Post - the seventh

Uses of Databases and ways in which you might use them to help children learn in any subject at school

Databases are a good way of evaluating and storing information for various purposes. Businesses will often use databases to store a wide variety of information such as contact details, bank details etc. They are useful in that they allow users to ask questions of them for example, how many men prefer to eat hamburgers compared to women. The result can then be manipulated and sorted and can also be transferred into graph format. They are very quick to search, they are easy to edit and to add to, they take up little space but can have contain a huge amount of data, they can also be used in relation to other programmes, for example word to create mail merges and they can be more secure than paper files. In the ICT lesson we saw how they can be used with history and gravestones. I would suggest that they can be useful in other subjects. They could be used by children for geography. This could involve putting details of various countries in the database and then could be searched for the country with the highest population for example. Perhaps they could also be useful in maths in data handling and interpreting as well as spreadsheets. In Science they could set up databases for the properties of plants or butterflies. I would suggest that databases are very versatile and can be used by children in lots of subjects

Other activities using ICT which you could use to make History more relevant to children.

To make History more relevant for children using ICT you could:-
· use websites to take virtual tours of museums
· Use CD-ROMs like Encarta to allow children to research
· Inspiration – to create mind maps or diagrams for certain topics. This is a way that pupils can display their own thought patterns and processes from bits of evidence for example
· Blogs and Wikis could be interesting ways in which children can record their thoughts about topics.