Level: Grades 2 to 5
Overview
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This lesson provides students with an understanding of the basic structure of electronic network communications and how Internet communications are different from telephone conversations. In a hands-on classroom activity, children create and use paper cup telephones and compare this to sending messages over a computer “web” created with photocopies of computers linked by yarn.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this lesson, students should be able to:
- describe how messages travel over an open electronic communications network
- understand how electronic communication is different from telephone conversations
Preparation and Materials
- Photocopy the following:
- Have on hand paper cups and yarn, a deck of cards, envelopes
Procedure
Divide the class into small groups. Ask half the group of children to create "cup and string" phones, by inserting the ends of a long string into a hole in the bottom of 2 paper cups. Have the other half create a large "spider's web" using different colours of yarn tied to chairs, desks, etc. in a designated section of the room.
Bring the class back together, but keep the children divided into the half which made the "phones" and the half which made the "web."
The purpose of this introductory activity is to underline how ordinary telephone conversations are private because the technology connects two people over a single cable.
- Ask the "phone" children to come to the front of the classroom while the "web" children watch.
- Divide the group of "phone" children into pairs. Each pair of children will use a cup and string phone to send a message. Each group quietly 'sends' the message between partners at the same time.
- The "web" children will watch and then be asked if they heard the message. If all goes well, they will not have heard it.
- Take a deck of cards and give one card to each of the "phone" message senders.
- Have the children tell their partners, by "phone," what card they have, while the ''web" children listen in.
- Then ask the "web" children to guess who has which card.
- Reinforce the privacy associated with telephone communications.
(An alternative to this exercise is to put the card in an envelope, hook it onto string between the two people holding the "phone" and send it over the string to the other end.)
Next, give each of the "web" children a photocopy of a computer and ask them to stand at various points on the web (i.e. the chairs or desk legs where a piece of yarn was tied). The "phone" children can now sit and watch.
- Reinforce how the Internet is like a web which lets computers all around the world talk to each other.
- Each "web" child can then say where in the world his or her "computer" is located.
- Identify pairs of "web" children who will "communicate" over the web. Give each of the "web" children a card, and have their partner ask them what card it is by calling to them over the web.
- They then call back their answer and hold it up for the partner to see. (Be prepared for noise!)
- Finally, have the "phone" children guess who has which card.
- Reinforce the open nature of the Internet and the complete lack of privacy in Internet communication.
Summarize how Internet communications are different from telephone communications.
- The Internet is completely open
- There is no privacy
- There is a lot of "noise," or activity, all at the same time
Evaluation
- Journal or verbal reflection on what they learned in each of the activities.
- Participation in the classroom activities.
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Where to go from here
The following activity can be used to reinforce the skills learned in this lesson.
