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Dec 16 2020

Making Computer Science career pathways explicit at KS3 – and boosting

Overview:
This is a Year 9 curriculum with a unique introductory careers unit “wrapping” around units from the NCCE and PGOnline. I am doing several talks in 2020 with Abbie Smy (Stem Ambassador Engagement Officer) and sharing the resources with colleagues – see here for details.

These are a selection of Year 9 posters showing seven Computer Science career pathways

Introduction:
Has anyone thought yet about Year 9 options evening this year?   I do – frequently – as I know that it is the key event of the year when I can influence the views of students and parents about options at KS4.  During the last few years I used to think we had it covered with a presentation and a video for all classes in the week before Options Evening in March.   Then talks on the evening with research data from the current year 11,  and everything would be sorted.   And it worked OK, with a decent take up each year for Computer Science in Year 10.  

And a few years ago I was asked to curate a set of  Computing Careers resources for the National Stem Centre –  and nearly a hundred curated links are now available here.  Seeing the range and calibre of resources out “there” got me thinking that  a computing department should be explicit about the potential career pathways available, and the strategic approach should be to make these explicit throughout Year 9, and probably even earlier.  

A recent post from *Dave Gibbs “Why waste years? Let’s inspire careers!” makes the point that “Computing for 11-14 year olds is important in its own right” but also that it is needed “to support recruitment to 14-16 qualifications for all learners…”.

Resources:
The introductory unit highlights that the majority of emerging jobs in the next 5 years are to do with computing. It then goes through seven of the featured career pathways, with interesting video clips and activities, with students then researching and creating posters of the ones they find most interesting. We then give feedback on the posters and put them on the wall.

In addition, we also have access to first rate KS3 resources from the NCCE and the RPF.  Here is our outline KS3 scheme of learning.

So, as a department, I have set out this year (2021-22) to embed careers into Year 9, starting with introductory lessons to make explicit the following career pathways:

  • Software Developer
  • Cyber Security Analyst
  • Machine learning engineer (/Artificial Intelligence)
  • Data Scientist
  • Web Designer
  • Computer Games Developer
  • Network Engineer
  • and Teacher!

We then pick out various units through the year to exemplify the knowledge, skills and understanding involved with each.

9_1 Computing Careers.

Bebras competition.

9_2 Software Engineer NCCE Y9 Python Half a term seeing prowess with Python s(et up on trinket.io) or code.org. 

Term 2:
9_3 Artificial Intelligence x6 leading up to options eve for inspiration.  Mixture of PGOnline Unit then 3 lessons buggies (include sensors)

9_4 Data Scientist (x5? L1 used in intro – adjust depending on )

Term 3:
9_5 Cybersecurity – Networks x2 Hardware / then Cybersecurity (inc L5 Risks, Defence applied to school network)
Y9 Exam?
9_6 Games developer x6 NCC Mobile App Development 


** 27/9/20 – I have just added a two lesson Y8 version with a list of extension videos:

***29/6/21 Further development for teaching 21-22.

*“Why waste years? Let’s inspire careers!” Dave Gibbs 21 September 2020

By Chris Sharples • Careers, Posts, Teaching •

Oct 27 2020

Will it make the Boat Go Faster? Out-learning, not out-working…

I wanted to motivate my Year 11s in my new school after a difficult Year 10. I have been listening to the BBC podcast “Don’t Tell Me The Score” for a couple of years now, where Simon Mundie asks “What can sport teach us about life and how best to live it?”. The story behind many of the podcasts are inspirational, and I was going to use several – including “Facing Fear” by Gareth Thomas – in assemblies.

However, I wanted to introduce my Year 11s to Growth Mindset, and give them a framework to show that they should believe in working hard (performance) and not worry about exam results. So I chose Clarity by Ben Hunt-Davis, broadcast during lockdown on 16 Apr 2020. In the interview, Ben tells how he and his rowing team chose to work smarter and with a very clear and precise goal to get better at what they were doing. In their case rowing to win a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics… hence the question – Will it make the Boat Go Faster?

