Many teachers have been utterly dismayed by the seemingly impossible demands of the new Programmes of Study for Computing. How can we all suddenly develop a wide range of new skills in Computing? Can our pupils, aged from only 5 years, really understand, write, and debug computer programmes? It seems an impossible task. But help is at hand…. And from a teacher of English, with no Computing training! (Though with some experience in using ICT.)
Lawrence Williams explains.
Did you know that today is International Ada Lovelace Day? Information about this, online poetry, journalism and novel writing, may be found in our latest newsletter. It’s a relatively short “interim” edition, but it’s still packed with lots of wholesome goodness!
Here’s the full list of contents:
If your students use iPads in lessons, what apps could you use in order to help them learn programming? In this article, Adam Foster, aka @iPadTeachers, describes his top 5 apps and how he selected them.
So, you'll be starting teaching soon, whether on teaching practice or in your first job. What should you try to find out in advance, as far as the education technology is concerned? Here is a general, though by no means definitive, list.
There are literally millions of free media resources for use in education. Theo Kuechel introduces some of them, with suggestions on how they might be used not only within the Computing curriculum but also more generally.
I was delighted to read, via an email from Terry, (our editor), that UNESCO has announced a World Day for Audiovisual Heritage to be held on the 27th of October this year. This timely initiative seeks to draw attention to the urgent need to preserve the worlds audiovisual heritage of film, television and sound recordings. Why this so important is graphically illustrated
Since the Government in England announced that Levels aren't fit for purpose, and so shouldn't be used, lots of people have come forward with their own ideas. With the old system of Levels, the description of each Level was given. You didn't have to think about what Level to give a student who could do certain things: all you had to do was look at the Level descriptors, find the one that was the best fit, and that was it: job done.
In his newsletter OLDaily, Stephen Downes has drawn attention to a blog post by Paul Bradshaw, entitled “The Great British Bake Off copyright grab: We can use your #ExtraSlice Twitter images but not give you credit”.
SMART Amp is an application designed to facilitate collaboration across a range of devices. Ellie Gregson, a Year 10 student, discusses what was good, and what was not so good, about its introduction into her lessons.
How do you assess project-based learning? John Partridge explains how he has approached this issue.
Kathryn Day describes how she and her colleagues have approached the teaching of the Computing Programme of Study in Suffolk, England.
In this series I’m going to be making some suggestions, putting out some ideas. These are based on presentations I’ve given. I can think of how these ideas, or their implications, might be applied in the classroom. However, I think it better if I stand back and let you do that part of the work!
I know that this is counterintuitive, but what if you devised an activity to teach programming or computational thinking, but instead of of just telling the kids what to do, you make them solve a problem first – by applying computational thinking or some elementary programming?
In this series I’m going to be making some suggestions, putting out some ideas. These are based on presentations I’ve given. I can think of how these ideas, or their implications, might be applied in the classroom. However, I think it better if I stand back and let you do that part of the work!
One of the most depressing things for me is the degree of conformity I come across.
The use of worksheets is often derided. You hear expressions like “death by a thousand worksheets”, and even a Government Education minister (now ex-Minister for Education) has weighed in, saying that teachers should use textbooks instead of worksheets [1].
Leaving aside the observation that how teachers teach is, in my opinion, none of the Government’s business – it’s the equivalent of telling doctors to use electronic blood pressure monitors rather than the manual kind – there are perfectly compelling reasons to use worksheets in the Computing classroom.
If you’re concerned that young children won’t be able to grasp computing concepts, or are worried about how you’re going to teach it, have a look around the Literacy from Scratch website.
Managed – and, I think, written by – Lawrence Williams, the website contains examples of pupils’ work in Scratch, cross-curricular ideas and examples, and notes on pedagogy.
This application is designed to teach Computing at Key Stages 1 and 2 (a more sophisticated version for older pupils is being worked on).
What struck me immediately on using it is the amount of guidance available, both in verbal form and videos. There is quite a large range of modules to choose from, including “Starter” ones which take you through the basics and, where appropriate, recapitulate what has already been learnt.
Code Academy is an online tutorial-based website for teaching yourself how to code. You can select which programming language you wish to learn, from the following list
As usual, I gave this application a workout without seeking help from a manual or anything like that – which is just as well because there does not seem to be a comprehensive manual.
There are three applications in one: JIT5, LOGO and Visual. This is quite useful because if you are familiar with LOGO but not JavaScript, you can start pupils coding in an environment that is familiar to you. Also, if you teach very young children, JIT5 is highly visual and colourful.
An advantage of J2Code as a whole over 2Code is that it covers the age range from Key Stage 1 (5-6 year olds) to Key Stage 3 (13-14 year olds).
Strangely enough, the most popular blog post on this website is 13 reasons to use educational technology in lessons. Why strange? Because I wrote it over three years ago. I re-read it recently, and (thank goodness!) I still agree with what I wrote all that time ago. I’d like to add more to it, but rather than do that I thought I would contribute to Mark Anderson’s series on this subject.(c) Terry Freedman All Rights Reserved