Computer Science News

Last week a training day was held in the Department for ICT/Computing teachers interested in starting GCSE Computing in their school. While all the main Boards are offering this qualification we were pleased to have our opening talk from the Chief Examiner for the OCR GCSE Computing, Sean O'Byrne. It became typical of the whole day, that even in this first session, many participants (30 teachers or advisors) interjected with vigorous, sometimes critical, questioning and discussion. It was an intense day with sessions on practical sorting activities at KS3, on programming (Scratch and Greenfoot), on the potential of on-line support especially for programming, and on what to do next! Two major themes that emerged were:

(i) problems associated with the assessment of programming tasks and the kinds of teacher intervention and support that are allowable and desirable,

(ii) how should teachers new to programming choose and learn languages suited to the GCSE and suited to students gaining valuable concepts for future work in computing.

There was a huge range of experience among those present: some had been on the OCR pilot scheme already for two years, others were committed to starting the GCSE this September, some had industry experience of programming, others no programming knowledge at all. The day proved a good success for most participants (judging by the detailed feedback) and will result in our setting up a dedicated schools portal (soon) and preparing to offer further CPD training for teachers this July.