This is the full text of the 10th newsletter which I (Jo B) email to all the UK teachers on our Teaching London Computing subscription list. Despite the name we support teachers across the UK and our resources can be freely downloaded by anyone anywhere in the world.

Details in the text below on how you can sign up if you’re reading this for the first time and would like to get the emailed version in future. It’s all free :)

 

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Dear colleagues

Welcome to the June 2022 Teaching London Computing newsletter, our tenth (previous newsletters live here).

We have a few free London events coming up in June and July, a new issue of CS4FN imminent, and our big news is that Paul Curzon has been awarded an EPSRC grant for his work on public engagement with computer science. This will also allow us to expand the A Bit of CS4FN project for primary schools.

For new subscribers – Teaching London Computing (TLC) supports computing educators with free classroom resources and events and is a sister project to Computer Science 4 Fun (CS4FN), a free computing magazine (and website) to enthuse young people about computer science. CS4FN was founded in 2005 by Profs Paul Curzon and Peter McOwan (who died in 2019).

1. New issue of CS4FN – issue 28

Cunning Computational Contraptions is the 28th issue of CS4FN, our free computing magazine for schools. It’s currently on its way to the printers before being distributed to our UK school subscribers (not a subscriber? Fill in your details using the purple form here). This issue is about contraptions with links to computation, if not always computers themselves, and looks at the history of computing. The magazine will be online shortly, before the print copies land, so please keep your eyes on the link above.

 

2. Events (all are free)

2a. Barts and Queen Mary Virtual Science Festival 2022
Friday 10 June (10 – 4pm)

[Online] A family-friendly science festival for older secondary school children. This year’s festival will feature short live talks as well as fun website activities. Paul will be giving a half-hour talk at 3pm this Friday, on good medical device design and how computer scientists can help.

Contact sciencefestival@qmul.ac.uk to register your class, see the festival website, and our own page about it.

 

2b. QMUL Festival of Communities
Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th June (11.30 – 4.30pm)

[In person] Our university (QMUL) hosts an annual free family-friendly event for our local communities in Tower Hamlets (everyone’s welcome though!) – no tickets, just turn up.

We’re excited to be back at the festival this year (after Covid) on the Saturday (only) with our stall in Stepney Green Park. We’ll have our ‘make a cyborg hat’ and ‘colour in a computer zine’ activities for younger visitors and Paul will be giving a talk on The Magic of Computer Science at noon, as well as doing some close-up table magic at the stall.

Find out more at our blog post and on QMUL’s Festival of Communities page.

 

2c. Discovery: Humans and Machines
Wednesday 6 July (9.45 – 2pm), QMUL Mile End

[In person] This is a free event, for A level Computing students (with their teachers registering them), jointly run between Isaac Computer Science and colleagues in the Computer Science department (EECS) at QMUL. We’ve now reached capacity (~100) but there is a waiting list.

Paul will be giving the keynote talk exploring “how programmers can prevent medical error with good interaction design”.

Find out more at Isaac Computer Science’s event page, and our blog post.

 

2d. Festival of Play, from Digital Schoolhouse and Electronic Arts
Guildford: Friday 8th July 2022
Salford: Wednesday 13th July 2022

A new creative careers and Computing conference for students aged 8-15 in association with Electronic Arts to showcase the breadth and depth of roles available in the UK games industry. Book your free tickets.

 

3. EPSRC ICT Public Engagement Champion

Paul has been awarded funding from the EPSRC for three years as one of 5 newly appointed ICT Public Engagement Champions. The grant will enable him to produce another three issues of our ‘mini CS4FN’ magazine for primary aged children (A Bit of CS4FN) and an issue of CS4FN focusing on diversity in computing for secondary schools on diversity. These and other events planned will empower teachers to champion computer science in their own classrooms. The funding will also enable him to support academic computing researchers (at QMUL and beyond) in embedding public engagement into their work.

You can read more about it in our blog post and see the original call for applicants.

 

4. Ofsted – Research review series: Computing education literature review (16 May 2022)

Ofsted have published a review of research into factors that influence the quality of computing education in schools in England. “Its purpose is to identify factors that can contribute to high-quality school computing curriculums, assessment, pedagogy and systems. We will use this understanding of subject quality to examine how computing is taught in England’s schools.” Ofsted will (later) publish a subject report to share what they have learned. Both Paul Curzon’s and Jane Waite’s research has been included in this review.

View the research review document and see what people have said about it on Twitter (main landing page, or about the report itself)

 

5. CS4FN blog: Lego Computer Science

Paul Curzon has been writing a series of blog posts on using Lego as a tool to understand and teach computing.

Part 1: Lego Computer Science: pixel pictures
Part 2: Lego Computer Science: compression algorithms
Part 3: Lego Computer Science: representing numbers
Part 4: Lego Computer Science: representing numbers using position
Part 5: Lego Computer Science: Gray code

 

Follow us on Twitter @cas_london_crc or @cs4fn.

 

 

Welcome to our first newsletter of 2019 (previous editions live here). It contains a mix of free resources from our Teaching London Computing website and pointers to some other resources and information which we hope you find useful.

If a colleague has forwarded this email to you and you’d like to receive a copy of the newsletter in future please use the orange form on this page.

