Category Archives: A-level Computing

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New 2017 short courses from CAS London at King’s (Waterloo)

We have a series of twilight courses which will take place at King’s College London (Waterloo) campus, under the CAS London (King’s College London / Queen Mary University of London) banner on Monday and Wednesday evenings in 2017. Each lasts between five and eight weeks with courses costs from £100 to £200.

PDF flyer for these events with clickable links.

KS3 Computing

January – March 2017

Teach KS3 Computing
Monday Evenings 5pm to 7pm
23rd January to 20th March (8 sessions)
£160
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MA Module in Computing Education

January – March 2017

Computer Science Education: Theory and Practice (30-credit Masters’ module).
Tuesday evenings 5.30pm to 7.30pm
17th January to 28th March.
Focus on research in computer science education and start working towards a Masters’ degree. Includes 6,000 word assignment.
£1,150

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GCSE Computing

April – July 2017

Teach GCSE Computing
Monday Evenings 5pm to 7:30pm
24th April to 3rd July (10 sessions)
£200
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A level computing

March 2017

Teach A level computing: Algorithms and Data Structures
Five twilights on Wednesdays at King’s College London
Cost: £100
Starts Wednesday 1st March ends Wednesday 29nd March 2017 (5.00-7.30pm)
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(note that this course was originally advertised in November with a start date in the last week of February and this has been moved back to the first week of March – 4 Jan 2016)

June – July 2017

Teach A level computing: Object Oriented Programming in Python
Five wednesday twilights at King’s College London.
Cost £100
Starts Wednesday 7th June 2017 ends Wednesday 5th July 2017 (5.00-7.30pm).
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November 2017

Teach A level computing: A2 Projects with Databases and Python
Five Wednesday twilights at King’s College London.
Cost £100
Starts Wednesday 1st November 2017 ends Wednesday 29th November 2017 (5.00-7.30pm)
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Have you attended one of our courses or workshops? What did you think?

If you’ve attended one of our events we’d love to hear what you thought about it as our project comes to a close. We would like to know if our project has benefitted you as a Computing teacher and, if so, how. Please take a look at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TLCFinalSurvey (the survey should take around 10 minutes to complete).

Also – our next A-level Computing CPD course starts next Wednesday with FREE places for London Master Teachers.

The current incarnation of Teaching London Computing aka ‘TLC’ (as funded by the Mayor of London’s London School’s Excellence Fund grant) is coming to an end however we are very keen to continue with the project and make it sustainable.

We know from teachers telling us (thank you!) that they really value our in-depth CPD courses, our ‘miniCPD‘ sessions, and our free workshops are perennially popular too. We also know that lots of teachers in London, the rest of the UK and even from around the world are downloading and using our free classroom resources – hooray! We know this partly because people tell us, but also from the website stats (at time of writing we’ve just passed 87,000 blog ‘hits’) and the figures telling us that our PDF have been downloaded around 28,000 times.

The team behind TLC (staff from Queen Mary University of London and King’s College London) have taken on the role of one of the new CAS regional centres (we’re ‘CAS London’) and we’ve working with CAS to enable Master Teachers to attend free* at our next course (A-level Computing CPD, starting on Wednesday 7 October 2015) *while places last.

Thank you for making this project so interesting and rewarding, from all of us at Teaching London Computing.

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New course date: A-level Computing CPD for London teachers – Wed 7 Oct, 10-week course

We will be running our A-level Computing CPD course again this Autumn for London teachers.

The course will run for 10 weeks from 5pm to 7.30pm on Wednesday evenings from 7 October to 16 December 2015 with a half-term break on Wednesday 28 October (ie a 10 week course running within an 11-week timeframe) in the ITL Building, Queen Mary University of London.

As always the course costs £300 but those teaching in London can take advantage of a 50% reduction thanks to funding from the Mayor of London, ie £150. In addition, with support from the new CAS London hub, we are also making FREE places available for London Master teachers only – please note that we will be requesting evidence of Master Teacher status before confirming your free place. The course will be taught by William Marsh and Trevor Bragg.

Full information and guide syllabus on our A-level Computing page, and there are some quick links to register below. Any questions? Contact Jo (j.brodie@qmul.ac.uk) for more.

