4 January 2016 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

CPD day for London computing teachers at the CAS London annual conference

Teaching London Computing’s Paul Curzon and William Marsh will be presenting at the CPD day for London computing teachers at this year’s CAS London conference, £25 for London teachers, £60 for those outside London (BOOK TICKETS). Read on for more information…

When: Saturday 27th February
Where: London (Gladesmore Community School, Crowland Rd, N15 6EB)
Tickets: £25 (London), £60 (elsewhere) – BOOK HERE
Event flyer: DOWNLOAD and please share with colleagues

Approximate timings of Paul’s and William’s sessions (note timings may change by +/- 10mins).

Paul Curzon
Unplugged Sorting algorithms – 10:00pm
Using Magic to teach computing – 2:30pm

William Marsh
Python Advanced GUI – 12:30pm
LMC 1 – Introduction Afternoon – 2:30pm

Here’s the information from CAS London about the conference –

CAS London’s Regional Conference, a day of CPD for primary and secondary teachers of computing

For those who need to gain confidence to teach programming, those who are brushing up on skills and those looking to find out about recent developments in computer science education.

HANDS ON Workshops, ready to use resources.

Select 4 x hour long workshops from 7 workstreams of more than 28 workshops.
Introductory and advanced programming on Scratch, Kodu, Python, Visual Basic, LMC, Java and more.
Pedagogy, assessment, exam boards, magic to teach algorithms, computational thinking, unplugged sorting …
Introductory physical computing with BBC Micro:bit, Raspberry Pi and Engduino.
Cross curriclar Maths and Scratch, DT and Crumbles.
Workshops led by Paul Curzon, Phil Bagge, Mark Dorling, Sue Sentance, Michael Kölling, Rob Leeman (OCR), Matt Walker (AQA) and many other leading CPD providers.

Nominal charge to cover lunch and admin.

We are funded by the Department for Education to support teachers in London, hence the reduced fee for London educators.

Teachers from further afield are very welcome, as are educators working with CLCs, boroughs and Coding Clubs.

Trainee teachers and University/ITT representatives are most welcome and also invited to attend.

At lunch time there will be a market place where voluntary groups, industry and other suppliers will be on hand to share their resources and ideas on careers, coding clubs, ed tech products etc.

If you would like to showcase at the market place please contact jane.waite@computingatschool.org.uk

About CAS London
CAS London, the Computing At School regional centre for London, is run by King’s College London and Queen Mary University of London. It co-ordinates CAS activity in London, supporting teachers of Computing through CAS Master Teachers, Hubs and Lead Schools.
Find out more about CAS and CAS London.

10 November 2015 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

[FREE] BBC micro:bit training for teachers at CAS East London Hub meeting

CAS East London Hub Meeting: BBC micro:bit training [tickets]

Thursday 19 November 2015 from 4:45- 6:15pm, Free.
East London Hub
City & Islington Sixth Form College

BBC micro:bit Training. Hands-on session teachers of year 7’s to find out about using the micro:bit. For further information: Ceinwen Hilton (ceinwen.hilton@candi.ac.uk)

PROGRAMME

Time	Topic
16:45	Registration and Refreshments
17:00	Introduction
17:15	Practical
18:00	Feedback

Tickets for this event (free)

18 September 2015 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

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).

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

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

22 July 2015 by Jo Brodie - 2 Comments

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.

30 June 2015 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

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.’

23 June 2015 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

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]

15 June 2015 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

OCR A453 Arithmetic Assessment using Python – Islington, 24 June

Please note: This is not a Teaching London Computing event but we occasionally share examples of others’ courses that we think our readers might find interesting.

Note that Teaching London Computing has a miniCPD session on Controlled Assessment with Python on Saturday 27 June 2015 from 10am to 4pm (£30 for London teachers, £60 for those outside London)

Dear Computer and ICT teachers,

We will be hosting CPD course for teachers delivering the OCR Computer Science Specification. The course based on delivering the OCR A453 Arithmetic Assessment using Python .

Venue: Islington Arts and Media School
Date: 24 June 2015
Time: 9:00 – 16:00
Cost : £100
Limited places available. The course will be delivered by David Batty from Code College.

Booking
Telephone 01772 454328 (10am to 10pm – 7 days a week)
Email courses@codecollege.co.uk
More information

Details of the course are below:
OCR A453 Arithmetic Assessment using Python

This in-school cpd course (for teachers only!) builds on your existing Python programming skills by teaching you how to break down a large task and, with stepwise refinement, build a fully working solution to a larger task.

This course will teach you, step by step, how to plan and write a solution for the OCR A453 Material 2 Arithmetic controlled assessment using the Python programming language.

This is not just giving you a possible solution to the task, on this one day course you will learn how to approach the task like a programmer, and be guided through each section as you plan, design and code a completed solution using nothing higher than GCSE level Python.

Participants will gain the skills needed to think like a programmer and to see how to write a complex task easily. At the end of the day you will understand the software development techniques teachers need to teach in the classroom prior to pupils starting the controlled assessment.

