I am Miss Mold and I am the Computing Lead at Gorringe Park.

Computing has always been a passion of mine, ever since I got my first game boy and was opened up to the world of games. This then spread into my learning at school and I always remember the excitement when we were doing our computing lessons in the ICT Suite and we got to use a computer to practice our touch typing and PowerPoint skills. However, Computing is not all about games and PowerPoints. We explore computing at Gorringe Park through so many medias such as iPad, Beebots, Scratch coding and our engaging online safety curriculum ‘Internet Legends’.

We live in an ever-changing world of technology that opens up so many incredible opportunities. It is important that we understand how to use these in the safest and most creative ways we can. Our children start debugging and problem solving right from Early Years and develop this all through the school. We explore Scratch in KS1 and KS2 to create games, animations and quizzes. In Upper KS2, we move onto a broader coding language of Python to apply these skills and get ready for coding in the real world. I am so impressed by all of the fantastic reasoning and creativity I see in the computing lessons across the school.

The teaching of Computing at Gorringe Park

The National Curriculum for Computing has been developed to equip young people in England with the skills, knowledge and understanding of computing they will need for the rest of their lives. Through the programme of study for computing, they will learn how computers and computer systems work, they will design and build programs, develop their ideas using technology and create a range of content.

At Gorringe, we work with a range of services including Google Internet Legends, Scratch and BBC Microbits to deliver this creative and explorative curriculum. To experience the widest range, children will use programmable toys, unplugged activities, data loggers, Micro-computers, Virtual worlds and so many other ways of exploring technology in the wider world. We are very excited to introduce new laptops to the school this year to develop these skills further and set up our children for the best technological future.

About our Network

• We have an educational filtered secure broadband connectivity through the LGfL
• We use the LGfL filtering system which blocks sites that fall into categories such as pornography, race hatred, gaming, sites of an illegal nature, etc. All changes to the filtering policy is logged and only available to staff with the approved ‘web filtering management’ status
• We carry out monitoring of internet use (in addition to filtering) and this is done by the headteacher through the LGFL reporting system.
• Uses USO user-level filtering where relevant, thereby closing down or opening up options appropriate to the age / stage of the students
• Ensures network health through use of Sophos anti-virus software (from LGfL) etc and network set-up so staff and pupils cannot download executable files