Criminals - investigation 

Criminals is a set of data handling investigations aimed at pupils in years 4 to 6. The project is designed to be used with Information Workshop or Information Magic. It consists of a datafile of criminals together with a selection of eyewitness accounts of a variety of minor misdemeanours.

Children need to employ a range of data handling skills (sorting, simple and complex searches and, for the more able, sub-string searches) to identify the criminal.

For those who need help with the techniques involved, there is a set of simple instruction sheets which will help teach pupils the skills of interrogating a database.

The Read Me document below provides the investigation names and a suggested order for use of the investigation sheets. It also provides the answers and the skills required for solving each crime. The investigation sheets could be used with any data handling program and the Criminals file is also available in FlexiDATA format and as a CSV file for use with other programs.

To download any of the files below, hold your mouse over the link and click the right mouse button. From the menu which appears choose to Save Target As. You will then be able to save the file to your computer in the appropriate directory.

We hope this project will stimulate other data handling ideas. If you create additional crime sheets which you are prepared to share, please e-mail them to us and we will add them to the list. Similarly, if you use a different data handling program and create a suitable version of the file please send it to us so that we can share it with others.

ais.ict.education@oxfordshire.gov.uk