Networks and the Web

Overview

We start by revisiting spreadsheets and computer hardware components, and introduce students to powerful filter and sort functions which allow them to find data fitting specific criteria in a spreadsheet. Real world examples of end users and websites are used to specify, source and communicate a PC specification. Students learn about networks and use a model to work out the cost of networking a real computer system and produce a network diagram in a desktop publishing package to communicate their findings. Students use scaling to work out the cost of cabling their World Tour head office and move onto calculate the cost of cabling thier own ICT room. Students undertake an engaging kinesthetic activity to learn how computers connect to a network and produce their own animation of the process. As part of their final assessment, students are put in charge of designing a network infrastructure for the Festival Finale!

Lesson by lesson key content

Lesson number	Indicative content	Homework
1	Use sort and filter to find hardware components; research, configure then communicate a PC specification.	There is no homework for this lesson.
2	What is a network; work-out the costs of a wireless network; work-out the costs of a larger wireless network and produce a network diagram.	An infographics about routers and hubs.
3	Cost up the cabling of a hard-wired network; survey cabling to cost a network in a room.	Producing a network diagram for your home network.
4	Work-out how a PC connects to the Internet; produce an advanced animation that shows how a PC connects to the Internet.	Research into sensors.
5	Tour task 5 : building a network for festival finale.	Produce the Self Assessment section for your write up.
6	Introduction section write up; working out the costs of the network, producing the diagram and creating the animation; self-assessment section write up; Evaluation section write up.	There is no homework for this lesson.

Computing curriculum content

• Design, use and evaluate computational abstractions that model the state and behaviour of real-world problems and physical systems;
• Understand the hardware and software components that make up computer systems, and how they communicate with one another and with other systems;
• Undertake creative projects that involve selecting, using, and combining multiple applications, preferably across a range of devices, to achieve challenging goals, including collecting and analysing data and meeting the needs of known users;
• Create, reuse, revise and repurpose digital artefacts for a given audience, with attention to trustworthiness, design and usability.

Literacy curriculum content

• Learning new vocabulary, relating it explicitly to known vocabulary and understanding it with the help of context and dictionaries;
• Making inferences and referring to evidence in the text;
• Writing for a wide range of purposes and audiences, including notes;
• Summarising and organising material, and supporting ideas and arguments with any necessary factual detail.

Numeracy curriculum content

• Extend and formalise their knowledge of ratio and proportion in working with measures;
• Develop their use of formal mathematical knowledge to interpret and solve problems, including in financial mathematics;
• Use standard units of mass, length, time, money and other measures, including with decimal quantities;
• Use scale factors, scale diagrams and maps.