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Computing at School

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About the CAS Hub

Suffolk One in association with Kesgrave High School runs the South Suffolk Secondary Computing at School Hub.  As a Lead School in the Network of Excellence for teaching Computer Science, we actively along with our partners support the growth of studying Computer Science.

Previous Meetings and Resources

Previous Meetings

CAS Hub Meeting

Wednesday 20th April 2016

Grant Abbitt (Suffolk One) - Games Development using Unity

Grant Abbitt is our in-house expert on Unity and teaches on our Games Design course. He gave an introduction into Games Development using Unity.

AOB

We are looking to hold the next meeting during the Summer Term with a more traditional show and tell. The annual CAS Conference is being held at the University of Birmingham on the 18th June. Tickets are £40 per person and can be booked via the EventBrite.

CAS Hub Meeting

Wednesday 4th November 2015

Grant Abbitt (Suffolk One) - 3D Modelling using Blender

Grant Abbitt is our in-house expert on 3D Modelling and teaches on our Games Design course. He gave an introduction into 3D Modelling using Blender.

AOB

Google are currently running an online learning course for teaching 'Computational Thinking' concepts. This course is running until the 20th December 2015.

Recent news story in relation to the scrapping of the GCSE and A Level ICT courses.

The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. Anyone, anywhere can organise an Hour of Code event. One-hour tutorials are available in over 30 languages. No experience needed. Runs from the 7th to the 13th December 2015.

CAS Hub Meeting

Wednesday 20th May 2015

Rob Leeman (OCR) - GCSE and A Level Computing Changes

Rob Leeman, a subject specialist for OCR GCSE and A Level Computing presented the upcoming changes to the various qualifications and fielded many questions from teachers. Rob also discussed Codio, a web based IDE platform to aid in the teaching of programming which includes many programming examples by OCR. Draft GCSE Computing Specifications are due to be published by exam boards on the 28th May 2015.

The OCR Computing team can be contacted at: ComputerScience@ocr.org.uk.

Dr Nicky Hughes (County Upper School) - Google Classroom (Show and Tell)

Nicky has embarked upon using Google Classroom with all her classes. Google Classroom is part of the Google Apps for Education and is a tool that helps teachers create and organise assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and easily communicate with their classes.

Dru Watts (East Bergholt High School) - Kahoot (Show and Tell)

Dru spoke about and shared her experiences of using Kahoot in the classroom. Kahoot is a free and easy interactive tool for creating quizzes and surveys. Dru showcased some example quizzes and demonstrated how to set up and run a quiz.

John Hughes (Suffolk One) - Master Document (Show and Tell)

John shared his Master Document as a way of getting his students to organise their work for the AS F451 Computing Fundamentals exam. Student paste work in the relevant section throughout the year as they make their way through the specification and course content. At the end of the year students have a full set of organised revision notes!

AOB

We are looking to hold the next meeting during the Summer Term with a focus on using Code Academy in the classroom.

CAS Hub Meeting

Wednesday 22nd October 2014

Pat Hughes - Barefoot Computing

Pat spoke about all things Barefoot and how they are helping colleagues in primary schools get to grips with the new Computing Curriculum. Resources are free and can be downloaded from the website. Secondary colleagues may wish to use them at KS3. More details and resources about the Barefoot programme please visit: http://barefootcas.org.uk.

Kelly Abbott (Kesgrave High School) - Baseline Testing and Levelling

Kelly shared Kesgrave High School's approach to baseline testing of students when they enter their school in Year 7. They have split the Computing curriculum into three strands: 'Algorithms and Programming', 'Data and Data Representation' and 'Software, Hardware and Communication' and written level descriptors accordingly.

Chris Fenner (Suffolk One) - Socrative

Chris is a PGCE student who is training to be a Computing teacher. He shared his experiences and gave a demonstration of how he uses Socrative in class as an assessment tool. More information can be found at: http://www.socrative.com.

Matthew Applegate - Creative Computing Club

Matthew is a distinguished programmer in the local community and talked about Creative Computing Club. More information about the club can be found on their website: http://www.creativecomputingclub.com.

Pat Hughes - Ofsted and the Computing Curriculum

Pat talked through a recent presentation given by the National Lead for Computing (David Brown HMI) at the Barefoot Computing Conference. It included what they are expecting to see not only in the classroom and across the school as whole. In particular the drive on e-Safety.

AOB

Kelly Abbott and Dr Nicky Hughes are local CAS Master Teachers for the area and are actively looking to run training sessions. If you have any needs you can contact Kelly at kabbott@kesgrave.suffolk.sch.uk and Nicky at n.a.hughes@bt.com.

There are still places available at for CoSpace at BT Adastral Park.

The next meeting will be 'Show and Tell'.

Workshop Resources

Python Workshops

Dr Nicky Hughes (CAS Master Teacher) kindly ran some Python workshops in the Spring Term of 2014. Please find below a copy of the resources used during the four week course.

Workshop 1

Workshop 2

Workshop 3

Workshop 4