What Should 10-Year-Olds Know About IT?

stephendl writes "I have been asked to give a computer based talk to a local primary school. It is part of an after school science club and I have a pretty free rein to talk about whatever I want for 10 minutes. The children will be aged 9 and 10 and will come from a range of backgrounds, there will be a parent of each child present too. My initial thoughts for the subject included the history of computers, the components in a computer and what computers are used for. Does the slashdot community have any suggestions, experience in this area or tips?"

Comments

CARE

[crapnutassneck]

This group here in my home state of Oregon has a fantastic DARE type program focussed on computer use and ethics...

http://www.cyberaware.org/about.html

Keep them engaged

[jd]

I tought for the National Association of Gifted Children, at one point, so this is a summary based on my experiences with that.

DON'T lecture - talk a bit, ask some, get them to ask a lot and do a lot.

Active participation is the key to teaching. Nobody learns, when bored or asleep.

Keep sentances short. Break ideas down into parcels. Kids will lose track of things quickly. It takes a little longer to get complex ideas across, but it improves the kids' chances of learning what those complex ideas are.

Attention spans also tend to be short. Same-old same-old will bore them after a while. That's one reason adverts are 30 seconds or less and why the more successful adverts put the bulk of the important information in the first 5 seconds of that.

In other words, with each topic, you've 5 seconds to get their full attention AND give them a rough idea of what the topic is. You've about 25 more seconds to convince them that it's worth finding out more, AND to cover the main reasons why it would be interesting to them.

Vocally, be interesting. Vary your tone. Monotone "robots" are almost universally ridiculed by kids. You want to be taken seriously. Constant patterns in speech can put anyone to sleep. (That's why many lulabies follow that formula.) Avoid repeating yourself, overusing words, or using words that are barely in your average PhD's vocabulary, never mind your average 10-year-old's.

Above all, pick topics that interest YOU. Kids can spot a fake a mile off. If you don't believe a word you're saying, you're going to have a hard time convincing them.

Visuals help a lot. Kids of that age-range can understand visually far better than they can understand intellectually. (Not always, but it's a fairly good rule-of-thumb.) For example, if you decide to cover transistors/logic gates, then you might want to try the following:

Have one volunteer act as the first input. Have a second volunteer act as the second input. Give them a colored sheet of paper. Say, red for 1, and white for 0. Have a third volunteer act as your "high reference voltage". They carry a red piece of paper. A fourth, final, volunteer is your "low reference voltage" and carries a white piece of paper.

For an AND gate, the first two volunteers are positioned one after the other. The fourth volunteer is to one side. The third volunteer is told to walk past the first two people, but must stop if one of them is holding a white piece of paper. The fourth volunteer is told to wait, unless the third volunteer stops. Then they are to walk on.

For an OR gate, the first two volunteers are side-by-side. Again, the third volunteer cannot walk past someone holding a white piece of paper, but CAN walk past someone holding a red piece of paper. Again, the fourth volunteer can only go if the third one can't go.

Again, to keep people's interest up, you would only want to do two or three runs of this game. Any more, and they'll get bored and lose the idea. Only one run and they won't get the point at all. (The point being to show how something electrical can make "decisions", even though it doesn't "think".)

Time constraints mean that two demonstrations of this kind are about the upper limit. One demonstration should either show what logic is (eg: as above) or show how semiconductors work. (eg: Have the kids act as silicon atoms, and use different color balls to represent electrons and holes into which the electrons can fall. Have the kids swap balls, to represent the flow of electricity through a semiconductor.)

The second demonstration should be something the kids are more familiar with (eg: a games console, a mobile phone, etc). Have the kids play different components in the system. For example, to show how mobile phones work, have two kids playing phones and have two more kids playing phone towers. The kids playing phones wander around, until you call stop.

purpose of learning - by albert einstein

[vikrant]

Here is what Einstien once told to a group of children:

Title: Teachers and Pupils

Description: An address to children, 1934

Message: The principal art of the teacher is to awaken the joy in creation and knowledge.

The Quote:

My dear Children,

I rejoice to see you before me to-day, happy youth of a sunny and fortunate land.

Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honour it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common.

If you always keep that in mind you will find a meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude towards other nations and ages.

The order is backwards

[mark99]

I would start with what they are used for. If you start out with the history you will lose a lot of them.

History is more interesting ina context.

Re:Easy

[chivo243]

Q & A is a good start! I work in a school as a network engineer/assist in any user issue kind of drone, and was in a classroom working on the instructors computer, while the they were having a disscussion/ Q & A about internet saftey, these were 11-12 yr olds. You should have a good knowledge of the basic internet topics, and let them ask away. Stay away from the indepth hardware topic, you will only interest the 7% geek factor, and they already know...