Next course(s): 10-week Wednesday evening course: 7 October to 16 December 2015 (half-term 28 October 2015), 5.00pm to 7.30pm. For this course we are making free places available for London Master Teachers (you will be sent an application for to confirm your eligibility).

Eventbrite - A-level Computing CPD - Teaching London Computing & CAS London for a place on A-level Computing CPD – Teaching London Computing & CAS London

Please sign-up to be kept informed of future courses.

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Our next events – one free workshop, one (not free) CPD course for A-level Computing teachers

Here’s what we have coming up so far in August… do also sign up to our mailing list to be kept informed of future activities.

1. Course for A-level Computing teachers in London
A-level Computing CPD August one-week intensive 2015 – from Teaching London Computing
Monday, 17 August 2015 at 10:00 – Friday, 21 August 2015 at 16:00 – at QMUL
This is a one-week intensive A-level Computing CPD course from Teaching London Computing. The course equips Computing teachers with the programming subject knowledge and skills to teach the new A-level Computing curricula.
[More information] [Eventbrite tickets]

2. Free workshop for Computing teachers in London
Using Turtle Graphics to Transition from Visual to Textual Programming
Wednesday, 26 August 2015 from 13:00 to 15:30 – at QMUL

How to transition from visual languages (e.g. Scratch) to text based languages (e.g. Python)?
A hands on workshop exploring the use of turtle graphics for making the transition from visual programming (using Scratch) to textual programming (using Python).

  • Comparing programs in Scratch and Python
  • Setting problems that can be soved in both visual and textual languages

Computers are provided but delegates may bring a laptop if they wish
(with MIT Scratch 2 and Python 3 installed). Some knowledge of basic programming assumed.
[More information] [Eventbrite tickets]

Do I have to be a London computing teacher to attend Teaching London Computing courses and workshops?
While we prioritise London computing teachers we do make space available for those from outside London. For our courses we charge non-London teachers the full price (£300) but thanks to funding from the Mayor of London we’re able to offer a 50% discount to London teachers only (£150). Our courses are aimed at those who are currently (or who are about to begin) teaching the Computing curricula (GCSE and A-level). Contact Jo Brodie (j.brodie@qmul.ac.uk) for further information.

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Launch event for the new CAS London Regional Centre (Computing At School) – Fri 10th July

Queen Mary University of London and King’s College London will be involved in running the new CAS London Regional Centre (this is separate from Teaching London Computing project but many of the same people are involved). There will be a launch event [free] from 4.30pm on Friday 10 July and the invitation and details are below. [Eventbrite link for the meeting]

Find out more about CAS London @cas_london_crc.

Here is a map of the CAS regional hubs and Computing at School‘s website, and they’re @CompAtSch on Twitter.

We would like to invite you to the first CAS London Meeting. This is a regional collaboration bringing together primary and secondary teachers, Computing At School master teachers, hub leaders, lead schools, universities, boroughs and other training groups and interested parties to promote and support computing education in London. The meeting aims to start a discussion of how we can best mutually support each other, further developing our London education computing community.

The twilight event is on Friday 10th July 2015, at King’s College London.

Here is the link to eventbrite invitation.

Outline:

  • 4:30 Networking tasks & refreshments
  • 5:30 Keynote speaker Simon Humphreys
  • 5:45 Contributed presentations: What’s happening in London?
  • 6:30 Working together: Tasks
  • 7:00 Finish – more refreshments and networking

We aim to explore three questions about computing CPD and teaching computing in London schools: What is working well? What help do you need? What can you offer others?

If possible, can you create 1 or 2 slides with your answers to the above questions and send them to us. We will share your slides on a rolling display during the networking sessions and ask a number of contributors to talk through their slides in the contributed presentations session (maximum of 4 minutes per presentation).

Join us to celebrate the work done by our fantastic community of computing educators (that’s you) and to find out how we can further grow and develop the network of support and computing CPD provision across London.

For more information and to share your slides please contact Jane (jane.waite@computingatschool.org.uk) or Trevor (trevor.bragg@computingatschool.org.uk)

Many thanks
Paul Curzon, William Marsh, Jane Waite, Trevor Bragg, Sue Sentance

The CAS London meeting is supported by ‘Computing at School’ and ‘Teaching London Computing’, which is funded by the Mayor of London and Department for Education. The meeting is being organised by London’s CAS Regional Centre (CRC) a collaboration between Queen Mary University of London and King’s College London.’