Although you are guided through every part of the project, course attendees will need existing Python skills. This course is ideal for teachers who have attended our two day Python course or who are quite confident in their Python programming skills, but are struggling to understand how to design and write the controlled assessment.

At the end of this one day course, you will have a working solution to the controlled assessment, you will understand how it was put together and how it all works. What is more important is that you will understand the skills your students need to complete the assessment and you will know how to teach students to approach designing and writing larger projects like the controlled assessment.

Obviously you cannot share this solution with pupils or teach them how to write it, but having written it yourself from scratch (with the tutors guidance) you will feel more confident when choosing how to guide students towards the skills needed to gain good grades with this assessment.

The course is delivered by David Batty of Code College who has 24 years of classroom experience deliver computing courses and 33 years experience as a professional programmer.

10 June 2015 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

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].

for a place on the Monday 29 June free workshop.

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

22 May 2015 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

Two free Computing workshops for London teachers on Tuesday 26 May @QMUL / @QMEECS

We have another two workshops happening next week, on the afternoon of Tuesday 26 May, at Queen Mary University of London. Both are free and you are welcome to attend either or both (but you will need to register for each separately) – there is a half hour break between the two workshops.

Thanks to funding from the Mayor of London we are able to offer these workshops at no charge but we do prioritise London Computing teachers though other Computing teachers are welcome too. The workshops are not suitable for school pupils however.

For more information please contact Jo Brodie (j.brodie@qmul.ac.uk)

The workshops below are named ‘2’ and ‘3’ as they are part of a series of three, however the first one “Explorers need maps: Abstraction, Representations and Graphs” (last Monday) has finished but the information and slides are available on the workshop website.

Workshop QMUL2: Tue 26 May 2015, 1.30 to 3pm

Primary Computing Unplugged

Overview

Computing doesn’t need to be taught at a computer and in fact to get across key concepts it is often better (and more fun) not to. This is especially true of the early stages of learning programming and computing more generally. A core idea behind the new computing syllabus is computational thinking. We will give you a deeper understanding of computational thinking and give practical ways to teach both it and other computing topics such as programming away from computers. Computational thinking is a fundamental skill set that students learn by studying computing. We will demonstrate a range of activities that show how core ideas and concepts can be introduced using fun unplugged activities and games. We will show that computing can be fun for everyone and that it doesn’t have to be taught at a computer.

Session material

This session presents a variety of activities from the other workshops. It will cover:

What is Computational Thinking?
Inspiring ways to teach Computational Thinking.
What is an algorithm
Writing your first program

for Workshop 2 – Primary computing unplugged
More information about this workshop on our page for Primary computing unplugged.

Workshop QMUL3: Tue 26 May 2015, 3.30 to 5pm

The Magic of Computer Science

Overview

When you learn to be a magician, it turns out you are learning the skills needed to be a great computer scientist too: computational thinking. Just like software, magic is a combination of algorithms and presentation. In this workshop we will demonstrate some simple to do but strong magic tricks. We teach the group how they are done so they can do the tricks themselves and then use the magic to illustrate the linked basics of computing. Overall we will show what computational thinking is all about and how both magicians and computer scientists rely on it.

Session material

This session will demonstrate a variety of activities from the other workshops. It will cover:

What is Computational Thinking?
Inspiring ways to teach Computational Thinking using easy to learn magic tricks.

for Workshop 3 – The magic of computing
More information about this workshop on our page for The magic of computing.

9 April 2015 by Jo Brodie - 0 comments

miniCPD – one day Controlled Assessment and Programming skills (Sat 2 May)

One of the things we try and do is vary the format of our courses so that we can offer something to suit as many teachers as possible. Some prefer weekly classes, others prefer intensive week-long, some are able to take a day from work for study, others aren’t. One thing teachers have asked us for is help with controlled assessments and so we’re trying out new ‘miniCPD’ one-day sessions.

The first will be on Saturday 2 May and will be held at King’s College London (Waterloo Campus). The cost for the day will be £30 for London teachers thanks to funding from the Mayor of London (£60 for non-London teachers). The miniCPD course will run from 10-4pm.

The new one day course ‘Preparing Pupils for Controlled Assessment‘ uses Python to program solutions to problems of a similar type to those set in GCSE Controlled Assessments. The aim is to make teachers feel confident about tackling these problems and programming solutions themselves, so that they can pass their knowledge, experience and confidence on to their pupils. Teachers should already have some knowledge of the basics of Python; strings, arithmetic, ‘if statements’ and loops. This is not a course for complete beginners.

About us

Teaching London Computing, is a successful partnership between Queen Mary University of London’s Computer Science Department and King’s College London’s Computing Education team which has been running courses and workshops for the past two years helping Computing and ICT teachers to deliver the new Computing Curricula at GCSE and A-level.

Teaching London Computing: A RESOURCE HUB from CAS LONDON & CS4FN

Category Archives: Computer Science curriculum