. You can't do anything in depth like communicate with the operating system because it's a locked-out environment.’
Locking out a generation of would-be coders
So, for a generation of children who only need to lift a finger for entertainment - literally - just how do you get them started on learning, coding and exploring computing?
McNab has a plan: ‘When lockdown ends, we’ll start by teaching dance mat typing which is a BBC app that introduces children to touch typing. Then, we will get them onto text - we’ll do that “ten print ‘hello my name is’ twenty go to ten,” and it gives them just that bit of interaction that they are actually talking to the computer rather than just a spectator.’
While it is common for children to have a tablet to watch cartoons or to play on - almost before they can speak - when should a child’s tech education actually begin?
‘In the early years foundation stage (EYFS) we use Bee-Bots and Code-a-Pillars, then introduce Scratch Junior through years one and two, then by the end of that year, we’ll move them up to using normal Scratch.
It’s not until years five and six that we’ll start looking at Python. CodeCombat introduces a game element and it's another area of learning where it isn't just a piece of code and a problem to fix. Putting that game environment in there gives the children a challenge and they feel like they're completing the game without actually thinking, oh I'm having to code again, boring. They like that interactive challenge.
‘I look at it from an end goal: say, by the end of year six, I want them to know about Python and I'll drop it in as early as I can, getting them familiar with it, playing with it and then when they get home, they can go on CodeCombat or Raspberry Pi and just get familiar with the interface and the commands. It needs to be a continuation, building on previous skills not a start again situation.
A living history lesson
While many of us “forty-somethings” grew up with home computing, ZX Spectrums, BBC computers in schools, the Code Show is a history lesson for the new generation. What happens when children, who have never seen 1980s tech, go into a room full of it?
‘The children just walk in and go “wow”,’ says McNab. ‘I will put 15-20 machines on display, all making their own unique sounds and beeps and what have you, with videos on in the background from the time, promoting the hardware. In every school, the boys will head for the arcade sounds and the gaming sounds and the girls will look in the opposite direction at all the hardware and think, “what's this?”
‘Boys are just looking at the end result. I'm already going to the moon - but I don't know how to build a rocket. The boys just want to interact with the hardware and play and the girls want to look at the uses and how it's all evolved.’
