Control and Monitoring

Do you remember the drawings of W. Heath Robinson? They contained splendidly incongruous devices and you could enjoy puzzling out how they worked. Here is his burglar alarm. You can see more here.

Although the success of this alarm is highly improbable, you feel you could have invented something similar yourself. Strings and pulleys, a hinged shelf and a soda siphon are all things we could collect and assemble in an afternoon. Even the pressure pad is a piece of wood and uses a hosepipe to sound the horn. It's all splendidly simple and very understandable.

But the truth is that W. Heath Robinson and his contraptions belong to a former age - a mechanical age. It's the one we all grew up in, the one we feel most comfortable with. But it's not the one our children now inhabit. Mechanical methods of doing things have given way to digital ones and the children we teach must develop the same fluency with electronic devices as we feel with pulleys and pieces of string.

Today, Heath Robinson would replace his wooden platform with an electronic pressure pad. The strings and pulleys would be replaced with wires, or perhaps networked wireless devices. And the whole thing would be monitored and controlled by a small computer which might be already programmed to call a central control point in the event of it detecting a break-in.

How do we, as children of the Twentieth Century teach these skills to the next generation? Children at school today belong to the 21st Century and we must do our best to equip them with skills for a world which is radically different from the one in which we grew up.

Fortunately, the basic building blocks of computer control are very simple. Very young children must learn cause-and-effect, just like generations before them. They will learn that when you press a button something happens and they'll do it with toys. The only difference is that their toys should be electronic. You should have some battery-operated toys in your early years classroom. Some might have the control buttons on the toys themselves but for others the controls will be remote - perhaps at the end of a wire or on an infrared or radio device. Either way, where a former generation turned a clockwork key our children will press a button. But they, too, will see that it causes something to happen.

Simple toys and gadgets abound for children in the youngest classes but don't ignore more sophisticated devices. In a project in Northamptonshire, a Reception teacher was asked how on earth she managed to get CCTV into her classroom. Her answer was simple. In the local DIY store for less than £100. And as you'd expect, the children loved both watching and performing with it.

As children develop they need to learn that they control electronic devices by giving them instructions. Children may use a programmable robot where adults use a microwave oven but the principle is always the same - you press buttons in the correct order and you get a result. Initially, the button-presses form a simple sequence.

As a child you might use a programmable robot or screen turtle:

• Move forward
• 10 units
• Go

As an adult you might heat a frozen meal:

• Full power
• 4 minutes
• Start

Well before they leave the primary school children should have mastered the art of giving a device a whole sequence of commands. Each set of commands is called a procedure and can be saved for future use.

As a child you might construct a sequence to control a set of traffic lights on screen or attached to the computer:

• Switch on the red light
• Wait for 10 seconds
• Switch on the amber light
• Wait for 5 seconds
• Switch off the red and amber lights and switch on the green light
• And so on

Children love the challenge of getting the sequence right and can move on to double sets of lights at a road junction. They should also include feedback, perhaps including a traffic sensor or making a pelican crossing with a pedestrian call button.

As an adult you might read the back of a frozen food packet, then programme your microwave oven like this:

• Full power
• 3 minutes
• Wait 30 seconds
• Half power
• 4 minutes
• Start

As a child you can save your procedures and even nest them inside each other to build up very complex actions. The challenge to a child's thinking is profound, enjoyable and incredibly motivating. As an adult we are more limited. Although modern microwave ovens contain saved procedures (such as a special "reheat frozen meal" button) you can't create and save your own. More expensive ovens even include sensors and may have a button such as "fresh vegetables" which sense the humidity and alter the cooking power accordingly - but the user has no control over this.

However complex it all may seem to an adult unfamiliar with the modern world, it's actually elementary programming. Logo has long been the ideal way to build sequences of instructions into procedures but you may not know that there have been many exciting developments with which you can challenge your class.

Even the youngest children and those who are non-readers can use the Logo in Early Essentials. The children will control spiders, frogs and cars and move them round an on-screen garden or town, all the while mastering those essential control skills.

As they go through the primary years, introduce them to Imagine Logo. This amazing program is so versatile and sophisticated that it's difficult to simplify its potential. Everyone from primary school pupils to professional software developers can use it. The only limit is their imagination and their results can even be saved as free standing computer programs. Find out more on the Imagine pages on the Logotron website.

But when it comes to attaching physical devices to the computer, many teachers put off the moment when they must tackle it. The idea of plugging temperature sensors or a set of model traffic lights into a computer and being able to use them effectively seems a step too far for many people.

Those who have taken the plunge have found it a rewarding experience - providing the equipment works correctly - and there have been many examples of excited children demonstrating their model lift, car park barrier, supermarket checkout - and even a complete mountain cable car which travelled up an entire wall of a Year 6 classroom near Peterborough.

Now there is no need to put off work in Control and Datalogging any longer. Junior Control Insight and Junior Datalogging Insight both present the perfect solution - real activities simulated on screen. At secondary level you'll find Control Insight and Datalogging Insight meet the needs of older learners.

No longer do you have to plug temperature, light and sound sensors into your computer and then wonder what to do with them - a wide range of scientific and other experiments are contained in the program, all simulated on screen. You'll also know that if a procedure doesn't work it's not a faulty battery or bulb! Then, when your confidence is high, you can connect an interface and sensors and start to conduct real experiments.

One of the excellent things about these programs is that you don't have to spend hours building a model to control, or an experiment to conduct. The program is ready to go when you are. And you'd never be able to build a complete bedroom with controllable door, television, computer and light in your classroom, or an entire fairground with a variety of rides. Junior Control Insight contains these and more. Junior Datalogging Insight contains scientific experiments ready for use at a moment's notice.

What will this generation of children create when they venture out into the world? Past generations used their knowledge of mechanical methods to create machinery, automobiles, aeroplanes and the hovercraft. What will the next generation create with their knowledge of computer control and monitoring methods? Your guess is as good as mine.

And is there a future W. Heath Robinson sitting in one of our classrooms right now, who will enthrall the world with imaginary devices based, not on pulleys and strings, but on the building blocks of computer control?