CAS A-Level Community

If you’ve missed our recent events here are the summaries for you to catch up on.

A new programming language suitable for KS3-5 Elan – First Language for British Schools Since 1981 - TC meeting

Ideas for educational visits and work experience for KS3-5 Inspiring Computing Students Beyond the Classroom

How to get started with unreal engine and the Rube Golberg competition Interactive 3D: Rube Goldberg in Unreal Engine

Help Shape the Future of Computing Education – Share Your Insights!

We’re seeking your input to better understand the challenges and opportunities surrounding GCSE Computer Science and part-time teaching roles. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us identify practical solutions to improve access and support for Computing education. Both of these surveys are anonymous and multiple choice so very quick to fill in!

Survey 1: GCSE Computer Science Availability
If you’re a teacher, we’d love to hear whether your school offers GCSE Computer Science and the factors influencing this.

Survey 2: Part-Time Teaching Insights
If you work part-time, please take a moment to complete this survey. We want to understand how schools manage timetables and school activities for part-time staff, including events on your non-working days.

Thank you for your time and input – your voice matters!

Hi everyone,

Our Thematic Community meeting, Elan – First Language for British Schools Since 1981, is happening today at 4pm and there’s still time to join us!

Register here if you haven’t yet: Elan – First Language for British Schools Since 1981

Looking forward to seeing you there!

CAS A-Level Community session reminder: Elan – The First Programming Language for British Schools Since 1981

Date: 5th December

Join the conversation about Elan, the first programming language for British schools since BBC Basic in 1981. Free, browser-based, and launching in May 2025, Elan is designed to make programming accessible and adaptable for classrooms.

Richard Pawson, leader of the Elan design team, will share the journey behind its creation and how it can transform computing education.

Sign up here: Elan – First Language for British Schools Since 1981

Just a quick reminder that our session, “NEA Preparation with Inversity’s Free A-Level Resources,” is happening tomorrow!

There’s still time to join us—register here: NEA Preparation with Inversity’s Free A-Level Resources

We hope to see you there!

hiya, I’ve had a bit of a new career path in mind and realised that I didn’t take the correct a-levels for a computer science degree at uni. So in my gap year I’m teaching myself a computer science a-level and I was wondering if there are any similar students to me who wanted to make a discord so we can ask questions and help push each other on, kinda like a study group I guess. anyways the invite link is Computer science help if you would like to join it. If you don’t link clicking links from strangers, fair enough you could add me first on discord my user name is “phroggomcwoggo” and I can invite you through discord so you know it isn’t a scam. Have a good day all!

Are you teaching 14-18 year olds Computing and looking to introduce or improve your students’ SQL skills?
We’ve just launched a set of FREE resources designed to help you teach SQL with confidence!

These resources cover the essentials, from basic queries to more advanced database concepts, tailored to engage and challenge your students. Whether you’re new to SQL or looking to refresh your lessons, these materials are perfect for you!

Download now and give your students a head start in understanding databases: KS4 and KS5 SQL Lessons

Digdata is thrilled to announce free virtual work experience events with National Highways this November and December. These career challenges are designed to develop key employability skills such as problem solving, data literacy, storytelling, and presentation. Hosted on Microsoft Teams, these sessions take place outside of school hours, making them easily accessible.
First Step Challenge Years 7-6 (England and Wales), Years 8-10 (NI) and S1-S3 (Scotland) - 27th November
Next Step Challenge Years 10-13 (England & Wales), Years 11-14 (NI) and S4-S6 (Scotland) - 11th December
Find out more: National Highways career challenges - Digdata - a Data Inspiration Group programme

We are absolutely ecstatic to announce our much anticipated 8th annual Teens in AI #IWD2025 Global Techathon. From 6 - 25 March 2025, we’ll unite cities worldwide in an epic tech extravaganza. Our mission? To close the gender gap in tech by introducing the thrilling world of AI to bright young minds aged 12 to 18.

But we can’t do it alone; WE NEED YOUR HELP! Do you champion gender diversity? Do you dream of making a positive impact in your community? Or do you have an interest in the world of AI? We’re on the lookout for Local Ambassadors like YOU, to inspire the next generation of tech innovators!

Why Join Us?

