My return to the CAS Conference for its 9th year

After around five years of absence I returned to the 9th CAS Conference held in Birmingham today.

I was hoping for new ideas and a chance to catch up with people and I got both.

Now, cooling off in the garden with darkening skys (it is nearly 11pm) I have spent a few hours reflecting on the day…

The day started really well.  I boarded my train, bacon roll in hand, and made my way to my reserved seat to find none other than Phil Bagge sitting in the seat opposite.  Phil was one of the CAS people I met at my first CAS conference and I’ve pinched his ideas and shown his jam-sandwich-robot video to teachers ever since.  We had a lovely chat about work and life and I tagged along with Phil right up to the University.

The opening sessions were thought-provoking…

Mark Guzdial introduced us to three keys to improving computing teaching:

1. Prediction – the power of asking the pupils to make predictions help them understand and remember more
2. Sub goal labelling – making it obvious (almost decomposition) what we are doing
3. Instructional design

This gave me my first take-away – trying to include Sub Goal Labelling in future resources and planning

The first breakout was on CAS’s Project Quantum with Miles Berry.  Again someone I’ve known for years and who I’ve quoted and also used his YouTube videos around the new computing curriculum with teachers in the past.  One thing he mentioned that really got me thinking was about hinge points/questions after around 20 minutes of teaching was something new to me and a definite second take-away.

Taking time to check real understanding at appropriate times within a lesson before moving on is something I probably don’t conciously focus on enough.   Project Quantum was interesting, a quantatitive online bank of quiz questions that can be used to assess pupils knowledge and understanding of Computing, but currently heavily biased towards secondary.  It made me want to contribute more primary-level questions…

The second break-out I attended was with the aforementioned Phil Bagge and Mark Dorling.

They have been working on a project around attitudes.  What makes a good Computing Problem Solver…

Phil’s resources and animated explanation and description made me want to try these ideas out straight away (another take-away).  I will certainly be introducing them into my teaching from September, if not before.

After lunch I attended a rather poorly attended session on streamlining assessment using tablets.  Will Franklin took us through Formative, Socrative, Kahoot and Plickers also mentioning Google Forms and Class Kick.  Although there was little really new here for me, it did server to reaffirm my ideas and prompt me to spend some time developing Socrative particularly which also made me think a bit more about Hinge points too… so another take-away!

The final breakout I attended was with Steve Bunce and Mark Dorling (again).  This was a look at how to move pupils from a block-based language (Scratch) to a text-based language (such as Python) via something like Snap.

The plenaries in the afternoon started with Miles once more recapping Project Quantum, but with some interesting audience participation!

The Second plenary was a very interesting and engaging talk from Chris Ensor of the National Centre for Cyber Security who talked about his organisation’s changing role since World War 1 and the modern challenges.  He talked about how they are hoping to encourage and support a new generation of security experts (and programmers who understand the absolute need for code without holes) through things like the Cyber First bursary scheme.

The day was rounded off by a charming and highly engaging session from Linda Liukas.  She’s describes herself as an author, storyteller and computer scientist (and more).  Author of the growing “Hello Ruby” book series.  Her storytelling style had the whole lecture theatre of 300+ people spellbound despite the heat and left me with even more to think about (and an Amazon bill for books).  A superbly engaging way of introducing young children to Computer Science and I can’t wait to share it with a reception teacher I know!

Thank you CAS for a great event, thought provoking and invigorating (and excellent value).

Computing at School Hub meeting at Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes

The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) is based at Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes and provides opportunities for ‘learning’ at the Museum.

For almost a year TNMOC  have hosted visits from schools and colleges from across the UK in support of both Computing and ICT courses, mostly at GCSE and A level.

The TNMOC team are keen to develop the Museum to provide even better value for their student visitors and make TNMOC a positive choice as a visit for teachers and their students who are engaged in these learning programmes.

One of TNMOC’s actions has been to join CAS (Computing at School http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/ ) and become a CAS Hub for meetings with teachers across the region.   They feel the Museum is a useful and interesting place to meet and offers teachers a chance to see their Museum and feedback ways in which it can better help them in the delivery of their subject.   Their aim is to meet perhaps meet three times a year.

The first meeting is detailed at http://tinyurl.com/6blgmgz.  For part of the meeting they are planning to show the Museum to those attending and ask for their comments, ideas and feedback and begin perhaps a dialogue with teachers to improve the Museum over time.  TNMOC feel it is important that their collection is responsive to the needs of education in both Computing and ICT.

On the same day OCR are running their course at TNMOC: GCSE Computing (J275): Get started – an overview to help successful first delivery (http://tinyurl.com/5wxfk8u), they hope some of the OCR course attendees to stay on to the CAS meeting.

Teachers from Oxfordshire and surrounding areas are most welcome to join in http://tinyurl.com/6blgmgz