Assessing without levels – Milestones At our school we took the decision last Summer to embrace the opportunities available to move away from National Curriculum levels. Our approach isn’t revolutionary, but I think it’s worth sharing. Background I personally felt that there were numerous issues with the old NC levels. They were not as well…
Back in September I was keen to get the Computing teaching community to work together to write a bank of high quality multiple choice questions. In fact, rather poorly, it was the last thing I wrote on this blog! Head back to see why I think that good quality MCQs can be an invaluable part…
A plea to teachers of Computing GCSE, please join an effort to write a bank of high quality multiple choice questions to support the teaching of this course. Why multiple choice questions? There is an increasing body of research and writing showing that skilfully written multiple choice questions are an effective means of developing retention….
April the 16th is the deadline for responses to the Draft National Curriculum Programmes of Study. Much has been written and said about the creation of the Computing nee ICT programme of study and it’s creation process. I’ve written myself around the topic a number of times over it’s journey from the Nesta report to…
Probably worth reading my last post about the disapplication of the previous ICT Program of Study and our plans to take it’s place at KS3 before proceeding with this one. So what have we done in the 4 months since my last post? Our fabulous ICT Department have thrashed out what we believe to be…
The title sounds like a nasty affliction – but I actually want to describe a great lesson! I was looking for a nice challenge for my Year 9 Computing class to continue developing their understanding of variables, if statements and loops – ideally moving on to nested statements and loops. As ever Twitter came to…
I have the pleasure of teaching two great Year 9 classes this year. One is a fabulous Maths group that I have taught for the past two years, another is an ICT taster class (we have brought taster options into Year 9 this year, allowing students to get a taster of KS4 courses – this…
There has been much said about the subject of ICT in secondary schools since Michael Gove spoke at BETT. I wrote with some excitement the day after, actually praising Mr Gove for once in my life! Excited with the potential freedom and with an idea to leave National Curriculum levels behind and look towards a…
I attended Alan O’Donohoe’s excellent Hack To The Future event at Our Lady’s High School in Preston on Saturday with 13 of our students, many of whom are on our GCSE Computing course. There were many highlights, in particular I should mention Freaky Clown and his tales of a hacker turned good. I won’t repeat…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock today I’m assuming you’ll have seen some excitable headlines followed by a more detailed speech about the future of technology in education in the UK and in particular the future of the subject of ICT. In a nutshell Mr Gove has scrapped the ICT curriculum, whilst keeping ICT…