• Sharpen your organisational, leadership, and management skills
• Boost your credibility by associating with a global event promoting diversity and inclusivity, enhancing your professional portfolio
• Experience the fulfilment of promoting gender equality and diversity while aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

Join us as a Local Ambassador and seize these incredible opportunities! Sign up now https://bit.ly/iwd2025 to lead the way in promoting a more diverse and inclusive tech generation. Deadline: 30 November 2024.

Visit Global Techathon - Teens in AI for more details

#teensinai #ai4good #iwd2025 #globalgoals #unsdgs

Hi everyone,

The UK Bebras challenge 2024 will be taking place between 4th-15th November. If you haven’t already registered your school and students there is still time to do this.

The Bebras Challenge introduces computational thinking to students worldwide. This exciting challenge takes place in schools, under the supervision of teachers, over a two-week period every November. Last year, over 3 million students from more than 80 countries participated!

In the UK, the challenge is open to all young people aged 6 to 19. Each participant has 45 minutes to tackle a series of interactive tasks, designed to encourage logical thinking and problem-solving skills appropriate for their age group. The challenge is conducted online, and tasks are marked automatically by our competition system.

If you would like further information or support we are hosting a series of online sessions. Details of the dates and joining link can be found on the calendar page of our site bebras.uk.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing students take part!
Harriet - Learning Manager
Raspberry Pi Foundation

Hello everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that our A- Level Community meeting, Building advanced database skills for the NEA, is coming up next week on Monday, 14th October at 4pm. We’d love to see you there!

In this practical session, you will explore Ada’s embedded SQL editor, engaging with a new database scenario and related project resources. The event is CPD-eligible, so you can further your professional development while participating.
( CPD Certificates Now Available for Online Events! )

Mark your calendars—we hope you can join us!

Register here:
https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/events/2024/october/building-advanced-database-skills-for-the-nea

I am excited to share an excellent professional development opportunity that I believe will be highly valuable. The event, BRILLIANT, is a free, full-day professional development experience designed to inspire, educate and equip teachers with the tools to innovate in the classroom.
Why Attend BRILLIANT?

This event offers a blend of inspiration, hands-on learning and cutting-edge resources to help you and your staff enhance your teaching practice, particularly in the fields of Computing and STEAM - and it is free!

CAS have a stand at the event and I will be delivering a presentation in The Inspire Theatre at 11.35am that unpicks students learning about AI.

Key Highlights:

Classroom of NOW: Experience the latest technologies, teaching methods and see firsthand how they can be applied in your classroom.
STEAM Integration: Discover practical ways to incorporate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics into your curriculum to foster problem-solving and innovation.
Visionary Speakers: Hear from renowned educators, thought leaders and industry experts on the future of education and the role technology will play.
Hot Topics: Explore key trends such as Artificial Intelligence, DE&I in classrooms and the growing world of Esports and Gamification.
Networking & Collaboration: Connect with over 1,000 fellow educators and industry professionals, sharing ideas and building a robust learning community.
Date: 15th October 2024 (8.30am - 5.00pm)
Location: ACC Exhibition Centre, Kings Dock, Liverpool, L3 4BX

I highly recommend registering to take advantage of this inspiring day of learning and growth. Whether you’re looking to deepen your knowledge in computing or broaden your understanding of STEAM, BRILLIANT offers something for every educator.
To register or learn more, visit the BRILLIANT website.

I hope to see you there.
Becci

I’ve been working on a Python project (bit of a toy project for myself, to get into using Tkinter’s Canvas as much as anything) - it’s to be able to create graphs and then demonstrate standard graph algorithms, step by step.

It’s now at a point where it’s worth sharing with others - it’s not beautiful, coding speaking, but it works as far as it goes (couple of minor cosmetic changes, then on with further functionality). Screenshots and GIF of a screencast, below.

For those interested, it can be installed through PyPI or the source code can be grabbed direct from GitHub.

Any thoughts, suggestions, etc then please do contact me

nodemon11366×728 14.5 KB

nodemon21366×728 19.8 KB

In case you missed the exciting announcement at CAS Conference, Richard Pawson announced ELAN - a new programming language designed for education. You can find out more and join the discussion here: Elan - the first new programming language designed for British schools since BBC Basic - #10 by Richard_Pawson

Thank you to everyone who joined us for CAS Conference on Saturday - it was great to see you all in person! We hope you all enjoyed catching up with each other and listening to some great speakers as well. And don’t forget, the session materials are available to download from

https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/communities-and-events/cas-conference-2024/workshop-programme

New resource! Use this to teach students how to use AI responsibly and what to watch out for.

