A date for your diary for schools that fall under the Park House Computing Hub (or beyond if you wish!), covering: Portsmouth, Gosport, Basingstoke, Newbury, Bracknell, Reading).
Wednesday September 22nd 2021: join myself and other experts for networking, advice, guidance and to share best practice in your computing curriculum.
Click here for more info: TeachMeet – Primary Computing Remote Session, hosted by Park House Computing Hub.
See you there!
I had the honour of authoring the KS2 Physical Computing course for the NCCE over the Spring and got to deliver the course for the first time this summer term!
The course aims to introduce teachers to the Crumble micro controller; a lovely piece of kit that is so open ended, pupils can create all kinds of robotic autonomous systems.
If you are interested in booking yourself on the course, have a look to see if there are any in your area:
Teach Computing: Introduction to Physical Computing – KS2 Crumble
If you want to know more in general about Physical Computing, have a look at my blog post:
Physical Computing: Where do I start?
Apart from having a lot to squeeze in to a short amount of time, the course was a great success and the participants (teachers from KS2 and KS3!) left with confidence to begin delivering physical computing lessons with their classes.
There will be more of these courses put on in the very near future; there will also be the opportunity to loan (for free) a class set of Crumble kits for your school from your local computing hub. Click here for more information: NCCE Physical Computing Kits for free hire
My fabulous Year 5 pupils have been busy applying their skills and knowledge to design their own robotic systems!
Following the 4 levels of abstraction (see below for links on my approach to physical computing), they have gone from design algorithm…
To coding…
To building and wiring…
To finally running the code and evaluating!!
I am so proud of them and their creativity!! Let’s hope this inspires pupils and teachers across the world!
If you’d like to read more and see other examples of pupil’s Crumble creations, please take a look at my approach to teaching Physical Computing.
The NCCE has released another quality training course, this time aimed at getting KS2 teachers started on Physical Computing:
Pupils should be taught to:
design, write and debug programs that accomplish specific goals, including controlling or simulating physical systems; solve problems by decomposing them into smaller parts
UK NATIONAL CURRICULUM – COMPUTING IN KEY STAGE 2 – 2013
The course is a 90 minute face to face workshop using Redfern’s Crumble kit and is free to attend for all primary state school teachers.
For teachers in the South East, there are three instances of the course on July 6th at Portsmouth University, starting at 10am, then again at 2pm, then finally at 4pm.
Please book on by singing in to the Teach Computing website and finding the right time for you:
Introduction to Physical Computing – Portsmouth University 10am
Introduction to Physical Computing – Portsmouth University 2pm
Introduction to Physical Computing – Portsmouth University 4pm
A Crumble kit and laptop with the programming software will be provided for all participants to use during the course.
If you would like to have a look at what physical computing looks like in primary, including examples of pupil’s projects, have a look at this blog post:
Book on here: Free Primary Computing Festival 9th July
On Friday 9th July, the West Country Computing Hub will be launching it’s Festival of Computing. A one-day, online conference for primary teachers from across the South West.Whether you’re leading computing in your school, or are new to the subject, the conference will cater for those in different positions with their provision of computing, with content for both key stage 1 and 2 teachers.
Free to attend, all content will be recorded and available for delegates to access after the event, providing the scope to revisit and focus on key concepts, or catch up on sessions you were unable to join.
With various strands to choose from, including coding, online safety and cross-curricular computing, teachers will be able to choose a pathway of workshops that is best suited to their individual needs and continuing professional development priorities.
It is our intention, to provide a wealth of inspiration for primary teachers to take back to their own classrooms!