Table of contents

1. Free course on teaching networks from Techpathways London
2. New free resources from TLC – Valentine’s Day pseudocode poems and Happy Times cards
3. Diversity in Computing posters
4. NCCE Hubs – apply for your school to be 1 of 40 Hubs in England
5. Discount code for The Power of Computational Thinking
6. Applications open (for Sep 2019) to join Digital Schoolhouse
7. QMUL is part of the Institute of Coding (IoC)
8. LGBT History Month
9. Royal Society funding for schools’ STEM projects

 

1. Free course on teaching networks from Techpathways London

QMUL is jointly running TechPathways London which is a new programme of free training and professional development for (formal and informal) educators of London’s young people aged 11-24.

Sign up here for a FREE course on 28 June 2018 on networking. This is for any teacher who teaches networks to learners of 11 to 24 years of age. Educators from non-formal settings who teach this topic are welcome too. This is a 1.5 day course split over Autumn and Summer terms, download a flyer for more. We expect this to sell out as only 15 places are available.

What digital skills do people need? Techpathways London survey for educators

In order to support educators to better equip their students to enter the digital workforce we (QMUL, CS4FN, Teaching London Computing and London CLC) are working with the Mayor of London to develop some CPD material and would like to hear from teachers/educators and people from industry in London to help us shape, and benchmark this.

• Survey for London educators

(There’s also a survey for industry people too, more information here).

 

2. New free resources from TLC

Valentine’s Day pseudocode poems & Happy Times cards

Pseudocode poems
Created by Paul Curzon, pseudocode poems are poems that work both as an algorithm/program and as a poem. They incorporate sequencing, selection or repetition constructs and other kinds of statements. You can implement them as an actual program – see what you think of our poems and have a go with your class to create some other ones https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/pseudocode-poems/.

As it’s Valentine’s Day on Thursday how about some Valentine Computing.

Happy Times
Created with Paul’s son Daniel ‘Happy Times’ is a fun Happy families / Rummy style card game where you collect sets of cards in the same times table to win. Playing helps younger children learn about the fun of numbers with a focus on times tables, multiplication, division and prime numbers. It also helps young children start to gain an understanding of the patterns in numbers. This is part of our expanding range of interdisciplinary computational thinking pages which cover the links between CT and other subjects, or look for Mix subjects in our website’s main menu.

 

3. Diversity in Computing posters

We have a set, free to download, of 30 ‘Diversity in Computing’ posters featuring a range of computer scientists from different backgrounds. There’s also a powerpoint slide stack of the posters which could be used as a looping presentation. We’ve had some lovely feedback from teachers about them and we’d love to know what you think of them. Jane Waite, their creator, wrote about the thinking behind them here https://equalities.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/2019/01/16/posters-celebrating-diversity-in-computer-science/

 

4. NCCE Hubs – apply for your school to be 1 of 40 Hubs in England

“The National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) invites proposals from interested parties to become one of around 40 Computing Hubs in England, supporting the work of the NCCE to July 2022. The final number will be determined by the need to provide a geographical spread across England, and will lead the delivery of computing CPD in local areas.”

If your school would like to become one of the 40 NCCE Hubs you’ll need to get your tender application in by 25th February 2019.

There are three Hub levels, find out more in the specification document and full application information available from https://www.stem.org.uk/opportunities-tender

 

5. Discount code for The Power of Computational Thinking

Paul Curzon and Peter McOwan’s book featuring “Games, magic and puzzles to help you become a computational thinker” published by World Scientific has a 30% discount code WSTPOCT30, available from https://doi.org/10.1142/q0054. Hardcover £48, softcover £20 before discount.

 

6. Applications open (for Sep 2019) to join Digital Schoolhouse

Ukie’s Digital Schoolhouse uses play-based learning to engage the next generation of pupils and teachers with the Computing curriculum. They are looking to expand their network of 34 Schoolhouses to total 50 across the country. The programme aims to reach 25,000 students and 5,000 teachers in 2019 and schools and colleges from across the country are invited to join them. More information in this PDF, and from their website. Applications close on 31 March 2019.

7. QMUL is part of the Institute of Coding (IoC)

The Institute of Coding (IoC) is an exciting, new nationwide initiative, bringing together a range of universities, industry, and training providers to develop computing skills for a rapidly changing and increasingly digital workplace.

We have an IoC page on our main departmental website outlining new events and courses coming up. There are a couple of 3-day ‘Introduction to Coding’ courses in June (registration isn’t open yet but keep an eye on the page).

11-13 June | 18-20 June 2019
Introduction to Coding
Join our beginner-friendly coding course. No prior coding knowledge needed! Registration opens soon.

 

8. LGBT History Month

To help your class celebrate LGBT History Month we have some information on LGBT computer scientists, also on that page is a link to a PDF version of the 14th issue of CS4FN magazine, which celebrated Alan Turing’s work and influence on computing.

 

9. Royal Society funding for schools’ STEM projects

Partnership Grants of up to £3000 are available to schools to enable students, aged 5–18, to carry out science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) projects with a STEM professional from academia or industry. Additionally we are looking to support projects on computing and data science. (emphasis added) The round will remain open until the end of the month for initial expressions of interest (Stage 1). Once the project has cleared the eligibility stage, teachers have until the end of March to submit their full application.

To find out more please visit the Royal Society’s website or contact the Education Outreach Team.

 

If you’d like to receive a copy of the newsletter in future please use the orange form on this page.

 

 

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