Join me tomorrow at 4pm where Dave Hartley will be doing an intro to Object Oriented Programming
https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/events/2024/june/intro-to-oop-or-why-everything-is-an-object

Free competition on Open Source Data Analysis launching for A-level CompSci students tomorrow

Hi all, we’re launching a free Open Source Data Analysis competition tomorrow, well-suited to CompSci A-level students. It launches at 6pm Saturday 1st June, with one clue landing each day until Friday. Entrants have to use a variety of Open Source Investigation techniques to solve the clues - from geolocating a photo, to computer vision analysis of satellite imagery, to prompt injection of a chatbot. There’s a leaderboard - and it should be accessible and great fun whilst being safe and appropriate for young people. All the data is provided and is synthetic (fictional). If any of your students might be interested then here’s a link: Inversity

Have a great weekend! James

I’ve been doing some research into how many degrees don’t require Maths A-Level and the findings were really interesting! Please share with your students The Path to Computing Degrees: Unlocking Opportunities for All Students

1-day Hackathon in London suitable for A-level Computer Science students

Morning all, we’re running a 1-day hackathon in London on Saturday 6th July at The Crown Estate, just off Piccadilly Circus. We have an incredible net-zero challenge, lots of industry mentors on hand, and short expert workshops throughout the day on software prototyping, developing in teams, AI in development and pitching. It’s a great ‘first hackathon’ for A-level students and our last one got an average rating of 9/10. It’s £25 to enter - which includes free food and drink all day - there’s also £2000 of cash prizes for winners and internships available, too…!

Learn more and register at Inversity

Thanks and hope to see some of you there James

If you missed yesterday’s session about how AI changes the skills needed for software engineers, here’s a blog post summarising it which includes a link to the recording

Join me tomorrow at 4pm where I’ll be joined by a former Chief Technical Officer when he’ll explain ‘How AI changed the skills I hired for in Software Engineers and Data Scientists… and what this means for A-level CompSci students skills.’
https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/events/2024/may/cas-a-level-skills-needed-for-software-engineers-and-data-scientists-jobs

University courses for A Level students without Maths (and, indeed, a few good courses for those without A Levels) now added: The Open University, De Montfort University; Newman University.

There are some great HE opportunities out there for bright students who either didn’t flourish in school, or whose schools were unable to nurture or support their interests.

Brilliant - thanks Becci

Many A-Level students won’t be studying Maths and will want to continue studying a CS-related degree when they finish A-Level. I’ve started putting together a list of degree courses which don’t require Maths A-Level. Please contribute any courses you know of, or come across which don’t require Maths A-Level and use to support your students CS degrees without maths req - Google Docs

For anyone who missed the session last night about using AI for assessment, here’s the blog including links to the slides and recording: AI to enhance assessment and integrity. AI TC Meeting
The later part of the session was focused on student use of AI in the NEA

Join me on Monday where I’ll be joined by 2 teachers discussing AI for assessment AI to enhance assessment and integrity

On Thursday at 4 pm I’ll be joined by Rebecca Franks for an introduction to Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

Explore our new enrichment resources that will support your learners in getting started in Unreal Editor for Fortnite. In the enrichment sessions, learners can design their own 3D world and personalise it with their own objects, they can then make a fun collectable game.
Sign up here: Getting started in Unreal Editor for Fortnite

On Wednesday at 4 pm I’ll be joined by Harry Wake and Anna Wake who will be
-offering some top tips on how you can make your programming lessons more interesting.
-demonstrating how to teach fundamental programming contexts with real-life scenarios, for instance, how programming can be used to tackle climate change.
-showcasing Mission Encodeable, the website they’ve created that takes students from knowing nothing about programming in Python to being able to answer high-demand GCSE programming questions. It’s completely free to access, very popular with students, and includes lots of interesting, real-world projects.
Sign up here Mission Encodeable's free programming resources

@bpeters suggested I share this here too…

DSIT are carrying out a survey to understand why teachers choose to deliver or not deliver the CyberEPQ and what the main incentives and barriers are. It should only take 10 minutes to complete and your participation will be highly appreciated and valuable to DSIT policy makers, whether or not you currently deliver the CyberEPQ.

