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…
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…
With todays announcement from Mr Gove it seems a good point to reflect on my first steps on a year long coding journey. I spent my Tuesday evening completing the first week of lessons on the brilliant CodeYear. It took me about an hour and a half and was a great little introduction to Javascript….
For the first time in about four years I won’t be visiting BETT this year in London. For the un-initiated BETT is an enormous educational technology trade show / conference held at Olympia in London each January. Things I’ll miss: Bumping into other educators I know from Twitter etc. Attending some of the fringe events…
Learn To Code Code Academy have set up Code Year. A lesson a week that over the course of the year will teach you how to code. Slate suggest each lesson will run to about 5 hours. Which is a hefty commitment. But I’ve signed up and will be encouraging learners at school to do…
The BBC along with Keri Facer at Manchester Metropolitan University are investigating the idea of a BBC Micro Mk2.0. For those of you who didn’t grow up in 80’s Britain, the BBC Micro was an Acorn computer, build for the BBC Computer Literacy Project and became the mainstay of early IT in almost every British school. An…