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What short courses & workshops do we have available for London Computing teachers at the moment? These!

Newly announced: we have a new free event, Understanding New Careers: Creativity and Technology on 14 July and a one-week intensive A-level CPD course coming up in August (17-21). More details about these below.

We also have space on our evening workshop session, on the 13th July, on GUI Programming in Python. (There’s a waiting list for the earlier one (identical workshop) on Monday 29 June though).

In upcoming-date order…

1. GUI Programming in Python – Monday 29 June 2015 – FREE (limited availability)

Python is a popular language for elementary programming but it not so easy to write programs with a graphical user interface (GUI). This workshop will introduce GUI programming in Python, covering:

  • the concepts common to all GUI frameworks: events, widgets and attributes
  • the role of object-oriented programming in GUIs
  • the choice of GUI frameworks (but looking mainly at tkinter, the default framework)

[Our page on this workshop]
[Link to Eventbrite tickets for 29 June workshop]

 

2. GUI Programming in Python – Monday 13 July – FREE (spaces available)

This workshop is identical to the one above.

[Our page on this workshop]
[Link to Eventbrite tickets for 13 July workshop]

 

3. Understanding New Careers: Creativity and Technology – 14 July – FREE

The event is for any London teacher who advises young people on careers, or who teaches art, or technology. Part-presentation, part-panel discussion, we will look at what happens in Tech City and discuss routes into new career opportunities in technology and creativity.

[Eventbrite link to more information and tickets for ‘Understanding new careers: creativity and technology’]

 

4. A-level Computing CPD: one-week intensive – 17-21 August 2015 – £300/150

This course equips Computing teachers with the programming subject knowledge and skills to teach the new A-level Computing curricula.

The course is taught using Python and includes much practical work. It is essential to have experience in programming, to GCSE level at least, including assignment, if statements, loops and arrays and ideally also function definitions. Delegates should be confident to solve simple programming problems requiring approx 20-50 lines, either with Python or a similar language.

The course costs £300 but thanks to funding from the Mayor of London we are able to reduce this for teachers in London.

[Our page on the A-level computing course]
[Link to Eventbrite tickets for this A-level Computing CPD]

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miniCPD course / workshop on GUI Programming in Python

We have a new free workshop aimed at A-level Computing teachers in London. It is being run (twice) by William Marsh at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

The first is running on Monday 29 June (5.30-7pm) and, due to popular demand, a second run of this event is happening on Monday 13 July (5.30-7pm). [Note that the two sessions are identical, please register for one OR the other].

Eventbrite - QMUL: GUI Programming in Python - FREE workshop from Teaching London Computing for a place on the Monday 29 June free workshop.

Eventbrite - QMUL: GUI Programming in Python (rpt) - FREE workshop from Teaching London Computing for a place on the Monday 13 July free workshop.

Course details
Python is a popular language for elementary programming but it not so easy to write programs with a graphical user interface (GUI). This workshop will introduce GUI programming in Python, covering:

  • the concepts common to all GUI frameworks: events, widgets and attributes
  • the role of object-oriented programming in GUIs
  • the choice of GUI frameworks (but looking mainly at tkinter, the default framework)

Time will be spent on practical work: computers are provided but bring your own laptop (with Python 3 installed) if you wish.

Eligibility
The workshop assumes knowledge of basic Python and is aimed at those with an interest in A level computing.
Because we are funded by the Mayor of London we prioritise London teachers on our events but all teachers are welcome.

Cost
FREE

Contact
Jo Brodie

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*New course* A-level CPD Computing for London teachers, from @TeachingLDNComp

Our new A-level CPD course will run over Spring and Summer at King’s College London (Waterloo Campus). The course will run on Tuesday evenings from Tuesday 28 April and run for 10 weeks (with a break for half term) until 7 July 2015. William Marsh from QMUL will be the tutor and all materials will be made available to course delegates at the start of the course.

The course dates are below, full course content information is available from our A-level CPD Computing page and tickets are available from Eventbrite.

You might also be interested in the new free material we’ve added to our section on Interdisciplinary Computational Thinking – lots of classroom activity sheets to download and other free resources.