Complete the survey here - https://dsit.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_39qV4fAM8t8aMt0

COMPUTING, ELECTRONICS & ROBOTICS
05 – 09 August 2024, University of Southampton

LIMITED FEMALE PLACES AVAILABLE!

Take your child’s passion for STEM to new heights in this five-day, ALL-INCLUSIVE residential course. This course will introduce students to industry professionals from Amazon Future Engineer, plus provide them with the opportunity to design and build their own robots whilst learning about the fundamentals of coding and circuits!

This course is available to students currently in Year 12 in England and Wales, S6 in Scotland, and Year 13 in Northern Ireland.

Hi Alan, on another topic - I wonder if there is a CAS meeting planned for Manchester Central? I am happy to come along or host at Tameside College if a venue is needed.
Thanks, Louise

Please sign up yourself or point your students here: Isaac Computer Science
This is an opportunity for your students and you to find out more about apprenticeships from the BCS and about other alternatives to traditional university degrees at an Isaac Discovery event we are hosting at 9am-10:30 am on 20th February 2024. (Aware that we are hitting half-term for some schools!)

(I’ll cross post to other threads - with advance apologies)

Thank you Richard, The spreadsheet really helps.

Abirami

Not a worksheet as such, but if you are teaching floating point normalisation, you might find this interactive spreadsheet simulation that I created useful:

https://metalup.org/floatingpoint/description.html

It is quite sophisticated, but by interacting with it you end up with a really strong feel for how normalisation works and why it is important to maintain accuracy. Also gives you an understanding of why the first two digits need to be different.

Richard

@Alan Harrison, thank you. I never thought about chatgpt worksheets.

@Abirami Kumar I use Craig’n’Dave resources, ExamBuilder and Isaac, but I also just used the free ChatGPT 3,5 to create some questions with this prompt.

Create a worksheet of six questions worth between 4 and 8 marks each, on 2’s complement fixed and floating point binary numbers, suitable for an exam in OCR A-level in Computer Science. Each question should have a mix of AO1 (demonstrate knowledge and understanding), AO2 (apply knowledge) and AO3 (evaluate and design solutions) marks. At the end of the worksheet write the mark scheme with model answers.
The results are in the chat transcript here, along with a follow-up prompt to create some simple conversion questions. Results are not bad, might need a tidy up.

@Priya Ravi it’s here: Useful websites for A-Level CS - Google Docs

Hi
I still can’t find the resources from 5/2/24 session - Useful websites to teach A level.
Can anyone help?
Thanks

@abirami Kumar, I teach it off the board, but you could try the Isaac Computing workbook? Isaac Computer Science

For OCR the questions on Data representations start on p127.
Alternatively ZigZag have worksheets with some questions.

Does anyone have worksheets for 2’s complement and fixed and floating point binary.

Hi all, for those of you teaching KS5, your learners may be interested in applying for an Apprenticeship at Arm. They have Level 4 and Degree apprenticeships in the Arm Cambridge offices.

Apply here: Search for available jobs at arm here

Lots of useful websites are linked to from here: Useful websites for A-Level CS - Google Docs
Do add your own if they’re not already included

Once I have taught Boolean algebra I get my classes to do Boolean Algebra Quiz and see how many questions they can get right in a row.

Are there any useful websites you use for teaching or would recommend for your students? Hoping to showcase some at our next event on 5th Feb. Email me if you’d be happy to show (Becci.peters@bcs.uk)

Ok, links being stripped out. Please do go to Isaaccomputerscience.org discover events for more details.

Hi there, I’m very excited to be able to offer “Alternatives to traditional university degrees” to a-level students via Isaac Computing events. As an OU graduate and post-grad and a teacher with an utterly non-traditional career, I would not be writing this here now without the OU. We are also talking about Apprenticeships and Code First Girls degrees. Isaac Computer Science
I hope it’s okay to tell people about this here :).

As someone teaching OCR for the first time this year these are really useful - thank you!

Thanks to those who came to the session this week about marking OCR exam papers. Here are the slides from the session. Do let us know if there’s anything you’d like covered in future sessions

Good idea!