01001000 01000101  01001100 01001100 01001111

Codes are everywhere and have been used throughout history to communicate, send and store information!  Today, Mrs Benger & Mrs Hall’s classes learned about some of these codes, including morse code, braille and barcodes.  Each of these codes use a combination of 2 different symbols or sounds to represent letters and numbers.  For example, morse code uses dots and dashes, braille uses raised and unraised dots and barcodes uses black and white vertical lines.

Morse Code Alphabet

Braille Alphabet

Computers and digital technology use binary codes to transmit and store information.  Using a coding system called ASCII – a sequence of 0s and 1s can represent all of the characters of the alphabet (in upper and lower case), as well as numbers and other symbols that you find on your keyboard.  For example

The letter A is 01000001
The letter B is 01000010
The letter C is 01000011

Binary Bracelets

The students put this knowledge about ASCII codes into action and created their own personalised binary bracelet, which spelt out their initials.  They chose 2 different colours (and a 3rd colour to use as a separator) and used the following chart to code their initials.  Each letter in their initials used 8 beads.

Ask your child to explain the meaning of their binary bracelet.  Then see if you can decode the message at the top of this post.