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Design
and make resources to help pupils learn about
‘smart card technology’ |
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School: St Cyres School,
Penarth |
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Fellow: Damian Parker |
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Email: n/a |
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Aims: |
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To design and make a range
of teaching resources to help pupils learn
about ‘Smart Card Technology. |
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The plan for my project was firstly to design
and make a range of teaching resources that
would enable pupils of all abilities to use
the ‘Smart Card’ programmer to
obtain various outcomes and secondly to produce
a teaching resource that will be used to help
the pupils understand ‘Smart Card’
technology and to guide them through the worksheets
that would accompany the kits. |
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One of the concerns that I had when designing
the kits was I did not want to create a resource
that was gender biased. From past experience
I have found that the minute you mention electronics
and control a large number of boys would shout
out ‘Robot Wars’ and the girls
would switch off. This was an image that I
clearly wanted to avoid at all costs. I wanted
to keep the design of the kits as simple as
possible using images that would encourage
the use by both girls and boys. I considered
designing my own images for the kits however;
I found many suitable images were readily
available on clip art. Lists of possible themes
were drawn up and I narrowed this down to
a useable three. Using the ‘2D Design’
software and clip art I produced the graphic
images for the kits. |
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As well as producing the three main boards
I designed a board that would allow the pupils
to connect various inputs and outputs to the
‘Smart Card’ controller. My initial
thoughts were to design a board with high
quality graphics; however I found that this
looked a little intimidating to the pupils
so I kept this very simple with no colour. |
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| Multi
output board with detailed graphic |
Simple
graphic with no colour |
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After completing the design stage I produced
two prototype boards using MDF and applied
a laminated paper graphic on top. The holes
for the LED’s and sound were then drilled
and a ‘Smart Card’ reader was
positioned along with all the outputs. A number
of tests were successfully performed on the
prototype boards and a positive response was
received from a number of year nine pupils
that I had showed the work to. |
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For the multi output board I decided to
produce a range of inputs and outputs that
would allow the pupils to produce their own
outcomes, this also allowed me to use the
board with the lower ability pupils who could
simply make one output switch on and off.
I ran a small number of tests on the output
boards and found that the pupils enjoyed these
more due to the fact that they had to plug
the modules in. This made them feel like they
were actually designing the system. |
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Within my Systems & Control room I have
many ‘Bigger Picture’ control
items that I use as teaching aids to illustrate
to pupils how various control devices might
be used in every day advertisements. From
the pictures you can see the Spiderman image
which has a number of LED’s that are
controlled through a PIC Chip and the Toy
Story image which has a number of moving parts
controlled by a 555 timer chip. I wanted to
produce a similar product that the pupils
could use and program using the ‘Smart
Card.’ Using an old advertisement for
Disney’s Atlantis movie, I placed a
number of LED’s and a motor into the
image and mounted it near the ceiling. The
outputs were all connected to a control box
that was fixed to a pillar below the image.
The pupils would then link the multi output
box via leads to the control box on the wall
and work through the programming tasks set. |
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| Toy Story and Spiderman boards |
Atlantis board and control
box |
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During the production of the Atlantis board
our department was fortunate enough to receive
a laser cutter which was controlled through
the ‘2D Design’ software. I spent
a number of weeks familiarising myself with
the machine and then designed acrylic tops
for the Christmas tree, Traffic light, Happy
birthday and multi output board. The use of
the machine allowed me to produce the boards
at a very quick rate as I no longer had to
spend time measuring, marking and drilling
the holes. It also gave the product a more
professional appearance with the graphic image
sandwiched between two sheets of clear acrylic. |
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Christmas
tree design and Smartcard writer cut by the
laser |
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The majority of my time has now been taken
producing enough of the resources to use with
a class of twenty five pupils working in groups
of two or three. My main focus over the next
few weeks is to produce the work sheets that
will accompany the boards and to look at,
and produce various PowerPoint presentations
to help teach the pupils how to use the technology.
The worksheets need to be both challenging
enough to stimulate the higher ability and
contain simplistic tasks for the less able
pupils. |
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Example of a worksheet
to accompany the Christmas board |
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Hopefully all the boards and teaching resources
will be completed by the end of the month,
allowing me time to try out the work with
my current year nine group. The reason for
me trying to complete the work by this date
is to see what impact the resources has on
the pupils opting for Systems & Control
in February especially the girls which has
been a problem in the past. Although I will
not be able to monitor this fully until all
four year nine groups have used the boards
it should give me sufficient feedback on the
use of the boards. During the latter part
of next year I will also monitor how the year
ten Systems & Control group use the Chip
Factory resources as this has very similar
programming language. It will be interesting
to see if the work on ‘Smart Card’
technology has benefited them in understanding
the basic principles of control language. |
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