Transition year

[sandra maloney]

Hi,

My school is considering new options for modules in Transition year. We offer ECDL at the moment and I do Scratch in Computer club so I was wondering if there were any other IT related courses that schools were running at the moment. I was considering suggesting Mobile phone apps? I would love any opinions or feedback,

Thanks,
Sandra

[Clarke Rice]

Hi Sandra,

Depending on their level of ability, you might want to consider:

GCSE Computer Science. The AQA option has a mobile phone app as one of
the practical modules. Google for 'OCR GCSE Computing' or 'AQA GCSE
Computer Science'. I've looked at both courses and content-wise, one is
as useful as the other. The AQA course is brand new, and hence the OCR
course is better resourced at present. OCR Ireland's office is in
Belfast and both boards will hopefully be at the Computing At School NI
hub meeting, 14th June.

AS-level Computer Science (worth half an A-level). Google for 'AQA
Computing' or 'OCR Computing'. AFAIK this would get CAO recognition.
You probably would not have time to teach the full 2-yr A-level during
TY, as the second year of the course has a hefty chunk of coursework.

HTH,

Clarke

[Bernadette O Dwyer]

Hi Sandra,

We have been running a scratch module for TY's this year, and it has worked out very well. We were initially
doing an EDCL-like program, but we found that the students found it a little boring, so we decided to give
Scratch a try. There is an excellent resource CD that I got at the CESI annual conference which gives a series
of lesson plans for teaching scratch at TY level.

The CD is a great resource. I used it to get ideas for projects and some sample files for students to use as templates.
I didn't end up using the lesson plans, as I wanted to teach scratch in a more informal way, more along the style
of coder dojo. I set a series of four projects for the students, showed them the basics, and let them work away.
It was quite interesting to observe how they learnt. A couple of students got quite into it, and became the technical gurus
who helped the others. I hovered and helped when the students got stuck, but after a month or two, most of them
were more proficient than me with the tools.What I did provide were guidelines on how to develop code and debug
in an efficient way, much like what you would do if you were coding in the real world.

I imagine that as Scratch becomes more popular students will want to move on to something more challenging,
simply because it is too simple to master for the students who are true techies. I'm going to start looking at
http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/ , which is being developed by MIT, who also developed Scratch. I imagine
it's the next step on the programming evolutions scale. Lets see...

If you need example of the projects I set, feel free to email me.

Best regards,

Bernie O'Dwyer








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From: cesi...@googlegroups.com [cesi...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Clarke Rice [clark...@gmail.com]
Sent: 15 May 2012 18:51
To: cesi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CESI List] Transition year

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[Claire Mc Hugh]

Microsoft office specialist is great for ty , plenty of skills in office learned , quite challenging

Sent from Claires iPhone

[Peter Lydon]

I teach Blogger to a full TY group - 6 repeat modules throughout the year to
6 groups,
Peter

[Rickie O Keeffe]

Hi
I have used photostory 3 or windows movie maker for a multimedia project. The challenge is create a slideshow of images which corresponds to the lyrics of their chosen song. Their peers should be able to identify the song from the slideshow. I finished this year using Sweet home 3D a free download the first challenge was to model the computer lab and then they modelled their homes. In the past I have used audacity to create pod casts and simpl adverts
Regards Rickie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Claire Mc Hugh" <clmc...@gmail.com>
To: cesi...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 15 May, 2012 9:27:40 PM
Subject: Re: [CESI List] Transition year

[Cora Keohane]

Hi Bernie,
I would to see the examples you set. I'm volunteering at the Clonakilty Code Dojo starting (a trial run) this Friday + we're looking for ideas to start us off.
Cora Murphy

[Bernie Delaney]

Hi Bernie,

 

Would love to see examples of projests you set.

 

Best regards,

Bernie Delaney