CAS Community Leaders

Hello! To celebrate all your amazing work we want to thank you all on our Social Media during National Volunteers Week (3rd-9th June). If you could fill this form out with a short quote on what being a CAS Community Leader means to you, that would be greatly appreciated

Friends,

I promised a brief up date on the survey that many of your kindly completed last term, here are some of the top line points and some of the thoughts and ideas we can collectively take away for this coming year.

The top lines from the recent survey

Over 75% wanted to continue being a CAS Community leader

That’s great! Thank you. Our involvement with the NCCE saw the opportunity to expand and build on the erstwhile CAS Hubs. One of the key contributions of CAS to the NCCE has been this network of local hubs. These hubs were established by CAS to provide support and training for teachers in computing, and have been an important part of the NCCE’s outreach and engagement work. As e move to new arrangements these community groups remain the foundation for CAS, acting as our “Computing Staff Room”. The place we can learn from others, seek encouragement and inspiration.

Over 78% would value more regular updates from CAS

Agreed, and noted! It’s not easy getting the balance right between too much and not enough communication but we’re working behind the scenes to improve on this and make it easier to disseminate some of the key information about what is happening in CAS. The website is clearly one of the places where news gets posted so do keep an eye out there and if there is anything further that you need you can always email (compatsch@bcs.uk) and it will get forwarded on to the right person.

The top three suggestions for improvement are:

1. Provide a list of potential speakers to invite to meetings
2. Provide a list of ideas for subject meetings, and
3. Help with getting the message out about my community leader activity

This last one is a bug-bear for all of us right now! It does seem hard to get in contact with even those CAS members registered to our community. However, this has already been improved and on the homepage for your community there is now a link to “Message the Community” which will go direct to their Inboxes.

Part of the point of these bulletins is to suggest ideas for meetings which I hope is helpful …?

Finally the list of speakers … I’m on it and will work on that over the coming weeks and make this available on the Community Leader homepage.

Some personal highlights from the forum …

Discussions

Just the one this time as it is so central to all that we do and are doing as teachers in the classroom, but this discussion is fascinating and far-reaching and I encourage others to have a read and put id the 2d!

• How are we teaching … and why? A good debate started by @amee on the role of worksheets, slide decks and other types of resources that we use in our classrooms. I do like the notion that the best resources we can use embody “learning by exploration, or learning by construction”. Much food for thought here, plus a delightful shout out for the resources shared by teachers on CAS: “resources generated by real teachers and shared freely via e.g. CAS are on the whole better than any of the commercial resources”

Resources

• ChatGPT Prompt Booklet A really helpful collection of prompts to generate personalised resources using ChatGPT.
• Complete set of resources for A Level and GCSE Computer Science My colleague here in Cambridge, Will Grey, has been working hard over many years building this suite of resources to support GCSE and A Level. Take a look!
• Say IT - Taboo with a CS twist A lovely creative idea for helping students’ understanding, especially as revision starts to loom large.

That’s all for now - I hope you have a lovely Easter holiday, with time to relax and recharge.

Best wishes

Simon

Hello Community Leaders , here something that might be of interest to yourselves and you communities. The importance of ethics and morals in IT - Can you help?

Friends,

I hope you managed a relaxing half-term managing to avoid too much marking and planning and return refreshed to the second half of the Spring Term? I’m not sure where the time goes.

It’s brilliant to see so many of you planning on hosting meetings with others in your area, either face to face or online. As ever in the CAS Community there’s a lot happening and it’s often hard to stay up to date. The intention here is to provide a quick summary of what has been happening, what is planned, ideas for meetings, how to get involved and connect and hopefully something useful you can take away and use in your own classrooms.

Thank you

Thank you to all of who who found the time to complete the short survey. It was really helpful. I’ll post out a summary soon.

Coffee and Chat

Our next informal get together will be on March 8th. Do sign up to join us. We’ll start at 4:30PM.

From the forum

How often do you manage to check in on the CAS Forum? There are a good range of topics and discussions taking place, and it’s OK to lurk, to like or even comment. Here’s what I’ve found interesting:

• A Level NEA Particularly relevant for A Level teachers but CAS member Richard Pawson has written some quite brilliant resources, ideas etc to help any of us involved in helping our students get through their project (NEA). As well as providing an exemplar project he poses several questions about the NEA, how it is delivered, how it is marked that provides much food for thought.
• Digital skills The title might not be a “headline grabber” but there’s some really insightful comments and thoughts from Adrian Mee, @yabbas, Adrienne Tough and others on focusing the taught curriculum and approaches to digital skills. Some great material here for discussion groups at your meetings.
• ChatGPT The AI platform has captured the zeitgeist in many spheres, not least education, and the impact this might have on assessment practices. Have you tried it? Does it concern or excite you? It’s a great discussion topic for meetings.
• Selecting students for GCSE It’s an evergreen topic, and not without some controversy. Do you select on the basis of ability (in some other subject), is access open to all? Join in the debate!
• Evidencing Computing From the Primary forum but relevant to us all, the tools, the ideas we have for monitoring progression and being able to evidence that progression in our classrooms. Do you have any tips to share from your own experiences?

Resources

It’s great that almost every day teachers are sharing “stuff” they’ve used in their classroom. The whole rationale behind the CAS Resource library is precisely that! If it’s worked for you then it may well work for someone else. They’re not formally curated, that’s left to the community who download and use them to give feedback, adapt, re-upload and so on. Here’s a just a couple I’ve found interesting and useful:

• Data representation of images and sound (with micro:bits) From Pete Dring, Pete’s resources are always high quality and well thought through. As an aside have you seen his website? It’s a brilliant resource for GCSE and KS3. Here are a collection of activities for working with images and the Micro:bit using Python.
• ChatGPT for Teachers - A Guide by Evan Dunne From Evan Dunne. It’s topical! How you can use ChatGPT to your advantage. The document is well laid out and gives some great tips on using it in the classroom for developing your own resources and for collaborative learning.

Blogs

• There’s a new series of blogs kicking off on the site about Cyber Security - It’s Everybody’s Business
• SEND expert and CAS Board member Catherine Elliot provides some great ideas for helping us all with supporting our learners who have particular needs and ensure we’re making our approaches as inclusive as we can.

Classroom Opportunities

We’re always on the lookout for ideas to spark interest and activity, both for in-class and our computing clubs. Have you seen:

• Your Voice is Power Introducing EarSketch as a catalyst for combing Music and Computing. Pete Marshman is running several events connected to this project during the year.
• Young Coders Competition For Junior and early Secondary pupils, now open for registration of interest. All resources are provided and great opportunity to showcase your pupils’ Scratch coding.
• BAFTA Young Games Designers Hard to find a student that’s not interested in games, or even games design. here’s the perfect opportunity to get them started …
• Apps For Good Climate Change Terrific for building cross-curricular links with Geography and/or PSHE, engaging for students concerned about climate change and wanting to make a difference.

Have you thought …?

We all know how stretched teachers are right now but getting together to collaborate and share together can be so energizing. Have you thought about connecting with other Community Leaders in your area to hold joint meetings?

I hope that sparks some thoughts and ideas and I look forward to seeing you soon either in person, or at an online meeting or engaging through the forum and website.

Best wishes

Simon Humphreys

Community Leaders have a look at the latest updates on the CAS Website community Leaders page - Unauthorised Access - COMMUNITY LEADERS ONLY . You will need to login. Get in touch with compatsch@bcs.uk if you have any issues with Login.

You will two short vlogs on how to manage your profile and communicate with you community.

and if you haven’t seen it already an exclusive surprise for you all .

Stuart