I was rewarded at the recent sixth form options evening having one of my Y11s clearly explain to her Mum that her objective was to work hard and get better at learning rather than aim for a particular grade next year…

You can listen to the podcast here, with highlighted sections below; the video of the Olympics final here; and buy the book here.

Choice sections:

19.40 We thought that resilience was going to be really important.

20.15 The goal became far, far more focussed. We became pretty ruthless about making sure everything we did was helping take us in that direction. But we couldn’t control whether we won or not. We have no control over how fast The Aussies, Germans, Americans, Dutch, anyone else in the world were going to go. All we could do do is control how fast we went, our boat speed.

22.55 We started doing things differently in October 98. Rowing like most sports is about rhythm and timing. Our first regatta was in Belgium in May, a World Cup regatta and we hadn’t done any work on starts, or race sharpness. We just wanted to generate the right rhythm for the middle of the race. Our goal was 1800m at this rhythm. We finished and people were shouting at us and we didn’t know what we had done wrong. We had come second! We realised then that concentrating on the performance stuff could work.

24.40 We worked incredibly hard on learning. We worked really hard on a learning culture. We were not going to out-work people, but we needed to out-learn people every day.

By Chris Sharples • Good Practice, Gr8ComputerScienceTeachingIdeas, Learning, Pedagogy •

May 12 2020

Launch of gr8computing ideas… May 2020-

Welcome!

We really do live in extraordinary times for computing education and opportunities. There are so many computing ideas bouncing around the ether at the moment, all vying for our attention…

Don’t get me wrong… I am in awe of the explosion in CPD opportunities during these seven weeks of lock-down and how much effort colleagues have invested. Since the Raspberry Foundation team introduced me to the concept of CPD via Google Meet at the Cambridge Computing Education Research Symposium, there has been an explosion of Meets and Zooms. Depending on your circumstances, it can be a really exciting time to find and use Computing resources and CPD, especially now the National Centre for Computing Education are releasing very good quality resources for every Key Stage which will enable us to modify and share as much as we want with no worries about copyright. It is also a fleeting opportunity, as we know that all of us will have a huge task ahead of us once schools open again in some shape or form for students and teaching staff to return.

However, this expansion can be detrimental to our well-being, especially at the moment. It can be difficult to find the specific resource you require, even if you know what it is, and it is then difficult to then keep track of everything. How many times have you searched back through your histories to try to find the resource that you now need and didn’t make a note of… It can also be a bit overwhelming (especially now you can see all these resources in one place). Those of you who know my Twitter name – @gr8ict – may remember in the dim and distant past when I used to curate a website of many ICT resources:

So how do we make sense of this situation we find ourselves in, make it beneficial for our students, and not something we look back on as an opportunity lost? I’ve been thinking for the last month about what I could do to help. I had offered on the Gr8 Computing Ideas FBG to organise some Zoom meetings. However, that market seems (more than) saturated now. I have decided that now is the time to re-create gr8ict for the computing age, linked to my interest in research. As before, it helps me to have a resource bank to refer to in addition to the school VLE, especially as I focus more on research and pedagogy. FB groups are good for urgent requests and support, but not for archiving… although I wish more people could learn to search a group to see if their question is really ‘new’! Keeping a shared index should save us time too! In this connected age, I would like to share the resources, curate a list of answers, but more importantly encourage colleagues to integrate the ideas into their own and their department’s practice.

All pages and links etc made by me. Please contact me @gr8ict or #gr8computingideas if there are errors which I will correct or if you would like me to add links. I reserve the right to choose to add links or not, in an effort to keep links manageable for busy teachers.

Stay safe
Chris Sharples
May 2020


By Chris Sharples • Posts •

Jan 23 2020

Rotacloud and Careers in Web development

Rotacloud is company whose three founders include one of my ex-ICT students, David Brandon.  I have followed Dave through his career in web-development and when I knew that I was to produce a series of collections of links for careers in Computing to help teachers and students,  it seemed an ideal opportunity to catch up with Dave, James and some of their employees – click here for article.

