Tag Archives: unplugged activities

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New free activity: The Emotion Machine – ready to download and print, with instructions

Computing teachers might find this useful, newly published on our website.

Emotion Machine bThe Emotion Machine

Age group: 7 – 12
Abilities assumed: None
Time: 40-60 minutes
Size of group: 1 upwards

Focus
• Programming
• Sequences
• Low-level code and high-level commands
• Compilers and interpreters
• Abstraction
Summary
Students create and program a 2D robot made of card to show different emotions. They create a table that can be used to translate emotions (high level commands) into low level machine instructions.

robot pdf

Click to download the PDF. Click the link above to visit the info page for instructions.

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Two CPD Computing courses starting next week and another two free workshops with Paul Curzon

Happy New Year to all our readers :)

I’m delighted to announce that Paul Curzon will be running another two workshops in January and free tickets (via Eventbrite) will go live soon, but in the meantime please make a note of these dates.

Workshops (free)
The first will be on Monday 19 January from 5.30pm to 7pm, on Computational thinking: searching to speak. The second will be on Monday 26 January at the same time with the workshop title to be confirmed.

Edited
Tickets for the first workshop are now live.

CPD Computing courses (not free)
We’ve two different short courses beginning next week.

The first course is £300 (or £150 for London teachers thanks to subsidised funding from the Mayor of London). The second is £1,000 (£500 for London teachers).

And… while we have your attention – we’re keen to find out more about what people want from training courses, please could you help by answering our survey? Thank you.

***London Computing teachers*** – please fill in our short survey
We would like to understand more about the training needs that Computing teachers in London have and we’ve developed a short survey to help us find out more. If you are a Computing teacher based in London your participation will be very helpful. There’s an opportunity to sign up for class sets of free booklets once you’ve completed the survey which should take no more than five minutes to complete.

Please visit http://bit.ly/TLCsurvey2015a to take part in our survey and pass this link on to colleagues.

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What’s happening at Teaching London Computing this week? – free workshop, job vacancy closing

1. Free workshop – Monday 3 March 2014
Prof Paul Curzon will be running the third in his four-part series of FREE workshops for computing teachers in London. The talk starts at 5.30pm, at Queen Mary University of London (nearest tubes Stepney Green and Mile End, or 25 and 205 buses).

Programming unplugged: learning programming without computers is an inspiring free unplugged session on introducing computing concepts into the classroom.

“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.”

Paul’s next workshop, on Computational Thinking: it’s about people too, will be the last in this series, though the talks will be repeated. Free tickets for the event, on Monday 17 March 2014, are now available if you want to book a place.

2. Job vacancy closing – Tuesday 4 March 2014
We’re looking for a research assistant / postdoctoral research assistant to help us develop our teaching support resources and evaluate them. The job is based at Queen Mary University of London (Mile End campus).

3. Looking ahead to April – a new short CPD course
We’ll be running another CPD course for London computing teachers, at King’s College London. “Computing CPD GCSE one week Easter 2014” runs from Monday 7 to Friday 11 April 2014 and tickets are available from King’s website. They cost £150 for London teachers (who are eligible for a 50% discount thanks to our funding) and cost £300 for non-London teachers, if space is available.

 

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New free workshop: Learning programming without computers

Prof Paul Curzon is currently running a series of free workshops for London computing teachers on Monday evenings (every second Monday) at Queen Mary University of London (QML). The next free session Learning programming without computers will take place on Monday 3 March at 5.30pm (registration from 5pm) in The Bancroft Building, Mile End campus.

Lego laptop

“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.”

For more information please visit the workshop’s information page: Learning programming without computers, and you can register for a free ticket using the Eventbrite button below.

Eventbrite - [Free workshop] Learning programming without computing for the free session on Monday 3rd March 2014, 17:30-19:00 (registration and refreshments from 5pm).

About us
Teaching London Computing is a joint project between QML and King’s College London (KCL), with support from Computing At School (CAS). We are supporting London computing teachers with a variety of classroom resources (free) and programming CPD courses for computing teachers (£150 for London teachers, £300 for others if space is available). We’re funded by the Mayor of London and Department for Education to provide this support.