 

Next A-level CPD course(s): Our next 10 week A-level CPD course will begin on Tuesday 28 April 2015.
Eventbrite - KCL: Summer 2015 - A-level Computing CPD - from Teaching London Computing

Fees
Our courses are reduced by 50% to £150 for London teachers, thanks to our funding, the full price for non-London teachers is £300 – please see our Fees and Funding page for more information. London teachers have priority on our courses.

Eligibility requirements
This course is a follow-on from our GCSE Computing CPD courses. The course assumes that you will be familiar with programming in Python or a similar language.

More information?
Please contact Jo Brodie (j.brodie@qmul.ac.uk)

Course dates: all on Tuesdays

Week 1: 28 April 2015
Week 2: 5 May 2015
Week 3: 12 May 2015
Week 4: 19 May 2015
Half-term: 26 May 2015 (no class)
Week 5: 2 June 2015
Week 6: 9 June 2015
Week 7: 16 June 2015
Week 8: 23 June 2015
Week 9: 30 June 2015
Week 10: 7 July 2015

Please sign-up to be kept informed of future courses.

 

 

 

 

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Paul Curzon’s doing two free workshops next Friday afternoon (20th) for Computing teachers in London cc @cs4fn

Paul Curzon’s free workshops, held at Queen Mary University of London’s Mile End campus, are fun and informal and support teachers who want to introduce programming concepts and computational thinking into the classroom in an engaging way. Each workshop is accompanied by downloadable classroom activities (also free) – these can be downloaded from the links below.

Next week’s (Friday 20th February) is a double session but you can choose to come to one workshop, or both.

The first workshop is at 2pm then there will be a half hour break with the second starting at 4pm, we aim to finish at 5.30pm.

Do I have to be a London computing teacher to attend?
The workshops are aimed at those who are currently (or who are about to begin) teaching the Computing curricula (particularly GCSE and A-level, though the information in the workshops has been used with younger children). As we’re funded by the Mayor of London we prioritise those who are currently teaching in London schools. The workshops are not suitable for school pupils though as the events are about how to introduce computing concepts into the classroom. Contact Jo Brodie (j.brodie@qmul.ac.uk) for further information.

Biography
Paul Curzon is a Professor of Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London. He runs the cs4fn ‘Computer Science for Fun’ (cs4fn) project, www.cs4fn.org. It aims to inspire school students about computer science through a series of free magazines, website and school shows. He regularly gives such shows around the UK as well as continuous professional development talks to teachers about the cs4fn approach to teaching. He is Director of the Teaching London Computing Project. He was made a UK National Teaching Fellow in 2010 in recognition of his excellence in teaching and outreach, was a finalist in the 2009 Times Higher Education Innovative Teacher of the year award and has twice won the student nominated Queen Mary award for excellence in teaching.

Workshop A:
Programming unplugged: learning programming without computers

2.00-3.30pm (free Eventbrite tickets)

Overview
It’s easy to assume that programming is something you have to learn at a computer but if you want your students to deeply understand programming concepts, rather than blindly getting programs to work then unplugged techniques can work really well to get students started. We will see how to program a robot face that is made of students, look at a simple way to give a deep understanding of how variables work by making them physical, and see how to compile programs onto your class instead of onto a computer.

Session material This session will cover:

  • Inspiring ways to introduce programming away from computers.
  • What is a variable?
  • How does assignment work?
  • Programming simple objects
  • Introducing flow of control and if statements

Workshop B:
Computational thinking: it’s about people too

4pm-5.30pm (free Eventbrite tickets)

Overview
Computing is not just about technology, it is about understanding people too. When we solve computing problems we are solving them for people. Computational thinking is the general group of problem solving skills that students learn as a result of studying computing. Often this is equated with algorithmic thinking – a direct result of learning to program. However it just as important to make programs usable by people – or they won’t be used. We will see how magic gives a fun way to introduce these ideas and how a simple game demonstrates why graphical user interfaces are effective.

This session is in collaboration with CHI+MED: an EPSRC-funded project about making medical devices safer.

Session material This session will cover:

  • computational thinking: understanding people
  • human computer interaction
  • why GUIs are better than text-based interfaces
  • The importance of data structures