By Chris Sharples • Apprenticeships, Careers, Posts •

Jan 20 2020

Python / Programming / Algorithms / Careers in Computing

6 pages of links of informative discussions on Quora which I have curated in the last year… click here for links.

By Chris Sharples • Python •

Jan 20 2020

A step-by-step guide to applying for Degree Apprenticeships

A step-by-step article written by a current software engineer apprentice explaining how to discover and apply for degree apprenticeships.  They explain where to look; how to apply; and give their own view on the advantages and disadvantages of doing such an apprenticeship.  Click here for the article.

By Chris Sharples • Apprenticeships, Careers, Posts •

Jan 13 2020

Gr8 Computer Science Teaching Ideas Number 1b: Using Trinket.io

This is the second blogpost in a series for the facebook group Gr8 Computer Science Teaching Ideas.

Trinket courses – I currently have over 20…

Description
Trinket is an “an all-in-one coding environment designed for education”. To me, it is a place to build my own courses which give my students a single link to access an interactive Python course with no messing about.
Click here for the full article…

By Chris Sharples • Good Practice, Gr8ComputerScienceTeachingIdeas, PRIMM, Programming, Trinket.io •

Jan 11 2020

Review of WJEC Eduqas GCSE (9-1) in COMPUTER SCIENCE

FOR TEACHING FROM 2020 FOR AWARD FROM 2022

Here is my review of the proposed WJEC Eduqas GCSE (9-1) in COMPUTER SCIENCE 2020 specification.  Please post any comments to the facebook post here.

By Chris Sharples • Posts •

Jun 25 2019

Bletchley Park Visit: Books, Films and web links for preparation beforehand

Please click  here for a google doc with all my resources for preparing for a school trip.

I suggested students (Y11/12/13)  watched The Imitation Game, and I lent them out DVDs of films Enigma and Bletchley Park: Code-Breaking’s Forgotten Genius (Gordon Welchman).  However, I consider both the Hollywood films very distracting from how Bletchley Park actually worked and how the people like Alan Turing were and worked together.  I therefore hunted out the 2 breaking the code films on Amazon Prime.   

This link suggests Howard Craston’s Top 6 Bletchley Park Books.   I already had listened to Station X and have subsequently bought two paper versions to share with the students.   I also have Seizing the Enigma, Hut 6 and Colossus.  

By Chris Sharples • Bletchley_Park, Careers, History_of_Computing •

Jun 6 2019

Gr8 Computer Science Teaching Ideas Number 04: Teaching Theory Well

This is the fourth blogpost in a series for the Facebook group Gr8 Computer Science Teaching Ideas.  

Please click here to go to article.

By Chris Sharples • Good Practice, Gr8ComputerScienceTeachingIdeas, Posts, Teaching •

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Recent Posts

  • Making Computer Science career pathways explicit at KS3 – and boosting
  • Will it make the Boat Go Faster? Out-learning, not out-working…
  • Launch of gr8computing ideas… May 2020-
  • Rotacloud and Careers in Web development
  • Python / Programming / Algorithms / Careers in Computing
  • A step-by-step guide to applying for Degree Apprenticeships
  • Gr8 Computer Science Teaching Ideas Number 1b: Using Trinket.io
  • Review of WJEC Eduqas GCSE (9-1) in COMPUTER SCIENCE
  • Bletchley Park Visit: Books, Films and web links for preparation beforehand
  • Gr8 Computer Science Teaching Ideas Number 04: Teaching Theory Well
  • Gr8 Computer Science Teaching Ideas Number 03: CyberFirst Education Pack by NCSC Cyber Schools Hub and Emma Williams
  • Gr8 Computer Science Teaching Ideas Number 02: Packet Tracer by Cisco and Duncan Maidens
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