Norfolk CAS meeting last night

[Neil Collins]

Hi all,

 

Excellent Norfolk CAS meeting last night I thought – sorry it ran over.  The highlight for me was definitely seeing what Jim’s year 8 pupil had done with Scratch.  There really aren’t many subjects where a pupil would take something learned in class and spend hours and hours working on it at home – not because they have to, but because they want to.  If we do nothing else but inspire a few more like that I don’t think we’ll be going too far wrong!

 

Anyway here are my notes, including actions, so please shout if I’ve got anything wrong or missed anything.

 

Google Group

If you’ve not done so already, can I also give you a gentle nudge to sign up to the Norfolk CAS Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/norfolk-cas-hub).  It’s probably the easiest way to get emails to people and now we’ve got some real projects off the ground – keeping in touch is really important.  To remind you, once you’ve joined you can send email to norfolk...@googlegroups.com and that’ll get to everyone registered. 

 

Also, don’t be bashful – please tell your friends!

 

 

Summary

Summarising a very interesting discussion we really identified two key areas we could work on in the near future:

1.       We want to promote the use of Scratch in Key Stage 3 and to help with this we’re going to have a competition across Norfolk (with £1000 prize fund so far – thank you UEA and MetaSwitch!).

2.       For Key Stage 4, we think that an important thing to do is build up teacher confidence in teaching programming for Computing GCSE so we’re going to launch a free “Learn Visual Basic” night class/self help group.

 

Details and actions as follows:

 

Scratch Competition

Outline idea is

·         teams of up to 4 people from key stage 3

·         called something catchy like “Scratch Off” (thank you Stephen!!)

·         writing a game (or some such) – possibly to be played by 8 or 9 year olds

·         max 6 teams per school

·         we’ve got £1000 prize fund to get 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd prizes plus a trophy for the winning school

·         announce by 14^th Nov (Seb’s subject leader day)

·         get expressions of interest by 1st Dec

·         run through Spring term with judging to be done at big event (ideally at UEA) on the afternoon of either 27^th or 28^th March

 

Goals:

·         Light the spark of interest in some kids.

·         The more schools that take part the merrier but we’re aiming for at least 10.

 

Actions as follows:

·         Neil – finalise prizes (gadgets or Lego Mindstorms or something) by 4^th Nov and venue (probably UEA).

·         Rudy – get outline idea for competition together by 4^th Nov and finalise by 1^st Dec

·         Robin/Seb – promote the completion to high schools across Norfolk

 

Learn Visual Basic Night Class/Self Help Group

Outline idea is

·         get teachers confident enough to teach VB as language for coding examples in GCSE computing

·         run a night class (say 7pm-9pm one day per week during Spring term)

·         Neil to lead but lots of self-help too

·         host somewhere in Norwich (Thorpe St Andrew if Claire can swing it)

·         try to make it free for attendees (so long as they’re teachers and could use it to promote computing at their school)

·         use VB as it’s free, widely used and fits well with use of Excel/Access in ICT.

 

Goals:

·         Get, say, 6 to 12 teachers involved.

 

Actions as follows:

·         Jim – get spec for what level teachers need to teach to (and co-ordinate with Mike Quantrill from Neatherd – copied on this email)

·         Claire – try to organise hosting (ideally for free)

·         Neil – lead classes

·         Claire – promote the course to other teachers in Norfolk (using Seb as conduit).

 

Next meeting is at the UEA again (thanks Vic, Pam, John and Rudy) on 7^th Dec at 4:30pm (I’ll schedule in Event Brite).  As I mentioned at the last meeting, schools please try to bring another school along to this meeting if you can.

 

Thanks all.

Neil

 

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Norfolk CAS

Google Group : http://groups.google.com/group/norfolk-cas-hub

Email : norfolk...@googlegroups.com

[Neil Collins]

Hi Rudy,

 

Thanks for your work on this.

 

Can I open this out to the wider group?  What do people think of this as the basis for the competition?

 

cheers

Neil

 

From: Lapeer Rudy Dr (CMP) [mailto:R.La...@uea.ac.uk]
Sent: 04 November 2011 20:56
To: Neil Collins; norfolk...@googlegroups.com; Gasse, Sebastian
Subject: RE: Norfolk CAS meeting last night

 

Dear all,

 

I have attached a draft of the game competition.

A example video (SPROGS) of a similar game done here, not in scratch but in C++/OpenGL, is to follow

 (too big for attachment so will send a link on Monday as my filestore is not working at the mo L )

 

All  compulsory aims and optional ones (see doc) are possible in Scratch.

The optional aims are challenging but that’s why it is a competition!

 

Any feedback welcome.

 

And now … after another 12 hours of work (don’t say again that uni lectures have an easy life)

I’m off to do some Ceroc dancing until 12:00 J

 

Best regards,

 

Rudy

 

 

Rudy J. Lapeer, Ph.D.

Senior Lecturer

Director of Admissions, School of Computing Sciences

University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ

01603 592305