In the ‘Online CPD’ section of this website, you’ll be able to access all of my short CPD YouTube videos on the primary computing curriculum.
This latest episodes tells you all you need to know about variables; what they are, how they work and how to teach them. I give some examples of variables in action using Scratch and some guidance on good practice on how to set them up within a project.
Please share this with your primary school teacher friends and let me have any feedback or suggestions.
If you work in a primary or secondary school, you should now be aware that there is a wealth of training available on the computing curriculum from the NCCE (National Centre for Computing Education). Some of it is available online, face to face or cluster/ conference meetings. You can find courses near you on the Teach Computing website.
I am promoting and delivering training for primary schools in the South, in particular schools in Portsmouth and Gosport. I’m happy to announce that we have just finalised the dates for KS1 and KS2 training for the Autumn term, in September and October. They are as follows:
11th September – Teaching and Leading KS1 Computing – day 1 17th September – Teaching and Leading KS2 Computing – day 1 25th September – Primary Programming and Algorithms 2nd October – Teaching and Leading KS1 Computing – day 2 3rd October – Teaching and Leading KS2 Computing – day 2
All hosted at Portsmouth University: 4th floor of the Future Technology Centre. 9.30 start 9am for tea/coffee and pastries .
Please remember we offer one free place to each primary school in Portsmouth and Gosport, on each course. A further £100 per day bursary is payable to the school, on successful completion of the CPD.
Remember I posted about these amazing year 6 crumble creations a while back? I did promise to show you more that were coming. Well take a look at these!
All of these were thought up, designed, built, wired and programmed by my amazing Year 6 students in Bitterne Manor Primary. I’m just so grateful for having the opportunity to have taught them computing from the beginning of Year 5, getting them to this stage where they can apply all of their programming and CAD skills, not to mention be ultra resilient and creative!
Did you know that there is currently a wave of training being offered to teachers on the computing curriculum? What’s more, some of you can actually get on it for free! (Or at least the heavily subsidised cost of only £35 each)
Part of my role as Subject Matter Expert for the NCCE (National Centre for Computing Education) is to promote training that is being rolled out in an effort to raise quality and consistency of computing teaching and learning across the UK.
My target area is all around the South Coast; if you are a teacher in a primary school and haven’t been offered this training, please get in touch with me straight away.
If you wish to browse courses that are available to you, or get your head teacher to sign you up and book you on, please visit the NCCE website.
If the training is on a date that you cannot make, please let me know as I can possibly arrange further training courses to commence anytime from now until October.
Please spread the word to all your primary and secondary colleagues; get back to me if you have any questions or suggestions!
Remember, even if you’re a primary school teacher but don’t teach computing, you soon may be required to! Plus, any training is great for your CPD…
Just for fun, but also to develop your Scratch skills, why don’t you join the competition/ collaboration and get Scratchin? Create a game that fits the brief, then have a look at the other entires. Whose game is the best? What skills did you learn? Whose code did you admire?
Follow all the action here! Started on Twitter:
So being a teacher and a @scratch geek, I love to have a play around. Would any other grown ups be up for a bit of a competition or collaboration, just for fun and to improve skills?
So I’ve set up a ‘Studio’ for the first brief, which is this:
Theme: Space, style: collection game (where you have to collect stuff around the screen), difficulty: enemies trying to stop you. I know it’s a bit cliche, but see how we go!).
When you’ve made your game, post it up in this Scratch Studio
Here is my attempt! Check it out, it’s imaginatively called ‘Space Junk Collector‘
Just wanted you all to see these, some more fabulous projects by my fabulous Year 6s, entirely planned, designed, built, wired and coded by them!
This just in!!!
I have to confess I “borrowed” the detector-bot idea when we were at BETT last week: a great way to show that the motor outputs aren’t just for buggies… pic.twitter.com/8vxb8uRjCP
